New Growth

 

As ever, a busy couple of weeks. We seem to be coming out of the wet season and get sunshine into the evening most days. A bit of a contrast with weather in the UK!

We've had 4 newborn babies in 2 weeks which is stretching the staff in babies A. We have put in extra workers for day and night. We have another baby waiting to come in but he is currently in an incubator in the prem unit so we have a bit of time before finding a space for him.

 

 

 

Late Sunday afternoon and the Carers dance to entertain the toddlers but they seem monumentally uninterested.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Dushime, who is going home tomorrow plots a bit of last minute mayhem. I have irrefutable evidence should we suddenly be without water.

 

 

 

 

Winniefred, our new Social Worker is learning fast. A father to one toddler who is ready to be resettled said that as his son was healthy and doing well, could he not stay on here. 'Eh' she said...'Do you see other children who have been left here by their fathers? Do you not take any responsibility for this child being brought into the world? You have remarried and had another child yet want to reject this one who lost his mother?' After several minutes of this he meekly handed over his phone contact number and directions for her to visit his house. Yep, she'll do well. We are not in the habit of bullying families, I hasten to add, but sometimes they need a bit of a reminder as to their agreement. Her home visit will ensure there is no reason why he cannot have the child.

Another proud moment was picking the first tomato grown at Potter's Village.

 

We need to take more seeds back with us in January. The children now have basil and parsley added to their food for added greens and taste. Parsnips will soon be ready but they are something new here and I am told it will take a while for locals to believe they are not carrots with something gone wrong with them.

 

 

Relaxation

 

After a busy week we headed off to Mutanda Lake Resort for a couple of nights. It is only an hours journey from us and would take much less time to get there if the roads were not so bad and so bumpy. Like Lake Bunyoni, it is a huge lake dotted with small islands.

Instead of bamboo domes, this time it is tents on stilts.

 

 

 

View from our room with the nearest 3 volcanoes in the background.

 

The small peak on the left is our favourite walk to the view of Lake Mutanda. Kisoro is over the other side of the hill.

 

 

 

 

It may not look like it but the photo below is one of a pair of otters in the water just below our room.

It has been good to have a break. Jackie left on Thursday and just before her leaving 'do' began, I had a message to say that the new person appointed to help with finances had got herself another job. Praise the Lord, she said......nope, it didn't seem too praiseworthy to me! The following day the guy who does our purchasing went AWOL. Apparently he does this occasionally....great!

Still, when all is said and done, things are going fine. It is important to keep local norms of behaviour at the forefront and not have western expectations of work ethic or reliability. Some people do have a strong work ethic etc and they are real gems.

The new washing machine arrived from Kampala but the buttons do not do what they say in the manual. For instance, it fills with water for the rinse cycle, comes up with an error saying there is no water in the machine, empties the water and beeps until you turn it off and manually put it on spin. A Samsung engineer in Uganda? No, the nearest is in South Africa and the Supermarket in Kampala are not interested. At least it works after a fashion!

Mike has been using the new medical equipment he bought in Kampala. He began by testing the iron levels of some of our children. Even the lad he picked as his control example turned out to be mildly anaemic. This reflects the poor diet here. This is sad and rather concerning. It is the problem of lack of protein - and our children get tuna and mince every week, whereas most community children get neither. We are also feeding them broccoli and spinach from our garden but maybe vegetables that grow so quickly here lack the essential minerals? Mike sees children as outpatients who are incredibly malnourished. He is thinking and discussing if there is some intervention we can offer that is practical and effective without making people dependent on us. If anyone reading this has ideas, they would be most welcome.

 

Highs and Lows

 

No power for 2 1/2 weeks then it came back.....for nearly 48 hours! Actually it is far less frustrating knowing you won't have power at all than having it coming and going at random times. For several days we had no water as well and that was hard. Still it puts it into perspective when you know that most people here don't have water or electricity ever. We have watched people toil up and down the steep hill to the lake with jerry cans on their heads. What right have we to complain if water doesn't come out of our taps for a while but complain, we do.

The night the power came back will stick in our minds. We were sitting in the candle light when a police car arrived. The power came back as Nurse Emily was walking towards the Medical Centre. It was a newborn baby found naked and abandoned in a banana plantation. He was still covered with grit and soil. He fought magnificently for several hours but his temperature was unrecordable when he arrived and even in the incubator, they couldn't get his temperature to rise very far. Eventually his lungs bled and we lost him. He had been outside for too long. We took him as one of ours and arranged his funeral. Festo, the carpenter made a coffin, Social Worker Annet got the paperwork done, Jackie went with the town clerk to find a burial spot, Leonard and James dug the grave, Mike led a short service at the grave. All very intimate and special but ultimately so very sad.

