My, how the weeks race by.
Things have got a lot busier here both in the Medical Centre and with our resident children. We took in a set of twins and a single baby within a short space of time. Julia, our 20 year old volunteer nobly took in a twin for 3nights before the need for sleep took over. We now have a set of twins in each baby room and a set sharing an incubator.
I woke at 5am the other night to the most awful heart rending wailing. I knew it meant a mother had just lost her baby in the Medical Centre. This was a 5 month old who had diarrhoea & vomiting for 3 days. While the mother went to get medicine, the grandmother thought she would be helpful and took the baby to the local healer for a local tonsillectomy - piercing the tonsils with a stick or bicycle spoke to let the badness out. The baby was brought to us with a temperature of 40 degrees and the family admitted she had bled profusely after the procedure. Blood poisoning had set in. This was the baby that died. There were 2 others on the ward who had been given the same procedure. Our Uganda Nurse tells them quite firmly the dangers of doing this. Unbelievebly, the parents of one of these children brought in their 4 year old son this morning. Despite what they had been told and despite witnessing the death of the baby, they had taken him for a local tonsillectomy and now he was much worse!
A member of our staff got married last week. I was invited to her Give Away ceremony in her home village. It was an hours drive into the mountains then a steep walk. I would have had to have gone by myself and was somewhat nervous of getting lost and climbing the wrong mountain. I also wasn't sure how steep, steep meant! I asked if I could attend the wedding service the following day instead as at least a taxi could get to the church. One of the other girls who was her attendant told me it had been a really steep climb so I was glad I hadn't tried. Also, the ceremony was supposed to start at mid day but didn't begin until 5.30 pm!
The wedding ceremony was joyful. As white people are a total rarity up there and I took tall, blond, Swedish Julia with me, the Vicar stopped the ceremony (we were a bit late) to have us introduced. Very embarrassing. Julia did not like being gawped at and having children in the pews behind her stroking her hair. We got more attention than the bride!
Some days the rain is so much - as the locals say in English. On this day it had rained all day and the lower ground was completely underwater. Staff did not know how to get home so Mike did some runs in the pick-up. The roads were muddy rivers and very slippery. A car would not have made it along some of them.
Another lovely use of English.....Are you coming now, or now now? Now now means right now, now means sometime soon.
Ivan is very into taking our shoes on and off. It proved very useful after the Tuesday staff meeting. Everyone's shoes were outside the door so there is a bottleneck whilst people slip theirs on. Ivan helpfully collected and brought Mike and me our pairs and put them at our feet which caused great hilarity.
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