Muddy days

I've had a good day today, started the analysis of the survey, figured out how to enter it all into excel. I worked with Richard, a Ugandan with some experence with Excel, who is great and will be doing all the data entry for the survey. We entered the first household's data together so that was exciting for me to see it come together.

I spent the morning with a community health nurse who works with AIDS patients. She goes to their homes and does education on all different types of things and ensures that ARVs are being taken properly. We walked through muddy fields up to our knees in puddles to get to the client's home, and got covered in mud. I slipped and fell on my butt right into the mud and got absolutely covered (typical for me..!). Everyone laughed really hard, including me. But then I was blown away after we got back, because they washed my feet for me. After they were done, my feet were cleaner than they've been the whole time I've been here, they cleaned each toe with so much care. It was an absolutely amazing, humbling experience. I have come here to give, and yet I recieve more from people who we think have "nothing" than I can ever give.

Then tonight I had a girls night with some of my friends here, as this is my last night and we made a Ugandan meal--I taught some of the visitors how to make Chapatis, which are a typical Ugandan food, so I was quite proud of myself. (I've been taught by some Ugandan friends).
They've all gone home now and the power was off and just as I was about to go to bed I walked into a corner of a wall (I'm staying in a new house and not familiar with the layout) and split my eyebrow open. So typical...I always end up doing these things to myself! After looking at it I've decided I'm ok and don't need stiches which is good because if I did, I'm sure there's no one to do them for me. Anyhow, I decided to check my email while I ice my forehead to try to downsize the already growing lump on my forehead. And now that I'm done writing this blog, I'm heading off to bed. I'm supposed to be getting up early tomorrow to meet a friend to go for a run. yuck.

Pictures of my last day at Joy Hospice

Me with Merab and Dinah, two of the nurses, and with a patient.

Survey is completed!

Today was the last day of the survey. I haven't acutally been going door to door doing the survey, because the chance of inaccurate results increases if a 'mzungu' is present--people are more likely to say what they think I will want them to say. So instead, I have been meeting with the people who are doing the survey every day before they go out and talking to them about the different problems they have encountered, and then taking them to the different areas they need to get to. After two days of the survey, we have surveyed a minimum of 408 people (I don't know the actual number due to a mistake some of the people made where they didn't record the number of children in each age group.) We are hoping to survey at least 600 people, so if we get another 200 today, then we will have reached our goal. If not, I may have to extend the survey one more day, which I am hoping not to do. Oranizing anything here is pretty much a nightmare, so this week has been quite stressful for me and I'm glad it's over now. I am very excited to see the results of the survey now, and next week will begin the huge task of analyzing the data.

When I was driving down the mountain today (Mooni is a mountain village), after dropping everyone off to do the survey, I took a wrong turn and ended up on a road that I realized was turning into not much of a road anymore. The roads are already terrible in Mooni--I may as well have been off roading--in fact that probably would've been easier than driving on the roads. But this road was quickly disapearing into just a little path. I kept driving for a bit, hoping that I'd find a place to turn around (the roads are also very narrow) and I wasn't finding
anywhere. Suddenly I came up to a really steep hill. I stopped, because if I went down I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it up, due to the muddy roads. So then my choices were to either back up all the way down the road until I came to somewhere where I could turn around, or to try to turn around where I was. On my right was a steep embankment up, and on my left was a ditch about a foot and a half deep. I did not like the idea of driving backwards down a muddy mountain road for a long time, so I decided to try to turn around. Of course it wasn't long before I went into the ditch. Both back wheels went over into the ditch. I thought I was really stuck then. Up in the middle of nowhere, by myself, and I had the only Jenga vehicle with me, because Robby had taken the Van to kampala. So I couldn't even call anyone to come up and help me.
Thankfully, I had asked one of the guys doing the survey to show me how to put the truck into 4 wheel drive right before I dropped him off because i was worried about the roads getting bad if it started to rain. So I decided to give it a shot. I got out and changed the setting on the front tires, smiling and waving at the crowd of at least 15 people who had now gathered to watch me. They didn't smile or wave back, they just kept staring at me. I got back in the truck and after stalling it about 4 times, miracle of miracles, I managed to get the truck up out of the ditch.
So that was my disaster eversion of the day.

I seem to have at least one potiential disaster a day here. Maybe it's just me. Probably. But a few days ago I sprained my ankle badly enough that I can't walk without a tensor bandage on it. I keep trying to take it off and walk without it because everyone keeps saying sorry and asking what happened and I feel really dumb telling them that I just stepped off a curb and my ankle rolled. I should make up an exciting story or something.
This has kinda been a rambling blog about nothing, so sorry about that. I need to get back to work now. Hope everyone's doing well and thanks to those that have emailed me, it's always great to hear from people. miss you all and see you soon!

More adventures on the Nile coming right up!

