International Partnership Manager

I got another job offer on Tuesday and quit my job as a health coach on Thursday. It's been a crazy week with some big decisions to make but I'm so excited for this new job. The job is with a non-profit organization (don't worry I will be getting paid) called Globus Relief. Globus Relief buys medical supplies for a discounted cost or has them donated. They then ship them to other organizations or local governments in over 100 countries all over the globe. My job is to connect the two. I decide which programs and development projects receive the supplies and in what quantity. Globus Relief is also doing some of their own development projects. They are currently building clinics in Haiti and Ethiopia. For more information on the company you can go to their website www.globusrelief.org. For the first six months or so I'll be working in their office in Salt Lake and as soon as I learn the ropes of the company I'll get to start traveling!! I'm so very excited and can't wait to get started! My start date is Monday, November 16th!! Wish me luck!!

My Very First Real Job...

So yesterday I was hired on at Health Behavior Innovations as their newest health coach! So it's my very first real job with benefits and the works. Health Behavior Innovations is located in Murray, Utah (Just a little south of Salt Lake).

Company Overview: Health Behavior Innovations (HBI) is one of the nation's premier behavioral-change oriented health coaching programs utilizing consumer-directed incentives and telephonic coaching. HBI's dual focus on physical and behavioral change gives us a distinctive edge in reaching wellness and lasting long-term results. As one of the first companies to integrate disease management and wellness strategies, we are addressing the urgent need for innovative demand management solutions for combating rising healthcare costs. HBI has over 10 years experience developing, implementing, and operating integrated demand management strategies for health plans, managed care organizations and large employers. Our clients experience a more productive workforce and a healthier bottom line.

So essentially HBI goes into businesses that want to offer a wellness program along with their health insurance. We then go into the business and take all of the employees BMI, weight, cholesterol, blood sugar, etc. This was my job last week before I was hired as a health coach. Those who meet the company's health standard will then have cheaper health insurance and those who don't are referred to a health coach, that's me. If they work with me to track and meet individualized health goals for an entire year they will then also get a cut on their health insurance. Our company makes people healthier, in the long run decreases the company's health insurance premiums, as well as decreases the cost of health care for the individual employee. As soon as I finish my training and really get going I'll be working with about 550 clients at one time. For now I will be commuting about 40 minutes to Murray but I am also looking into moving into Salt Lake in the near future! I'm super excited to get started as a health coach and just wanted to share my good news with all of you!

Another way to HELP

Friends and Family,

So I have some exciting news! One of the local groups we worked with while in Lugazi, The Youth Outreach Mission (TYOM), now has their own blog and you can donate to their organization. TYOM is run by Lugazi's youth who volunteer in the community. Most of them are college students in Kampala but live in Lugazi and during their free time they try to lift and build the community. They assisted me in my hand washing project and translated for the hand washing certification of the vendors in the local marketplace and also for the health lessons we taught to the street kids soccer team. The mission of TYOM is to educate and empower Ugandan youth and to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in the hopes of creating an AIDS-free generation. The individuals who founded and run The Youth Outreach Mission are local youth who themselves do not always know where their next meal will come from, and yet, they spend their days serving their community.

“We have little, but others have even less,” Laker

Wilson, President of The Youth Outreach, explained when he told me of an experience visiting a man who lived under a tree behind a school. Wilson gave the man his own shirt and the only food he would have had that day. The Youth Outreach’s dedication to their community and their integrity are qualities rarely seen in Uganda. The picture above shows members of The Youth Outreach (Back left Florance, Laker Wilson-President, Dennis, James, Patrick, Barrack, Sarah, Josephine-Head of Public Health Kawolo Hospital, Robert-Chairman, Front from the left Annet, Luta, Hassan, Paul) as they work on the construction of a well in the village of Geregere to bring in safe drinking water to the people. The government will not provide the finances for such projects. The Youth Outreach raised the money themselves, provided the labor for the project, and is currently attempting to raise the funds to build more wells. Safe drinking water is always a scarce resource in Uganda.

I recognize that we are currently in difficult economic times. But I hope we realize that these times are nothing compared to what these people face in everyday life. I hope that you take an interest in the lives of our brothers and sisters and make it a priority to help support them. Please take time to read about The Youth Outreach Mission on their blog at theyouthoutreachmission@blogspot.com. Because I am so passionate about this organization, I am not hesitant to point out that they do have a “Donate Now” button on the right hand side of the page.

I can assure you that 100% of all donations made to The Youth Outreach will go directly to serving the youth and the community. The Youth Outreach is working on many projects. Here are just a few:

Well Construction-As previously stated, safe drinking water is not readily available. Often, small children are assigned the task of walking miles to the closest functioning well to get the water for the morning and then again for the next meal, laundry, etc. The roads are unsafe for women and children, and the water obtained is often polluted and disease-ridden. Although nearby villages often have wells, they are typically nonfunctional after years of use, and the local governments will not supply the labor or the finances to fix them. It costs approximately 100,000 shillings or $50 to repair a well to bring clean water to support an entire village.

Soccer Outreach-Over 50 orphaned or abandoned children live on the streets of Lugazi alone. These street children are at high risk of being victims of abuse and/or rape and will most likely contract HIV/AIDS due to the harsh lifestyle of the streets. The children are forced to beg, steal, or rummage for food through large trash piles that are common along the sides of the roads in Uganda. These children will never be able to attend school because they cannot pay school fees and therefore will never be able to advance in society. The Youth Outreach Mission provides soccer outreach programs that gather all the street children for a soccer game and then after the game teach the youth a health and education lesson. These children would otherwise never receive these educational lessons. Currently the children play without shoes and usually without eating any meals that day. These are some things that, as an organization, Youth Outreach would like to change. While I was in Uganda, these children began practicing as a team, formed formal teams, and began competing with official teams. Just as I left this summer, our team of street children competed against the top team in their age range and won the title as top team in Uganda. These children not only learned that they have something to gain from working hard but they were also given a family-like structure and something to work for.

Orphanage and School for Street Children-A major goal of The Youth Outreach Mission is to construct and run a safe orphanage for the street children of Lugazi. This home will be a place of refuge for the children and a great educational facility. Many members of The Youth Outreach Mission will work at the home. They hope to have the home supported by a bakery in which students will work shifts to bring in the finances to support the school. The bakery will also be a training center for the youth where they can be taught not only a vocational skill but also receive business training. The initial start-up cost, including the land purchase construction of the building, of the orphanage is approximately 25,000,000 Ugandan shillings or $12,500.

Although the situation in Uganda can be overwhelming, there is hope. I know that The Youth Outreach Mission is a very strong and dedicated organization in which we can put our trust. Thank you for your support of The Youth Outreach Mission. With help from individuals in Uganda and generous individuals in America, we can empower and educate the youth of Uganda, give hope to the abandoned and helpless children, and create an AIDS free generation.