On a brighter note, Rosie returned from the UK but Emily leaves for good on Thursday. On Wednesday morning she and I will try and climb the hill for her to have one last look at the view of Lake Mutanda then in the afternoon we will have fun and games with the children. She will be sadly missed.

 

 

 

At the end of the month we say farewell to our Administrator Jackie. In traditional style for a big celebration we will kill and eat a pig. Meat is a rare luxury for most of our staff so it will be a treat for them. After the customary speeches the staff will perform traditional dances to drummed music.

 

 

Here are a selection of vegetables that have grown from seed since we arrived back in July. We have enough tomatoes to last 3 months.

 

The children are eating their first courgettes.

 

 

 

There will soon be carrots, broccoli, cabbage, cucumber,

leeks and there are a vast array of herbs. The speed of growth

is phenomenal. Strangely the rhubarb is not doing so well but

it is going to transplanted onto a mound of manure - of what

variety I am not sure, nor will I ask!

 

Powerless

 

Yet again we are without power but this time we know we are in for a long haul. Over a week ago the transformer was seen heading very slowly out of Kisoro for Kampala. We were informed it would take a week for them to decide if it was possible to fix it. The last time this happened there was no power for a month!!!! It is only our line that is affected so I am sitting in the Hotel with our equipment plugged into the wall. The problem with that is that there is now a power cut here also. Grrrr!

Coping without electricity is a nuisance but feasible. We were without water also for several days and that was harder. We got to the point we had to buy in bottled water to make up the baby feeds as it was deemed unsafe to give them boiled green water from the tanks. So we count our blessings that we have water and keep reminding ourselves that most others live permanently without electricity.

So we apologise that we cannot answer emails etc as well as we should.

Jackie, the Administrator, leaves at the end of the month. We announced a vacancy for a secretary at the English Service on Sunday. The Board this end was happy for me to have a Junior post to help in the office - I need someone who speaks Rufumbira as much as anything. One applicant has a post grad diploma in finance....wow! She has also worked in the Probation Office which is ideal. We are now debating whether to swap roles and appoint her to do the finance and I will run the office. She will be a more expensive option but very useful.

Moses, our new Uganda Nurse, also announced he was leaving in order to work with an American NGO at the Refugee camp. They can offer twice the salary so it is no surprise he wants to take up the offer. We have had a lot of interest for his post so that should not be hard to fill.

Apart from that, things are going well. Ivan has found his appetite but has now bloated with air and looks like Humpty Dumpty. Talk about one extreme to another! He also had an x-Ray last week as he was unable to lift his arm and was clearly in great pain. Mike was worried he had had his shoulder dislocated by someone lifting him up by his arm alone. He hadn't but the arm is still very sore. He certainly goes from one trauma to another.

Mike is in Kampala trying to get his Medical registration and the registration for the Medical Centre - both of which he was informed were ready to collect. He got the Postbus at 5.30 am on Thursday and arrived in Kampala at 4.30 pm. Not a journey I want to take. Sadly he has achieved nothing. Neither were ready so he has to stay until Monday and hope to get them then. To cap it all, he had his phone stolen on the way back to the Guest House. He is not a happy chappy!

I am now very low on power so will move to the Gorilla Junction cafe and see if they have electricity there.

It's all part of the African experience I keep saying to myself!

 

Lots of play

 

We now have a team of 6 with us and they are doing a wonderful job. John has been digging, making fences and attempting to bring sense to the finances. Carol is stationed in the medical centre as she has taken over from Rosie for a month while Rosie is in the UK. Karen and Andrea are doing great stuff in training the Carers in interaction and play.

 

 

The staff training sessions mean that Debbie, Beth and Sue are left literally holding the babies!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here the staff are putting their training into practice with hilarious results.

 

 

 

Sunday afternoon ended with a sing-a-long. We will now endlessly have to endure Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes sung to the tune of London's Bridge is Falling Down! It doesn't matter how often you sing it with them the right way, they revert back. It has the potential for being very irritating!!

 

 

 

We were concerned we might have had one of our children developing mumps this week. This could have been dreadful as none of the babies are immunised against it. As a precaution, Eva was isolated immediately and although she has big swellings on either side of her neck, they have not developed further.

