Ja ja home day

Today (Saturday 26th) was Ja Ja home day. Jaja means grandparents in the local language and it's a day when all the HIV positive children from a few local villages are invited to the community hall next to the hospital. The name comes because lots of them are cared for by their grandparents because their parents have died. The two medical students, Becky and Jess, and Emma and I helped Rita organise it. We made name badges for the children by plaiting ribbon and sticking the ribbon to pieces of card. They then wrote their names and stuck stickers on the cards.

The children arrive in the morning and have porridge for breakfast. They then play games and run around for a few hours and then have lunch before they go home. I spoke to a couple of local volunteers and they said how much the children like being around other children with the same health condition. Because all these children are on the register they all get ART (anti-HIV medication) and they mostly looked quite well nourished and healthy.  I imagine there are loads of other children in remote villages that haven't been diagnosed though.

It was a very tiring but really fun morning. As usual we were one of the main attractions, and they spent hours following us around and poking our skin, but they also played with toys, stickers and balloons. Like with everything here though, funding is a problem. Rita and her team do a brilliant job organising everything and I hope we can help out in the next couple of months when she's gone.

A Ugandan Easter

Sorry not to have posted for a while. The internet stopped working for a week and it's been a busy and stressful few days. I thought I should write a bit about Easter here. They have a tradition in the hospital chapel of celebrating both Easter and Christmas on the Thursday beforehand, as lots of the staff go home for Easter. They call it carols, even at Easter. There's a nursing and midwifery school on the hospital site and all the first year nursing students put on a play of the Easter story. The morning service lasted about  3 hours, including the play. They acted out everything, including whipping Jesus and putting him on a cross. It was a slightly bizarre, rather dramatic performance but more entertaining than the usual chapel services! They sang lots of songs too. Afterwards we had the more formal service.  I have to admit I struggle sometimes sitting on the hard benches but it's noticed if the Muzungos (white people) don't go to chapel and most days the service is only 30 minutes long.

On Easter day itself Emma and I had pancakes and coffee for breakfast (thanks Ann Smith!). We then got invited over to Olga, a German girl's house for more pancakes! There were about 10 of us there, us two, Olga, Rita and 6 Ugandas, mostly doctors or nurses at the hospital. It was really fun and rather indulgent to eat pancakes twice in one day. I took the last bag of little eggs Mum gave me when I left and everyone was very excited! That's all the chocolate gone now though, unless anyone wants to send a parcel...

Home sweet home!

We moved into our house today! It's a lovely little bungalow with 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and big living room and garden. For the last 2 days we've been staying in the doctors' guesthouse and having meals cooked for us which was nice but it's lovely to have moved in and been able to finally unpack and stop living out of a rucksack! We went shopping and have a fridge full of giant avocadoes and passion-fruit which cost 3p!

The last two days have been hectic and exhausting. Everyone is really friendly though and very pleased to have 2 extra doctors to help out. I'm relieved to be on paeds rather than adults! The day starts at 8 with a 30 minute service/meeting in the hospital chapel. They understand that we're not Christians but it's polite to attend and it's an interesting cultura experience. Then we go to the ward and do a ward round of the children and then the newborn babies. At the moment there are between 20 and 30 children and about 10-15 neonates. The round takes all morning and we see most of the children alone, with the consultant seeing the sick ones and any others she wants to. She's very nice and I think I'll learn lots from her.  I'll write another post soon with more details of the hospital and the things we see on the ward. Lots of the children are really poorly when they come in but most get better, I'm very relieved that our 2 sickest both started opening their eyes today. The newborns have a more turbulent course and 2 have died in the last 24 hours which is horrible. It's quite harrowing but it's also lovely when they improve.

We have lunch around 1.30 and then have a nice lazy afternoon until we go back in at 4 to see any that the nurses are worried about and review the new admissions. The nurses on paeds are great and quite independent. I felt bad about having this time off at first and then I realised it's the time that in the UK I'd spend writing discharge summaries and doing other paperwork- there's much less of it here! The nurses do all the bloods and cannulas and sort out discharges. At the moment there is a British medical student, Becky, and a Ugandan student, Charity, on paeds too so we share the work but Becky's changing to surgery next week and Charity is moving hospital so it might just be me and Dr Mary, the consultant. I will let you know!

Arrived!

Hello everyone, I am writing this from Kagando hospital, using the internet from the nursing school here. I'm exhausted after an early start and a long journey. The journey was lovely though- the countryside is gorgeous and got nicer and nicer as we got closer to here. We are right near the Rwenzori and can see the mountains from the accommodation. We are also only a few miles from the Queen Elizabeth National Park and drove through a bit of it and saw an elephant! It was from very far away but I was still very excited! We also saw antelopes and water buck and earlier in the journey we say baboons. We are staying in a gest house for the first couple of nights and then moving into our house. Anyway I'm shattered so going to go to bed. Will write properly in the next couple of days.

Hello from Kampala!

So we have arrived in Uganda after years of dreaming and months of planning. We're staying in Kampala, the capital, for a few days and then will get a lift to the hospital on Monday morning. We got here on thursday after a very smart but very long journey with Emirates, via Dubai.The views from the plan as we landed were amazing. The international airport is in Entebbe, which is a city about an hour's drive from Kampala and it is on a penisula on the edge of  Lake Victoria, a massive lake bordering Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. It's the wet season here at the moment so everything is very green and lush, not sure if it's always like it!
We're staying in a lovely little hotel in quite a quiet and smart part of the city. It's like a little oasis of calm in the mad bustle! I feel very grown-up staying a hotel rather than a busy hostel with 20-bed rooms like I'm used to! Everyone is so friendly and kind here. We spent the first day and a half being lazy and resting in the hotel with the odd walk in the local area. Yesterday there was a massive thunderstorm and it poured with rain in the way it only does in the tropics- like someone is emptying a massive bucket! We were very pleased to be inside! The rest of the time it's been sunny and hot though. We're both re-adapting to the  sticky feeling of wearing high-factor sun-screen and deet all the time!

This morning we went to the National Ugandan Museum which is about a 15 minute walk from here. Walking is interesting as the pavements are quite pot-holed and the motorcycles often decide to drive on them instead of the road! The museum was realy interesting and about the history of Uganda from prehistoric times and the animals and geography of the area. My favourite facts were tt chimpanzees eat special leaves to treat themselves for malaria and worms and that all the water in Uganda used to drain from East to West into the Atlantic until the plates moved thousands of years ago and suddenly they changed direction! There were loads of school kids there and I think they were more interested in us than the exhibitions! We had loads of conversations along the lines of "Hello, how are you, I'm fine, how are you" The brave would try to touch us or hold our hands! Ugandas are known for being really friendly though and they definitely have been so far.

Where oh where is my passport?

Tomorrow Emma and I are off to Uganda! Months of planning and stress were almost wasted however when I momentarily lost my passport. Cue a mad panic tearing around the house only to find it at the bottom of a neat pile of documents... I will be attempting to write this blog on my tablet at the hospital. I've been told there's wifi in some parts of the hospital so fingers crossed! I haven't tried the blogger app yet so I hope it works ok, sorry if the format's a but dodgy. Anyway I will leave you with a link to the website of the hospital and the website of a UK organisation who work closely with them. We organised our placement ourselves but the friends of Kagando have been really friendly and helpful. http://www.kagando.org/ http://www.friendsofkagando.org.uk/