Last One

I've been home for two weeks and three days (not that anyone is counting) and I've been procrastinating this final blog post because it reminds me that my internship is really over. :( During my last few weeks in Uganda I got to see two births, and let me tell you either Ugandan women are way tough or Americans are way over dramatic. Neither of the Ugandan women made more than a quite groan throughout the entire labor without any form of anesthesia. Both births were so simple, without the use of any modern day medical equipment and both infants were crying and healthy at birth. The hospital doesn't even have an incubator for the infants and the nurses merely wrap them up after birth. The nurses even cut off the top of their surgical glove to tie off the umbilical cord. Ugandans are really such resourceful people. In Uganda, giving birth isn't as big of a dramatic deal as it is displayed in American media. One of the women got up out of bed merely a few minutes after giving birth, cleaned up her own bed for the next mom to be, and headed on over to the female unit. I couldn't believe it. Here's a picture of the first baby, a cute little boy. Ugandans don't typically name the child for a few weeks or months after birth, so they will just call him baby.

I spent my last few weeks teaching family planning classes at the Hospital with nurse Harriet as my trusty translator. I had another male nurse translate for one of my classes and after I completed the class the women asked to get a woman translator because they didn't believe a man would translate what I was saying correctly. I had fifty cycle beads a week before I left and within two days of classes we taught and sold all fifty beads! So within a few short weeks we totaled 138 cycle beads sold. It was a great way to end my family planning project!

I also decided to finish up the hand washing project at Kawolo hospital with some health promotion. After stepping in human poo, we managed to paint, "Thank you for washing your hands" in Lugandan on the inside of three sets of latrines located on the borders of the hospital.

While wrapping up my public health projects I also had the opportunity to assist another volunteer with her project dealing with persons with disabilities. We got a group together to meet weekly where the parents would meet for a support group and then the children would meet for play, musical, and physical therapy. In Uganda, there's a terrible stigma that disability stems from someone sinning or their parents sinning, so many of them believe that their child's disability is their fault. The parents also believe that their child's physical or mental condition cannot be changed and will never be improved. The support group was directed towards fighting these stigmas. Lugazi actually has an existing group of adults with disabilities who meet regularly and another part of this project was teaching them how to make soap which we then made a deal with the hospital to purchase their soap from them for the hand washing stations as well as other uses. I really loved working with this project because I can't even describe how incredibly happy these children are. They are truly some of the happiest children in all of Uganda and maybe even the world. :) Below are Sam, Joel, and Bulukan from the group.



On my last friday in Uganda we attended one of the street childrens' soccer practices and then taught them the importance of dental hygiene and how to brush and floss their teeth. We then gave all of the boys two toothbrushes, a tube of toothpaste, and floss.

I thought I'd add some pictures of some of my favorite Ugandan friends. One is of Fiona and I in the very spot where I would buy pineapples. I calculated that I ate approximately 48 pineapples over the summer and now the pineapples here at home don't really taste good. Another is a picture of Sandra and Sarah (Youth Outreach Mission members) as they joined Sami and I for our home visits for children with disabilities. The other picture is of Betty and I at her little home in the hospital workers quarters. Two days before I left she had Josephine (public health nurse), Sami, and I over for omelets and homemade passion fruit juice before I went on an outreach with Josephine. It was such a fun day. Betty cranked her favorite Ugandan songs as the four of us cooked in her little cement countered, no running water, kitchen. I then got to spend the rest of the day free of mzungus and just with Josephine and other hospital workers as we traveled to a rural village. The hospital workers set up a temporary hospital in a church where they screened for HIV, gave immunizations, diagnosed people and offered them the little prescriptions we brought with us, and of course we did some family planning courses. We also went around and gave children deworming pills.



I am now at home sitting on a bed about a billion times more comfortable than any other piece of furniture even available in Uganda missing it like a fat kid on a diet misses cake. It's kind of funny how I ended up loving every minute of living in Uganda despite it's flaws; the bathrooms with only a hole in the ground and remnants of people with bad aim around the hole, cold showers outside with dirty water, repetitive food options, being dirty always, one pair of trusty chacos I wore daily, doing laundry in a basin with dirty water, doing dishes outside with dirty water, mosquito bites, other mysterious bites, massive bugs hiding amongst your bananas, gekos on the walls, a house made of cement with no furniture besides the beds, running water and electicity only some of the time, long taxi drives that feel like the indiana jones ride while being accompanied by 33 live chickens, wearing a head wrap to hide dirty hair, constant dirty fingernails, falling into holes, eating pork that still has hair on it, fish for dinner that still has eyes to stare at you, knowing that dinner was alive only a few hours before eating it, Ugandans being forever late and unreliable, stopping an entire days work because that's what the Ugandans do when it rains, and yet I miss it so much I'd fly back in a heart beat. Their flaws aren't really flaws at all just differences, and after about a month and a half those differences just become a way a life, one that you love more than your original. Ugandans are truly the kindest most loving people I've ever met. Unlike us, they base their entire lives on relationships and not schedules or to do lists. Which makes public health projects move slowly by slowly (A Ugandan phrase), but in the end I've not only taught Ugandans, but they've taught me. They've taught me to slow down, don't stress the small stuff, and really get to know each and every person in your life and base your day not only on completing tasks but nurturing relationships. One example of this is when Josephine told me, "First, we will eat lunch with Betty, then we will go to the outreach" (when we were already an hour or so behind schedule). This way of life was frustrating at first, but when I got the hang of it, it was so much more fulfilling than any other way to live. I'm so grateful for the patience I learned and how it's okay to put aside the to do list and have lunch with Betty. I also learned that "things" or the material possessions in our lives do not bring us happiness. I lived for three months lacking the basics that even most of the poorest of Americans have and I have never been happier. Most Ugandans will never see the day where they will own an ipod, computer, car, or even a humble home and yet they are such a happy people. After my experience I feel that I no longer will ever have any reason to complain. Over the past few weeks I've taken a mental note on what others around me, or even myself, complain about and how really everyone of those complaints isn't even half of what the Ugandans could complain about. But don't Ugandans complain, they smile and laugh all day long. :)
I'm so grateful for my experience and I sincerely hope that I'll have the opportunity to one day return to Uganda and further the public health work that I started. For now, I hope to keep every lesson that I learned as I continue on. I'm currently looking for a job, studying for the GRE, and looking into potential grad schools as I am forever missing life in Uganda.