Ivan is still very ill. His skin is peeling off and although he is taking milk he is refusing food. Yesterday I smeared some marmite on his lips which he did eventually lick off. At least a few vitamins went in. He is tolerating the goat's milk which is a relief but the goat is not really producing enough milk. Ivan's face and limbs are still very swollen so he has a long way to go before being on the road to recovery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giving Away.

 

 

Two particularly interesting things happened this week. Firstly, on Wednesday we met Alfred at the border with Rwanda and Samuel tried his standing frame. It provoked such a lot of interest from people there that I don't know how we've got a photo without interested bystanders. Samuel was very excited and very happy. I have to say...it was a perfect fit and enables him to stand without collapsing which should help strengthen his legs. The VSO person who found funding for his Dad Alfred to come and help make it, has found funding for him to continue to come and work with us for a while. If he only lived our side of the border he would have made a great permanent member of the team.

 

 

The second thing was our invitation to the Giving Away Ceremony for the Bishop's daughter. This is when the Groom's family comes to ask for the girl and she then goes with them and gets married in their community.

It starts with a meal. Under the pineapple is matoke - boiled green bananas. I am still the only foreigner we know who likes it. Then clockwise it is pineapple, rice, potato, watermelon, cabbage, chicken and a chunk of beef. This comes with a bottle of coke or sprite.

 

 

After the meal we sit in the tents....for a few hours!!....waiting for the groom's side to arrive and then eat. I was wondering what they had put in the icing to stop it melting in the hot sun. Maybe they are not real?

 

 

 

 

Every half hour we were entertained with an energetic burst of colourful dancing accompanied by drums and singing.

 

 

After the two family sides have talked across the compound and the Bride Price agreed upon, the girl eventually arrives with her attendants. She is dressed according the culture of her father's tribe. She has to stay looking sad as she is leaving her family. When gifts are exchanged she leaves to get changed again.

 

 

She comes back dressed for her future family's cultural traditions. She then serves her new family and leaves with them. The actual wedding was to take place 2 days later further north in Uganda.

In all it took 7 hours!!!

Young Ivan spent a night with us again. He had become seriously dehydrated as he wasn't able to keep anything down so we had to spend the night with a syringe trying to get water in, 1 ml at a time. He kept it all down which was good. He had further blood tests and a chest x-ray which showed nothing conclusive. However it has been decided to start him on TB treatment as that most closely fits his symptoms and lack of ability to put on weight.

The new CPAP machine has come in great use and Mike finds it very reassuring to have it for those babies who struggle with breathing. Power cuts still come and go as does the water but we do have more rain now. So next is the problem of drying the washing. John, your big ball of string has been temporarily utilised as washing line in the carpentry workshop - a big timber shed. The ball of string is the size of a football so goes a long way.

On Tuesday a team of 4 join another 2 volunteers already here. We will then start stimulation and play training in earnest.

 

 

 

 

Oh, what a night.......!

We are now at the beginning of the wet season which is marked by ferocious thunder storms which will last for about 2 weeks and then the rains will begin in earnest. This last week we had an extremely scary night. We had never heard thunder so loud and so continuous and the lightening was non-stop and overhead for some time. At one point there was an horrendous bang followed by the fizzing of live electricity. Each of us on site thought our house was hit. We were already in a power cut but I could hear the generator and there were no screams or shouts so I presumed - thankfully - that all were safe. In the morning the lights in half of the medical centre were not working and the only other damage was the collapse of the play dome. The metal stakes at the edges and corners were completely bent. The Gateman thought a flash had hit the ground near there and then arched over his small hut.

We have often been warned about being out in thunder storms. I am told that people here get struck by lightening and killed on an almost daily basis at this time. The deaths are reported on the morning radio. A lad was struck and killed on the field behind us last week. I felt sorry for anyone who needed to be out in the storm this night. We will not be blasé about storms in the future.

 

 

 

 

Water cuts continue too and we, like the locals, will welcome the rain. Not very British, I know.

On another note, we have welcomed two new ones into the village. Benson arrived aged 4 months after his mother died from TB, we think. Mujewamana, (I am calling her Moogee for short) arrived yesterday from across the border in the Congo. Her mother was eating porridge two hours after delivery and suddenly died. An embolis? Muji is very pretty and doing well so far.

The little lad that came to the medical centre in an extreme state of malnutrition and dehydration, survived and is doing well. It will be a while before he will be strong enough to leave then we will support him and his mother in the community for a further six months before reviewing their future. We have to ensure we don't increase their vulnerability by giving hand-outs with no long term survival solution of their own.

It's evening and another power cut. Mike has a temperature and feels very sick. It could be anything or nothing so we hope it passes before morning.