Dental Outreach and Baboons

This week was something else.. My second big project was this week, and it was an interesting experience. For a couple weeks I’ve planned to do a dental outreach at an orphanage. I had 2 dentists hired but one cancelled the week before and the other cancelled the night before.. So I found another dentist and she did a great job! We checked around 60 kids, removed teeth from about 20 of them, and afterwards treated about 30 adults. In addition I got to deworm 136 more kids! The people here were so strong; there were few tears over removed teeth.

Picture of Immaculate (the dentist) removing teeth (We had to use our phones as flashlights all day)

The next morning I taught several classes about First Aid and STDs. The kids love it and always have amazing questions. Some of the questions I’ve been asked are if peeing on burns is good treatment, if putting salt or sugar in cuts is good, if gun cleaning oil is an acceptable pain killer, or if liquor works for wounds as well as medical alcohol. I’m not sure who came up with these solutions but I’m happy to fix their misconceptions.

Younger Siblings of the kids I taught. 

Picture of another project moving bricks to make a piggery. I could only carry 2 bricks per trip...

After pulling off those projects I got to end the week with a safari. Never tell a travel agent to find the cheapest option because.. well.. There aren’t words for this weekend. Also, baboons are not cute. I now have a completely rational fear of them. They were crawling on the bars over my windows all day and night and I felt like I was in a concentration camp. When harmlessly sitting in my taxi one decided to crawl in with me…… Thankfully he didn’t come all the way in.

Picture of Baboons and warthogs guarding the bathroom. I decided I'd rather not go. 

Even though the baboons were terrifying, the giraffes and elephants and hippos and alligators made up for it.

Picture of me in my giraffe shirt with giraffes

We could've touched this guy.. 

On the way home I got to see some awesome cave paintings. To other people in my group it was “extremely anticlimactic”, but to me it’s incredible that this paint has stayed for over 5000 years. THAT is a successful artists. Next week I'm painting a school- maybe 5000 years from now people will travel to see it too ;) 

Deworming, First Aid, and WashingWood

Wherever I go people say “Mzungu Hello!” or “Mzungu how are you?!” or the best is the children who just scream and point… Now I know how Roger the UPS guy feels.

As I’ve visited many villages I’ve noticed that one of the biggest health problems is children with worms. I talked to my friend Dr. Jan who told me the local clinics should be providing deworming medication for free. I was confused and next asked my friend Dr. Dennis about the problem; he explained that every child should be able to easily be dewormed unless their village is very far from a clinic. I was still frustrated because neither response answered why the children weren’t getting dewormed. So I went to the source- the local government clinics. I discovered that many of the government clinics had the same problem- they are only given a small number of deworming pills each year. These pills hardly cover a fraction of each community’s children (not including the nearby communities without government clinics). By working with two clinics this week, I was able to organize a deworming outreach. I acquired enough deworming pills for 500 children. And on this Wednesday- 500 children were dewormed.

Picture of a teacher having his school kids line up to receive pills.

While we worked to provide deworming medication, the clinic workers were busy giving vaccinations. About 20 children were immunized. 

The next big project this week was to teach a community about First Aid. We met with 30 teachers from 6 different schools (some traveled for 2 hours or more to hear us teach) and taught them what to do in emergency health situations. After teaching we answered questions for at least an hour. 

When questions were finished we took them outside to practice basic bandaging techniques. Instead of teaching I got to distract the children so they wouldn’t disturb the teachers. Luckily I had a story book about how to stay clean and healthy- they loved it. The way they acted you might think they’d never seen a story book before. Perhaps some never have.

While I was teaching the younger kids about staying clean and healthy, a teacher interrupted to ask if I could look at a couple of the student’s cuts. Before I knew it, there was a line of children with serious cuts asking for help. In the class to the adults I stressed the importance of being prepared to help in any situation- thankfully I had packed my first aid kit that morning and was able to clean an bandage dozens of wounds. Because there were so many students with cuts, I was able to demonstrate to the teachers how to clean the wounds with alcohol and bandage them to keep them clean. Some of the cuts were NASTY and I had to use a lot of alcohol to clean them; even though I knew it would be extremely painful, not a single kid cried. 