Kigali

Hello fellow readers. I had the opportunity to spend a long weekend in Kigali, Rwanda. We left Friday at one in the morning, but before we left we spent Thursday in a rural village called Burundi. The village is right on the Nile river and is absolutely gorgeous. We spent the day helping the community build a school entirely made of bamboo sticks, plants, and a mud mixture which most likely contained animal fecal matter (luckily I didn’t have to touch that). The mzungus learned how to construct the walls out of bamboo and then the children filled the walls in with the mud mixture. After the construction they fed us millet porridge, which was disgusting, then we began our journey to Kigali, Rwanda.
Most tourists take a plane or even a private hire car to get to Kigali, but not us. It’s over a tenth of the price to take public transportation. So we got bus tickets for a mere fifteen US dollars and hopped on for a long ride. The roads everywhere are terrible and the bus driver, like the rest of the drivers in Uganda, drove like a crazy man so the bus ride felt once again like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland that lasted over ten hours. They only stopped once on the trip and I luckily monitored my water intake so I didn’t have to use the restroom on the way. Unfortunately, the Ugandans didn’t have the same idea. Lets just say when we got off the bus there were approximately twelve water bottles filled with urine stuck behind the seats. All I can say is, thank good it was dark.
Kigali is surprisingly a lot like Los Angeles. I know that sounds crazy, but it really is so much like LA. The weather and vegetation is similar and it really is a developed city with sidewalks and tall buildings. They drive on the correct side of the road and no one drives like a maniac. The bota bota drivers wear helmets and even have a helmet for you to wear. There are trash cans all over the city, and therefore is so much cleaner than anywhere in Uganda. The surroundings truly made me feel like I was on vacation. Along with the developed feel of the country came the increased price in food, transport, and lodging. So we booked half the number of necessary rooms and shared beds.
One of the most amazing things about Rwanda, is that its only been fifteen years since the genocide and the government has done an incredible job rebuilding the country. We met with a man from the local government and we learned why Rwanda is where it is on the road to development due to the infrastructure of the higher governments. In Uganda, most local governments are really doing a fairly good job with the funds they have in building their communities, the issue is with the corrupt government officials at the top of the Ugandan leadership totem pole. Another absolutely amazing thing about Rwanda is how after only fifteen years since the genocide, the Rwandies live together in peace. No longer as Hutus and Tutsis, but as fellow Rwandies. There system isn’t perfect, there are still many Hutus who participated in the Intrahamwe army who were never convicted and still walk the streets of Kigali. One of the men who told us about his story with the genocide said he has passed the killer of his parents on the streets many of times and just passes him without saying a word. Even after such a terrible genocide, many of the Rwandies have remained in their native land.
On Friday, we went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum. It was a beautiful museum and it was air conditioned! The majority of the museum is composed of information and memorials on the Rwanda genocide and then one of the exhibits was of a few other genocides. We also went to Hotel Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda). We had tentatively planned to swim in their pool, but it was unfortunately being renovated.
On Saturday we got up early and went to a small town called Neamata. It’s about thirty minutes outside of the main city and was the third hardest hit village during the genocide. Over half of the population of the village was killed. Most of the Tutsis fled to the church in Neamata for refuge and were then killed. The church is no longer functioning and now acts as a memorial. Inside the large meeting room of the church are piles and piles of clothes of the victims who were killed stacked up on the pews. There are still bullet holes in the ceiling and holes in the ground from where grenades landed. Outside of church are mass graves that you can walk down into and are filled from floor to ceiling with coffins and bones. The underground graves had no artificial lighting and therefore were dimly lit with the natural light that shone in from a small window. The underground graves were a little eerie and I opted not to go all the way in.
Before going to Rwanda I did some of my own research on the genocide and I thought I had an understanding of the sheer number of deaths, until I saw the piles and piles of clothes. There was a man at the church who is one of seven survivors from that particular church and we were blessed to hear him tell his story. He, along with seventeen others, hid among the piles of rotting corpses for a few days and then hid in the swamps for over a month. During that months time ten of them were killed by the Intrahamewa and only seven survived the genocide. That evening, we went and saw a guest speaker back at the museum and then a screening of the movie, “Shooting Dogs.” In the US the movie is called, “Beyond the Gates.” It’s based on a true story about a secondary school in Kigali where troops of the UN were stationed. The guest speaker told us of how he fled to a local church with his family and was also one of few survivors.
Sunday, we went to church at the only LDS branch in all of Rwanda, which was held in a conference room at the basement of a hotel. The church is small in Rwanda, but it is growing. Elder Holland will be here just a few short weeks after I leave to open Rwanda to missionary work. Monday, we got up early and left for our ten hour journey back to Kampala, Uganda. We stopped on our way to take a picture at the Equator, and then slowly made it back to our home in Lugazi. The trip was definitely such a great learning experience and it was great to see and learn about how Rwanda has really come so far from where they were after the genocide.
I plan on teaching family planning every Monday and Wednesday at the hospital until the Wednesday I head home. Our first batch of 83 cycle beads have already been sold for one hundred shillings to the women who attend a class on family planning. We just got another batch of fifty and I’m hoping to sell most of them before I leave. I’ll also continue helping one of the other volunteers with her project with persons with disabilities. Today we painted, “Thank you for washing your hands,” on the inside of the latrines at Kawolo hospital to further promote the use of the hand washing stations. I unfortunately stepped in a pile of human feces while I was painting…yuck! Until next time…..Hill

Safari at Murchison Falls

Last week I went with some of the other HELP Volunteers and two med students from the UK on a safari at Murchison Falls. Murchison Falls is the largest national park in all of Uganda. We left Tuesday late afternoon and spent the night at the Red Chili Lodge in Kampala. We left from the lodge at 8:30 am on Wednesday morning and arrived at the Red Chili campsite around six that evening. The drive down wasn’t too bad and the van we traveled in is the nicest car I’ve been in for three months(it really wasn’t that nice, be in comparison to the yucky taxi vans here it was luxurious). The last few hours, however, were rather bumpy and I felt like I was on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland as we made our way through the national park. On the way there we saw tons of baboons, monkeys, beautiful birds, and elk. We arrived to a campground infested with wart hogs! The wart hogs situation was fine because if you don’t bother them then they don’t bother you. Before dinner we walked down to the Nile, that was bout 500 meters away, to be greeted by some hippos. The following morning we left for our game drive at 6:30 am. We took our Safari vans and then had to take a ferry across the Nile. The vans’ roofs lifted up so you could stand and see the animals, or you could sit on the top of van in shallow metal baskets at the front and in the back. Our game drive was three to four hours long and we saw elephants, giraffes, gazelles, baboons, more warthogs, elk, and a pack of lions feeding on a dead wart hog. Our driver got us incredibly close to all the animals except for the elephants and I was glad to have been sitting on top of the van when we were only ten feet away from the pack of lions. The picture of the giraffe was taken up close and personal. We parked right next to them and they just stood there and let us take tons of pictures! The other picture is of Mandy and I (we life guarded together at the Heleman Halls pool a few summer ago) sitting on top of the van. I finally had a good excuse to wear my awesome one dollar DI (Goodwill) find safari hat.
We then went back, had lunch, and got on a boat to see more animals. The boat was fairly large with an upstairs and a downstairs. We saw schools and schools and school of hippos, water buffalo, alligators, more elk and wart hogs, and some gorgeous birds. The day was absolutely amazing and it was so incredible to see so many animals so close and in their natural habitat. That night, we had kind of a scary encounter. I was sound asleep when my tent mate, Melissa, woke me up only to discover that there was a hippo right outside the windows over my bed. Its face was in the first window and its bum was in the second window, to give you an idea how close it was! I leaped out of bed and onto Melissa and her bed and we both froze in silence as we listened to the Hippo eat the grass around our tent. After a few minutes he walked to the front of our tent and then left. Just a few minutes after the hippo left, Melissa said that she had to use the restroom. So we waited a few more minutes gathered up our courage and left the safety of our tent and into the hippo campground. We were very relieved to make a trip to the restroom with no hippo encounters.
Friday morning we left the campground at eight and drove up to the top of Murchison Falls where we hiked around for a while and then began our descent back to Lugazi. Our ride back was very much like most transportation experiences in Uganda. The van broke down four times on our way home and instead of it being a four hour journey it turned into a nine hour journey. Our driver didn’t seem to know what he was doing and at one point started siphoning water or maybe oil out of some tube with his mouth.. Whatever he did, manage to get us to the outskirts of Kampala where a new van came and picked us up. Luckily, we were well supplied with snacks and I had a few books with me, so it actually wasn’t too bad. However, we had to take the same road that we take to Gulu to Murchison Falls for part of the way which means we got to go over the two hundred and seventy something speed bumps all in a road for a third and then a fourth time.
This week I’ve got some family planning classes to teach, a new hospital to visit, a dental hygiene lesson to teach to the street kids, begin passing out some of our donations, following up with sexual education curriculum at a school in Mukono, and a few latrines to build in a rural village. We then leave for Rwanda Saturday at one in the morning from Kampala and will return Monday night of next week. We plan on going to the genocide memorial museum as well as many other memorials at churches and schools where massive amounts of Rwandans were killed. I’m currently reading the autobiography of Paul Rusabagina (the man who’s story inspired the movie hotel Rwanda) and I’m trying to finish it before we leave on Friday. The title is, “An Ordinary Man,” and he does a beautiful job of describing daily life in a rural village in Rwanda, which is very similar to life here. He also goes into great detail about the history of the Tutsis and the Hutus and all of the propaganda that played into the genocide. Until next time….Hill

