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