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