Beautiful Gulu!

So I was able to get another picture up today of gorgeous Gulu. I took this after an hour long boda boda (smaller motorcycle) to a village called Agulu, where we plastered two adobe stoves.

Greetings From Gulu

Hollar from Hillary! Last week the eye camp ended with over one hundred surgeries! It was such a great success and I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to be a small part of it. I got to stand about two feet from a patient as the doctor performed cataract surgery! Don’t worry I got it all on film! I also installed four hand-washing stations at Kawolo hospital last week and I plan to do some hand-washing advocacy at the hospital tomorrow. Tomorrow we are installing two hand-washing stations at a secondary school just right up the street from our house. We will be teaching them how germs are spread as well as proper hand washing technique.
Saturday was our AIDS Extravaganza! We rented a large complex here in Lugazi and had schools and AIDS support groups perform. I spent a good portion of my time last week learning to do a traditional Ugandan dance, which we performed at the Extravaganza with costumes and all. Don’t worry the amazing moment of ten muzungus doing the African dance was captured on film. I ran a booth on infectious disease prevention using resources that they already have available to them. I created the posters in English, and then had a Ugandan friend translate them into Lugandan. I also ran a booth on family planning. I can’t remember if I explained this new project yet, so I’ll keep it brief. I located an NGO called the Uganda Health Marketing Group in Kampala. They sell a lot of products to private businesses as well as give them away for free in villages within their district. Unfortunately, Lugazi doesn’t fall within their district so we purchased a box of Cycle Beads. Cycle beads are composed of a necklace with different colored beads where women can track their cycles. They can then abstain from unprotected sex during the time of the month that they are most fertile. It’s 95% effective in preventing pregnancy for women with regular cycles of 26 to 32 days. We had a booth at the Extravaganza where we planned to run family planning classes and then sell the cycle beads for one hundred shillings. We didn’t quite get the audience we were expecting. We were hoping for the community to come so I could then teach the women this form of family planning. The main people at the Extravaganza were hundreds of student performers. I had to leave a few hours early for Gulu and I left the family planning classes in Josephine’s (public health nurse) care. She said they sold about twenty after I left. I didn’t quite get the numbers I was hoping, so today I planned with Josephine to come every Monday and Wednesday to the hospital and teach the mothers who come in to the antenatal unit to immunize their children. We will then hit our intended audience as well as teach them the benefits of having time in between pregnancies for their own health, which can be accomplished with cycle beads.
Saturday at three pm we left for Gulu. Gulu is supposedly only a four to five hour drive, but for us it ended up being a twelve-hour trip. Due to our bus breaking down in the middle of the night and us having to go over 276 speed bumps consecutively slowed us down quite a bit. We arrived in Gulu at three in the morning and I think we were all grateful to have our Ugandan and native Guluian with us. We took bota botas (smaller motorcycle) to our incredible hotel. When I say incredible, I really mean it. It was located behind a bar and had the scent of urine and alcohol. The hotel had no running water and each room had a jug of dirty water and basin to use. There were even larger basins of standing water that could be used for a shower. The bathrooms weren’t too bad; they just smelled really bad and didn’t flush. One of the rooms had a family of mice and the entire place had the ambiance of prison. I was so grossed out that I stood for a few hours, not wanting to even touch the bed, and made oh so many jokes about how the Multi-choice Hotel was so choice because of all the many options. Finally we got tired and I shared a twin bed with Amy, because they messed up our reservation and there weren’t enough beds. The walls were paper-thin and we could clearly hear all the other volunteers making jokes and so Amy and I lied down (with my towel under our heads) and giggled for an hour or so more. The giggling stopped when one of the volunteers started throwing up and continued to do so for hours into the night. We woke up for church approximately three hours later. We met in the world’s smallest church building that was located on one of the member’s property. It was a very humbling experience to worship with some of the church’s poorest saints. The branch president is such a great leader and it’s exciting to know that the church is in good hands in Gulu. Later that night we put on an impromptu fireside for the branch where we all sang and gave a few short talks. We sat in a circle right outside the church in the grass as we bore our testimonies and sang hymns about our Savior. We had planned to just sing as a small group for the branch, but as we stood up to sing they all opened up their hymnbooks and wanted to sing with us.
After spending the day mentally preparing myself to return to the Multi-Choice Hotel we got a special surprise; we had gotten a new hotel for the remainder of our stay! I wouldn’t classify the K.S.P. as anywhere near nice, but in African standards it was five stars. It had running water and even a cold shower, which was conveniently, located a few feet from the toilet, so when you showered the whole bathroom got wet. The floor appeared to be clean enough to walk on without shoes and each room had its own flushing toilet. It even came with a complimentary breakfast, not for the whole group, but for seven people (we still don’t know why only seven). The breakfast was a hard-boiled egg, two pieces of bread, and passion fruit juice, the Ugandan breakfast of champions.
We spent Monday building energy saving adobe stoves. My group traveled to a cluster of huts that could only be reached by an hour-long bota bota (motorcycle) ride, to give you an idea of how rural it was. The women made us a very humble lunch to thank us for our work of cassava (a cooked root) and some dipping sauce that strongly resembled a cow pie, but it actually tasted pretty good. Tuesday, we finished the stoves and met with some local NGO’s (Invisible Children and Aid Africa) along with UNICEF. It was really amazing to learn about the projects they’re doing on a much larger scale than our organization accomplishes. We left Wednesday morning around 9:45 in the morning after a few hours of a bus fiasco and actually arrived in Kampala around two. We were all so glad to have made much better timing on the way home. On the way back I sat near a baby who couldn’t have been over one and would laugh hysterically after we went over the miles and miles stretches of 276 speed bumps. It was sooo funny and so adorable.
This upcoming Monday is Ugandan’s annual agricultural fair! Monday morning I’ll do family planning with Josephine (public health nurse) and then the two of us and some other volunteers will head to the fair! I ate a guava at one of the rural villages I taught at and haven’t been able to find guava since. I’m hoping to find some at the agricultural fair.
We leave for our super amazing safari on Tuesday of next week! We will spend the night in Kampala on Tuesday night and then head to Murchison Falls early Wednesday morning. We’ll be staying in tents and since the food at the lodge is supposedly outrageously expensive we’ll probably bring a few days supply of PB and J’s and bananas. We will have a full day of seeing the animals from a roofless van and then we’ll go out on a boat to see some hippos and crocodiles! We’ll also do some hiking around Murchison Falls.
I hope you are all happy, healthy, and enjoying all the things I sometimes miss! XOXO -Hill

AIDS Extravaganza and Cycle Beads!