I’m going back to the same school 3 more times (weekly) to teach as much first aid as I can. There’s no reason any child should have such serious infections. Some of the current treatments were Black Jack (a weed), gun cleaning oil (commonly used during circumcision rituals), or urine (for burns I think... but really I don't even know...). Hopefully I can teach them better/cleaner ways to help in emergency situations.  

That's not the only teaching I did this week. My friend Matt James had the idea to introduce wash boards to the market here. (One lady insisted they were WashingWood not WashingBoards.) I think they're going to be a big hit! They've certainly made doing our laundry easier. 

Check out this little Ugandan mzungu girl I found. She's one of a kind. (Usually Ugandans are quite dark)

All in all it's been a busy week, but things just keep getting better. I've made so many friends I'll never forget. Best of all are my primary children. Last week I asked them to draw pictures of what they were grateful for- several drew pictures of me. I'm grateful I'm here. I'm grateful for the amazing friends everywhere. And I'm grateful for angels God puts in my path. Right now I'm where I'm supposed to be. 

Tomorrow I'm teaching the primary that with God's help they can do amazing things. And it's true- with God's help you can do anything. Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.

(Alma 26:12)

Portrait of me by Amos (age 4) 

Orphans

Remember my friend? I met her sister. 

I have been working with their mother, my friend Carolyn, to reach out to different schools for orphans. This school, located on the top of a mountain, has over 300 orphans. There are MANY more in the area, but because they are orphans, it's not a priority to send them to school. One guardian I talked to had 13 orphans but could only afford to send 5 to school (it's amazing he could send 5!). 

This is a small group from the school sitting in their new school house. Yup, that's where they have school. They sang and danced for us as we waited to have a meeting with their guardians. One of the songs they sang explained what happened to their parents.. 

My friend Holli taught a class on saving money to pay for the orphans education. Instead of just listening politely and not acting (the American attitude), they immediately got out a metal box and put together a weekly savings group. They are always proactive and wiling to learn. 

This past week has been the best yet. There's nothing to compare to the experiences here. And I'm excited for the many experiences ahead. 

Another crazy week in Uganda

First- my apologies for not writing anyone back for a while; I haven’t had power or internet for a week.. Last week went so fast! I worked at a clinic in Namaqueque on Monday and returned to the Buwasunguyi clinic on Tuesday. I’ve been trained on most of the blood testing methods and have been able to work in the lab with the lab technicians.

The Namaqueqe clinic is great for standard simple tests (above is a malaria test), but the Buwasunguyi clinic has unique cases such as a boy with billions of chiggers in his hands and feet, or like a seven year old with cancer who won’t live much longer. I will never stop being shocked by some of the cases here.

Often we treat the people as puzzles that need to be solved and sometimes it’s hard to remember my patients are real people with real lives like mine. And it’s even harder when you realize their life will be cut short. 

Last week while in town I made a friend, Abraham, and this week I got to visit the schools in his home town. I’ll be teaching first-aid there soon. I was spontaneously introduced to a class and on the spot had to answer many complex medical questions. The kids were so smart! They love anatomy and they wanted to know things that I just learned last month in physiology. They made me wish I'd studied harder. 

Their school was at the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. There are waterfalls literally just all along the road and we were so high we were in the clouds. Here are some other pictures of the community: 

First, admire this ridiculously good looking wall. I would do a painting of just this wall. 

The road up to Bulegeni (where the school was)

Market day. 

Bulegeni students. 

I think this wall looks like a Rhino.  

But seriously, there are waterfalls literally along the sides of the road. 

Thursday I made another friend. This time a student instead of a teacher. When visiting a school I noticed a dirty quiet little boy and my first thought was that "good heavens his mother needs to fix his pants". When I asked about him I learned that he's an orphan and has no mother or father or siblings or anyone to look after him. He's only 3. His name is Ian. 

He is a "quiet boy" who hardly said a word to me even when I got him to laugh. He's had a rough life. There are MANY more kids like him. Just today I visited a school for orphans. There were 300+ just at this one school. Where are their parents? I'll cover that in my next post.