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