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