After a week of hard work, I am excited to be taking the weekend off. I have just arrived in Jinja, with Angie, and we are spending the weekend here. Angie's going to bungee jump today (I'm not quite crazy enough to do that!) and then tomorrow we are both doing a full day of whitewater rafting on the nile. I've never whitewater rafted before so I'm pretty excited but also nervous.

This week has been very busy as I have been working on the survey very hard and pulling together all the details. We are supposed to do a training day on Monday to teach all the surveyors how to do it, and then the survey will take place over three days. The rest of my time here--only a few weeks now--will then be spent analyzing and sorting the data gathered from the survey, along with continuing to volunteer at Joy Hospice. Joy has been quite slow lately, for some reason we have not had many patients coming in, which is unusual. But there have been many med students and various visitors there so it has been interesting still. Last week Dr. Jan went away for a few days to Murchison falls for a safari, where I will also be going at the end of August, and so Rachel, a British Med student, and I, were working with Jim Knox, a resident from the States. We had one patient come in with a facial tumor. She had only noticed it a few days earlier and already it had started to close one of her eyes due to the swelling. It was hard to know where it originated from, becauase we had no access to scanners, but from where it was located, on the bridge of her nose, it could easily cause her to lose her eyesight or go into her brain and cause death. It amazes me how much Cancer we see her, and how far progressed it is, it is so sad. I have seen so many tumours that are just open and hard and huge and there is nothing that can be done because there's no money to treat patients.

One of the things that I have really enjoyed doing is helping out a a Kids Bible club on saturdays. We sing songs, tell stories, and the kids are just wonderful. They are so beautiful.
I can't believe that I will be home in less than three weeks now, the time has gone by so fast. I am excited to come home but really sad to leave at the same time.

More pictures

Here are a few more pictures of some of what I've been up to this past week. The first one is me in the IDP camp with some of the children that followed us around.
Today after church we went for lunch in a little indian restaurant (reminded me so much of home for those of you who've been to...haha I can't actually remember the name of the east indian restaurant we always go to in Burnaby!) Anyways this is a picture of me and Tim, a British short term Jenga volunteer, with Emma, a very lively ugandan girl who has been adopted by an Australian couple. They are leaving to go back to Australia next week so I will miss them.
The last picture is of us wading in a stream up in Sipi Falls, which was very very cold! Me, Tim, Jayne and Jonathan (another short term British volunteer with Jenga who is actually leaving on tuesday and will be missed).

Pabo IDP camp

I just returned from my trip to Gulu, which is a 7 hour drive from Mbale and in northern Uganda. We visited an IDP camp, called Pabo, with 43 thousand people. Very sad. There used to 64000 but some have gone home now because it has officially been declared safe for them to do so. It is the largest camp in the area. Many people still remain, mainly because they are scared that it isn't really safe, but also because they have been there for 11 years and it is not a simple thing to move back home where there is nothing left.
Gulu is also the place where the children used to come from miles around into the town to sleep at night--used to be about 15,000 children walking into town each night from the villages and sleep anywhere they could, because it is safer there. The LRA would raid villages at night and kidnap the children to be child soldiers. One of the workers with the ministry that we visited was a soldier with the LRA for 5 years. He was captured when the LRA raided his village when he was 14 and then worked his way to quite high up in the army. After being with them for 5 years, he was shot and left at a hospital to recover, and then left and went to a World Vision rehabilitation Centre in Gulu. I can't even imagine what he has been through...he didn't give me many details as he told the story and I didn't press him.
We also met a pastor of a church in the IDP camp who was captured by the LRA, which is quite unusual because normally they just capture the children and kill all of the adults. The only time the keep adults (or so I've been told) is when they have a specific purpose, such as carrying a load, so he knew that he had to escape or he would be killed. He managed to run away and escape at night and is now pastoring a church in the IDP camp.
The camp looked a lot different than I expected, it was more like a village with its own little shops, and even some schools and a health centre provided by the government. The only difference was that none of the people own any land, all the huts are built squashed together, almost on top of each other, on dirt ground. There are children, mostly naked or barely clothed at all, running around all over the place. Many of them are carrying babies on their backs, even though they only look like they are about 5 years old themselves. One little girl was struggling to hold a baby and was going to put her down on the ground so I reached down to help her and she grabbed the baby and ran away. Vinnie, on of the Ugandan Jenga workers who speaks their language (he speaks 20 languages--and that's only counting the ones he's actually fluent in!!) went after the girl and tried to talk to her but she ran from him also. The children live in fear. Their whole lives they have known nothing but living in fear. The LRA used to come and raid the camps, and although they have military protection, the military would hide because they are scared of the LRA, because the LRA would usually target the military first to get them out of the way so they could raid the camp.

Anyway now the situation does look more hopeful, the LRA has not raided this camp since 2004 I believe, and as I said, the people are slowly starting to return to their homes.

Me with Merab, a nurse I work with at the hospice, at my birthday dinner.