Hello loves! If all goes as planned this week I’m currently in Kampala using high speed internet for the first time all summer! I’m hoping the high speed will allow me to post not one, not two, but five pictures! Leslie and I took a half of a vacation day to use this fabulous high speed internet to book our European adventure. If all goes well we’ll book our train tickets as well as all our lodging. The second reason I’m in Kampala today is because I’m starting a new project this week! I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the public health nurse at Kawolo hospital and she had mentioned the need for family planning in Uganda and especially Lugazi. Women here can’t afford birth control and so they have no way of choosing how many children they want to have. There are also many couples with HIV, who if they had the choice would choose not to have children due to the risk of passing on the disease to their child or the risk of them not being able to be there to raise their child as the course of the disease takes their life at a younger age. So we have a plan. Today we’re meeting with another NGO called UXMG who specializes in health and reproductive services. We are planning to purchase massive amounts of Cycle Beads for a reduced price from them. Cycle beads come on a necklace with different colored beads and a marker to keep track of your menstrual cycle. The women track their cycle and then abstain from unprotected sex during their fertile time of the month. This form of birth control is 96% effective and the cycle beads can be used for the rest of their lives, talk about sustainability.
This Saturday is our fabulous AIDS Extravaganza. We have rented out a complex where we will have performances from different schools and AIDS support groups. We will also have booths all around the complex teaching the locals about the projects we do, and how to they can use them in their lives. For example we’ll have volunteers there to show the locals pictures of the adobe stoves we build and then teach them how to build them in their own homes. I will be running two health booths. One will be on hand washing and the other will be on prevalent infectious diseases in Uganda and what feasible preventative measures can be taken. We will also be running classes on reproductive health and family planning. The women who take the class will pay one hundred shillings (equal to five cents) to come to the class and receive their cycle beads. Having them pay a small fee will weed out the women who aren’t interested in using the cycle beads and are just there for the free hand out. We have the locals pay or contribute five percent to all of the projects we do in order for them to have ownership of whatever the service or product we provide. I guess the best way to describe our purpose for it is the difference between giving a teenager a car or making them save and work for it. The teenagers who paid for the car themselves are more likely to take a lot better care of it than the one who it was just handed to. It’s the same with development. Speaking of, the management of the local marketplace is keeping up there five percent of the deal and is continually refilling the stations with soap and water. So I’m way excited about that.
This week the ophthalmologist from Sight Savers will be performing the eye surgeries. As of now there are 124 people scheduled for surgery. We will still be doing eye screenings for then next few days here in Lugazi, so that number will probably be growing. Tomorrow we’re going to have a bit of a ceremony as we begin the day of surgeries with local television and radio stations as well as the local newspaper all there to advertise the event. Leaders from the Town Council will speak as well as some of our volunteers. It’s going to be quite an exciting week as we finish up the Sight Savers Project. The four hand washing stations for the hospital were completed this weekend and we will be installing them tomorrow. We will have extra people at the hospital this week and HELP International will be in charge of feeding the patients who come for surgeries, so I think we will just put them in the food preparation room and where they will be most needed. On Friday, I plan to move them to their permanent locations and put up signs in the latrines reminding people to wash their hands.
I got to spend our nations day of independence in a rather special way this year. The US Embassy put on a party for all of the Americans living in Uganda. We go to hear from the US Ambassador and see some cool Ugandan performances. There was a fabulous barbeque, fireworks, music, and dancing! It was probably the most fun I’ve had yet here in Uganda! I also met a pre-med student from the University of Kentucky at the party. He’s working in a rural village not to far from Lugazi. Unfortunately, he’s only here for a week and a half more but hopes to assist us in our AIDS Extravaganza on Saturday. He could really be helpful with our multiple health booths.
Early Sunday morning I will be leaving for Gulu, which is in northern Uganda. We will be completing some adobe stoves that the first group started a few weeks ago. We’ll also get a chance to meet with the head honcho of Invisible children and get to hear from some of the people who were there during the time of the war against the Lords Resistance Army. I want you all to know that it’s completely safe to go up there now and the government is in the process of getting the people to move out of the internally displaced person camps and back into their communities. There was a documentary that came out a few years ago called War Dance. I watched a couple of weeks ago and if you get a chance you should see it. The landscaping, the communities, and the people are identical to Lugazi, except they speak Acholi, not Lunganda. So if you want to get a feel for what it’s like here you should watch it. The documentary follows a secondary school (high school) as they prepare to compete in a national music and dance competition. All of the kids in the group were there during the war and they each share their experiences. I highly recommend it, its not violent at all, but some of the things the kids discuss might be a bit much for younger audiences. I also don’t want you guys to worry about me after seeing the movie. It’s very peaceful in Gulu now, so you have nothing to worry about.
Now the five pictures posted. Two of them are from the Fourth of July party. Look as all those muzungus (white people)! It was soooo weird to be around so many white people. I just kept staring and feeling like I was no longer in Uganda. There’s one picture of our lovely hand washing stations per my moms request. The one on the boat is of Melissa, Mindy, and me on the Nile on our way to the Gandhi memorial. Mindy (the one peeking trough the two of us) is on the board of directors for HELP International and spent a few days with us. I spent a lot of time with her learning about all the development work she’s been involved with all over the world. Then there’s a picture of me at Josephine’s office, aka the public health department. That was taken when we were waiting for her to discuss ideas about family planning. I’m not quite sure why it says blood bank, but I can assure you there’s no blood in that office.
Rumor on the dirt roads is that Elder Holland is coming to Uganda! Unfortunately he’ll be here just two weeks after I leave. He is coming to open the mission in Rwanda! Apparently the Rwandan government has really turned the country around since the genocide and its now safe enough for missionary work! The church is really growing here and I suspect that it won’t be long before Northern Uganda becomes a mission. I hope all is well with you guys. Morris family…ride a few waves for me at the beach house! I love you all! XOXO

Sight Savers

Hello friendly friends and my fabulous fam. Last week was by far the busiest week I’ve had thus far. I spent four of the five days assisting with the screenings at the eye camp. The HELP volunteers and I would do the initial eye test and then the patient would go see an OCO (hired by sight savers) who would make the diagnosis and administer the medication if needed. They would also determine if the patient was a candidate for a free surgery in the following weeks. The first day we went to a hospital in a rural village and when we arrived there were over a hundred patients waiting to be seen. We’d then spend the entire day screening the patients and wouldn’t stop until we had seen them all. On Thursday, we left at eight in the morning and we didn’t return until ten thirty at night. It was a great week, but was also rather exhausting. We still have this week to complete the screenings and next week the patients will be picked up from the rural villages and taken to the Kawolo hospital where the surgeries will be performed. In the picture of me administering the eye test there was a rather large family of bats living in a whole in the ceiling directly over my head. I moved a little more quickly that day so we could be out of there before dark in order to avoid the bats flying our of their hole in the ceiling while I was still standing there.
Last week, we also got to have a little dance lesson by Luta and his dance crew. Luta runs a dance team that performs at weddings and other celebrations. We got to see some of them perform and them we were taught how to do some of the moves. In the picture, we’re all wearing the traditional fur on our bums that they wear in their performances. I filmed most of the performance so I’ll definitely have to show it to you when I get back because they’re absolutely amazing.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Gandhi memorial at the source of the Nile. Gandhi’s ashes were spread in some of the rivers in Africa, including the Nile, where they have a small monument in honor of him. We were invited to a Fourth of July party at the US Embassy this weekend. There’s going to be fireworks and a barbeque! I’m exited to celebrate our national holiday in a different country; I think it’ll be an awesome experience.
Sorry this is a short one but I’ve got to run! I hope you all have a blessed week!

