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.