Hand Washing or Bust

Hello to all the loves in my life. Things are continually super duper fab here. This week marks the start of a new project that I’m really excited about! We have teamed up with another NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) called Sight Savers International. They donated eight million shillings ($4,000.00 US dollars) and supplied us with ophthalmologists and eye surgeons. For the next week and a half we will be going to rural villages and doing eye tests and screenings. Those with conditions that could be cured with prescriptions were given the drugs free of charge. I assisted with the eye tests yesterday and we saw 267 patients! We have seven more days of these outreaches then three days where the eye surgeons will be performing surgeries on those who were in need and were prescreened at the outreaches. The only bummer to this program is we didn’t get funding for glasses, but almost all other eye conditions will be treated. It’s a great program and I’m so excited to be apart of it.
Last week we had our unveiling of our very first hand station in the Lugazi Central Marketplace. We set up a booth in the marketplace, luckily it was near the produce and the not near he hanging raw meat. We first presented the hand washing station to the management and then had them sign a contract saying that the hand washing stations will always be fully stocked with water and soap. I will be checking in on the station throughout the summer and if I find that it is not stocked with water and soap three times then we will have a meeting with the management to discuss their relocation. The management agreed and the station has been well stocked since the grand opening. We then certified 167 market vendors in small groups. I gave a lesson on how germs are spread and then I discussed the importance of hand washing and how if done correctly, it can decrease diarrheal diseases by 42-45%. I then asked them questions to verify they understood the material. When they answered them all correctly we had them line up and wash their hands. As soon as they washed their hands they were presented with a hand washing certificate and a hygiene kit (Thank you again Sister Morton!). It was a wonderful day and many of the vendors have proudly displayed their hand-washing certificate at their stand. We are still waiting for four more hand washing stations to be built and I’m hoping they will be finished by the end of the week and then we can install the remaining four. The picture was taken at the end of one of my lessons and the woman I’m handing the hygiene kit to has just washed her hands in the newly constructed hand washing station.
Our next stop for hand washing stations is the local hospital where we will be installing four. We’ll have to do something a bit different as far as promotion and sanitation education, so more to come on that.
Now I must tell you about the most beautiful and magical place on earth, Sipi
Falls. Sipi is just a mere thirty minutes from Kenya and is probably the most the gorgeous place on the planet. We stayed at this resort with little cottages with only enough accommodations for 16 people. So the resort is tiny tiny and half of our group filled the place. The adorable cottage I stayed in is not far at all from where we we’re standing in the picture and you can see the waterfall from the window above my bed. One of the coolest things is that there’s really nothing around you except for a few huts and some locals. So you’re pretty secluded and besides the sound of the waterfalls, its soooo quiet. We got there around seven at night and they fed us the most fabulous meal I’ve had in over a month. I then got to take a long hot shower, first one in over a month. We spent Saturday hiking around and eating three fabulous meals they fed us. Oh and you must know that I only paid forty-five US dollars for accommodations and three fabulous meals. If you’re ever vacationing in Uganda this is the place to go. The two girls in the picture standing next to me are our two country directors. The one to my left is Melissa and she just graduated from BYU with her Masters in Public Health and has been such a great help to me. The girl on the far left is Becca, one of the other volunteers that I flew all the way from Salt Lake to Uganda with.
Thanks for all the love and support! I wish you all a wonderful week!
XOXO-Hill

A Little Love From Lugazi

Hello to my fellow fans and readers (aka my supportive friends and family) I would like to start off this blog with a little public health plug. While I’m in Africa I’m taking ten credits of coursework in order to complete my undergraduate degree by August. One of the classes I’m taking is International Health. I was just doing some reading for my courses when I found a statistic that I found interesting. “An international cancer study found that 35% of cancer deaths are caused by nine lifestyle and environmental factors: overweight and obesity, low fruit and vegetable intake, physical inactivity, smoking, alcohol use, unsafe sex, urban air pollution, indoor smoke and air pollution, indoor smoke from household use of solid fuels, and contaminated injections in healthcare settings.” (Jacobsen, 2008) Notice that six of the nine lifestyle factors we as individuals have complete control over. I know that we can all do a little better, myself included, in at least a few of those six areas. So cheers to cancer prevention.
The sun is still shinning and will always shine as the HELP International volunteers continue to thrive just miles from the earth’s equator. We have a big week ahead of us as we prepare to install and promote our very first hand washing station in the local market place on Thursday. We will only have one hand washing station constructed in time so the following four will be installed early next week. We are going to have a booth for two hours after the installation where we will teach and certify the local vendors in proper hand washing and hygiene. After they complete the short lesson and pass off that they understand the importance of hand washing before preparing or cutting food, before eating, and after using the latrine they will be rewarded with a certificate and a hygiene kit! Props to Carol Morton for donating the kits! Thank you! One thing you must know about Uganda is that they absolutely love and cherish certificates. Why, I don’t know. You give them a certificate for something and they’ll save it forever. So we are going to laminate them so they can display them on their fruit stand. If all goes as planned and the hand washing stations are utilized correctly, we can expect a decrease of diarrheal diseases among vendors and customers by 42-45%.
Tomorrow I have a meeting with one of the administrators at the local hospital to discuss installing hand washing stations there as well as promoting and educating the staff on the importance of hand washing. It sounds like their running water is a lot like ours, it comes and goes. However, it looks like we won’t ever have running water again. Anyways, so the hand washing stations would be used when there is no running water as well as a few out by the latrines.
If I get a picture up it’ll be one of Leslie and I teaching a sanitation lesson to the local street kids after a soccer match. Sugar cane, one of Uganda’s main crops, surround the soccer field. The man standing next to me is Robert, the co-founder of The Youth Outreach Mission, translating for us. The street kids don’t have the money to pay the school fees and therefore don’t speak English, hence the translator.
Well dinner is almost ready and I’ve got to finish up some homework. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for future blog posts. XOXO -Hill

The Muzungu House

I have had several requests for a picture of our humble abode and here it is. I tried to get a shot so you can see it in its entirety. To the left of the photo you will see a cement wall that has glued broken bottles on the top. That wall surrounds the entire house to keep the Muzungus in and the Ugandans out. We then have a large gate in the front with two doors to get in and out. Behind the house are our guard’s quarters and where our married couple team members will move in tomorrow. The latrines are also in the back of the house, but I figured you probably didn’t want to see a picture of that.  My room is the room behind the balcony that’s covered in mosquito nets. Six boys are in the garages (with the green doors) and then two of the boys sleep on the balcony. There are five rooms upstairs which house twenty girls. I share a room with five other girls. We all sleep in bunk buds with mattresses made of three-inch foam. They’re actually more comfortable then you’d think because at night I sleep like a little lamb. In the right bottom corner of the picture is our well. This is where we shower, do our dishes, wash our clothes, and sometimes just hang out. The water isn’t clean enough to drink and whether or not it’s clean enough to bathe in or do our dishes in is debatable. Most of the time we use it when it’s dark outside and you can’t tell that the true color of the water is brown. The blue plastic chair in the picture is one of our few pieces of furniture. Besides the bunk beds in our house our only other furniture consists of plastic chairs and stools. The buckets sitting in front of the garage are our drinking water, which we get delivered from a plant. The bricks in the center were being used to rebuild part of the outer wall that fell down during a recent rainstorm, but the wall is completed and the bricks are still there.
The house is basically constructed of cement, which is great for fire retardation, but terrible for hanging anything on the walls. Most of our mosquito nets are held up in very creative ways since we can’t really use nails. The floor is mainly painted cement but a few of the rooms have linoleum. Upstairs there are two bathrooms. One of them has a normal toilet, which flushes when we have water, and we’ve had running water maybe 20% of the time we’ve been here. The other upstairs bathroom is the same as the only restroom downstairs and consists of what we most affectionately call a squatter. Enough said on that subject. If there’s no running water and you have to go number two then you have to use the outdoor latrines. Our house is pretty mosquito and bug proofed with mosquito nets on every outside door and window we can leave them open to keep the house cool (no A/C or fans). We still get our fair share of bugs in our little home and if we’re lucky we’ll get a rhino bug, that’s about the size of your hand. There are actually not as many bugs here as I thought there’d be.
The other picture is of me administering an oral polio vaccine at one of the vaccination clinics in Jinja. The government provided measles and polio vaccines to all children under five in Uganda during a three day period. Some of the vaccination posts were in hospitals, but most of them were just under some random tree. I got to wear one of the infamous Mormon helping hands vests! LDS members all around the world wear these vests while giving aid to those in need. It was such a good experience to be apart of the country-wide vaccinations.
Per my dear Tia Lisa’s request I’ll do my absolute best to describe how Uganda smells. The latrines and all surrounding areas smell terrible. The market where we buy all our produce smells like fish. One time we shared a taxi with thirty-three live chickens and that didn’t smell so good. I have also shared a taxi with a ton of dead fish, not such a good smell either. The taxis themselves smell damp and mildewy. They don’t have any means of disposing their garbage and they pile it in huge piles, and that smells like the dump. When they burn their trash it kind of smells a bit like weed, or so I’ve been told. We pass a lot of livestock just wondering around on our way in to town and so I always get a whiff of pure animal smell. Ugandans don’t have money for deodorant, so most of them smell like B.O. Their staple food item here is called matoke, and the women here are cooking outside over their fires all day everyday and it smells a lot like potatoes. Just minutes after it rains, Uganda smells fresh, alive, and cleansed. The rain lingers in the humidity and the smell of dew fills the air. The farther you get away from the center of the village and into the more rural parts of town the more you can smell the surrounding vegetation. Sometimes you can smell the jackfruit, pineapple, mango, or passion fruit growing in nearby fields topped off with faint scent of sugar cane. I wish I could bottle it up and take it with me wherever I go. I love you all! XOXO!

I'm going to Amsterdam and Paris!

Hey friends and family!

I don’t have much time but I just wanted to share some super exciting news with you. Me, along with one other girl and two guys from our team, were able to switch our return flight home (free of charge) so that we have a week long layover in Amsterdam! Which means I think we’re going to try and go to Paris as well! Wahooo! So the four of us will be planning specifics for the next few months. The other girl I’ll be traveling with is a seasoned travel and we’re going with two guys, so we will be safe. Oh and not to worry Mom, my return flight from Amsterdam to LAX has not been switched so I'll still arrive the same day and time.

A little health update. There's currently five volunteers with Malaria and a few with Typhoid. Our country directors suggested that we all get tested, just in case. I had a blood test done this morning and my results came back negative for Typhoid, Malaria, and Salmonella. I'm doing every thing I can to keep it that way and I'm putting Purell on my hands more often now than ever before. The sick volunteers are all doing pretty well and have all received medication for their illnesses.

If I get a picture up it’s of me and two of the other volunteers with some of the women at a rural village in Luganga. I taught a lesson on the importance of sanitation and hand washing. Things are still as fabulous as ever here and this weekend is immunization weekend! I’m praying that we’ll have an incredible turn out and I’m so excited for the difference these immunizations will make in the lives of so many Ugandan children. Well I’ve got to go and prepare the health lesson I will be teaching the street children before there soccer game this afternoon. I love you all! XOXO!

My Ugandan Name is Nantume

My goal is to get two pictures up today while I’m online, so we’ll see how this goes. This first picture is of our very first soccer game and public health lesson with some of the street children of Lugazi. The street children are all of the kids who don’t get to go to school because they don’t have the money to pay the school fees. Andrew, the guy in the picture with the dreads, got his hometown to donate soccer equipment and uniforms to the cause. We plan to make these soccer games a weekly event and are coupled with a brief lesson on health. I give the lesson and Andrew and some of the other guys from the team take care of the soccer part. Our first game went really well and thanks to our translator, I think they got the jist of my lesson on how germs are spread and the importance of proper hand washing in infectious disease prevention.
I began making a prototype of the hand washing stations we are going to build for the local market place, but unfortunately ran into a little problem. We haven’t been able to locate one of the materials we need locally to build the hand washing stations. Part of the sustainability of the project relies on the supplies being inexpensive and accessible so that the members of The Youth Outreach Mission, along with others I train, can continue to build them in Lugazi after we leave this summer. Luckily, just days after I encountered this issue one of our country directors found out that one of the senior missionary couples in Kampala have built hand washing stations using a different model and have had a lot of success. I have an appointment to meet up with them in Jinja on Wednesday to see the hand washing stations and learn how they build them. Jinja is also one of the very few places in this country with American food, so Wednesday will be an absolutely splendid day.
This upcoming week some of the other interns will be pulling out some teachers from their classes to do some teacher training while I get to entertain their classes with a public health lesson. So part of this week I’ll spend creating lesson plans and visuals. This upcoming weekend is the countrywide distribution of polio and measles vaccines and I’m excited to spend three days with some of the senior couples in assisting with the vaccinations.
The other picture that I hopefully get loaded is of Becca, Wilson, and me at Szebwa Falls. Becca is one of the other interns and Wilson is the president of The Youth Outreach Mission, which we have done a lot of work with. About twelve of us interns and seven Ugandans from the Youth Outreach Mission hiked around Szebwa Falls Saturday morning and then we went and spent the day in the capital, Kampala. We went to a mall there called Garden City and for six hours I felt like I was no longer in Uganda. We ate at this fabulous Indian restaurant while sitting cross-legged on couches. We don’t have couches at our house and it a nice change from sitting on the floor or in plastic chairs. The food was amazing and the restaurant sits at the top of the mall and is completely open. It was a beautiful sunny day with a slight breeze and we got to enjoy it all as we ate Indian food. We then went and saw Angels and Demons and for two and half hours I felt like I was at home in the U.S. We then got ice cream in the mall, which was okay. The ice cream they have here isn’t as creamy and sweet as it is in the US and they haven’t quite gotten their chocolate flavoring down. After ice cream we went to an American super market at the mall where they have a lot of American brand food that’s way overpriced. I bought a few Ugandan brand things that you can’t find in Lugazi and avoided the American cereal that cost ten US dollars.
Today I taught Young Womens at church and it was way fun. It rained so hard that one of the walls that surround our house fell down, but it is currently being fixed. I’m off to go locate the phone my family will call on in approximately twenty-five minutes. I love you all and I love Uganda!

The Nile

This is picture of Tiffany and me just minutes after we'd woken up at the Adrift campgrounds. We woke up to a campsite covered in monkeys! That is the gorgeous Nile right behind us!

A Weekend On The Nile

Hello friends and family! I want you all to know that I am healthy and well! All of us survived the epidemic and we’re all strong and back to work. This past weekend we did probably one of the scariest most amazing things I’ve ever done. We white water rafted the Nile. We went up to Jinja the night before and stayed at the Adrift campground in dorm style rooms. Adrift is an Australian owned company with a plethora of attractive Australian white water rafting men (just a small perk to the fabulous weekend).  The rooms were fairly small with bunk beds that were four beds high! It was like sleeping in a jungle gym! We got up on Saturday morning and had breakfast at the campground bar that sits on a cliff overlooking the Nile. I had eggs and hash browns for a whopping $2.00. Then some people from our group bungee jumped over the Nile. We then loaded all of our gear, minus our sunscreen, onto the pick up bus and then got fitted in our life jackets and helmets. Our group had about 17 people and then there were a bunch of other Muzungus rafting that day as well. Nine of us loaded into our raft and after a small set of class one rapids our Ugandan, with an acquired Australian accent, (unfortunately not one of the Australian tour guys) instructed us on how to row and what to do if we were thrown out or if the raft tipped over. Before every rapid and during our instruction he kept saying whatever you do don’t panic, even if you get sucked under the rapids for minutes don’t panic, remain calm. Not comforting words. Our tour guide’s name was Owlo and despite his dirty mouth was an absolutely fabulous guide. He’d been a guide on the Nile for over a year and a half and had to do a year of training before he was a guide. So he’s basically a pro. We spent the morning going over class 3-5 rapids and we all successfully stayed in the boat except for when one of the class 4 rapids when we flipped (I’m pretty sure Owlo flipped it on purpose). I’m not going to lie; I was pretty scared after the first flip. I lost my helmet almost instantaneously and all I could think about as I was being tossed around in the water is that I hope I don’t hit my head on anything. I was fortunate and was fine helmetless. When I finally got out of the rapids one of the safety kayakers (there were about 15 of them that followed us to pluck people out of the water) picked me up and took me back to my raft. After a few more rapids we came to a class five rapid with a twenty-foot waterfall at the end. I was praying all the way down the rapids that if I fell out or if we flipped, that it would happen after we went over the waterfall. Fortunately, I got lucky and stayed in the boat for the rest of the morning. Going over the waterfall was crazy! I really can’t even describe the sheer terror and adrenaline. Ahhhh!! It was a good thing that you can’t really see the rapids or the waterfall before you’re into them or I would’ve yelled uncle before I ever went over any of those rapids. After a wild morning we stopped off at literally, a tropical island in the middle of the Nile where they fed us the most fabulous lunch. We had ham and salami sandwiches with a million different toppings, potato salad, pineapple, and watermelon. That may not sound very gourmet to you guys but it was like heaven to us. After lunch we hit some more serious rapids. One of the funny things that our guide did was that after we went down crazy rapids he’d give us a lollipop and we’d do a little cheer. The last rapid of the day was a class six, which rafts are no longer allowed to attempt. Our guide Owlo did it in a raft with a bunch of other guides and ended up in the hospital for a month afterward. So now the kayakers are the only ones allowed to go down the class six rapids. We parked the raft and walked around the class six area and would normally jump in where it’s a class five, but the water level was a little low and it would be super dangerous if we were to flip. So we went back in at the class four area and lo and behold we flipped. I’m convinced our guide flipped us on purpose again, but I guess we’ll have to watch the video to see if he did. The second flip wasn’t as bad, but there was one point after I had been twirling around in the water after what felt like forever when I finally came up and thought it was over, only to see one of the biggest waves I’ve ever seen right in front of me. So I screamed and down I went. Finally, me and my trusty life vest (which I had the guide tighten repeatedly throughout the day) popped up and I was retrieved way down the river by a kayaker. I was way far away from the raft and had to swim behind the kayak to the rest of the group. To say the least it was an absolutely wild day and I’m so glad I did it!
Today we went to church back in Jinja where I got to teach nursery to a bunch of munchkins who don’t speak English. English is the primary language here, but the children don’t learn it until they go to school. To say the least it was an interesting lesson. We then took a packed taxi van, which we shared with 33 chickens, to Mukono, where the branch president and his family fed us an amazing meal! We ate chicken, which I haven’t had since I’ve been here and it was so good. They also fed us chocolate cake for dessert! The branch president got his master and doctorate degrees at BYU and now teaches at the university in Kampala. One of his daughters will start at BYU this fall! They live in the nicest home I’ve seen since I’ve been here and for the first time in Africa I took my shoes off and walked around in their house barefoot. In our house, we all were our “house slippers” because it’s not quite clean enough to go barefoot.
A couple of weeks ago the branch president in our little Jinja Branch read a letter from the first Presidency. The church is funding measles vaccinations for all its members in Uganda. They’re doing it for three days in June and I signed up to volunteer all three days. I’m excited to be a part of such an amazing cause. Measles will be eradicated among the members in Uganda. What a miracle.
I received the blue prints at the end of last week for the hand washing stations and I have an appointment to meet up with Robert, one of the college students from Kampala, who we’re working with the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign. He’s such a great leader in the community here and has worked on hygiene and sanitation projects in the past. I’m excited to work with him and I hope that he’ll be able to continue the work we start this summer long after I leave. The blue prints we’re working off of were created by another BYU student and professor and implemented with great success in South Africa last summer. Tomorrow is research day, as I will pick Robert’s brain to see if he thinks these hand-washing stations in the local produce market will be successful. My team and I will also go around the market tomorrow and talk to the local sellers to see if they would be interested in having a hand washing station and if it would be used. If my results after tomorrow’s research look promising then I’ll write a project proposal and will submit it to the HELP Office for the necessary funds. If not, we’ll rework our ideas and blue prints. We’re also scheduling some school visits to teach HIV/AIDS prevention, hygiene and sanitation, as well as drug abuse.
I love love love you all and I love love love Uganda! I miss you guys! XOXO

Our Neighbors!

Here's a picture of the little kids that live near us and run out to greet us every time we pass. This is also a little view of what Lugazi looks like just outside our house.