The medical clinic

Sorry for the gap in the journal entries lately. I've been sick for a few days and haven't had the energy to write.

It's always a little scary getting sick here because malaria is such a big killer in this region and it's symptoms are very similar to a flu. I felt nauseous, dizzy, I had a sore throat and congestion, I was sweating a lot, and I kept getting headaches. Those are all malaria symptoms, and it can kill an adult in 48 hours.

I'm being melodramatic though. Several other volunteers got sick in the last few days and malaria is not easily transmittable except through blood so I was quite confident it was just some kind of flu or food poisoning or something. And Arianna is a nurse and would be able to run the necessary blood tests and give me the correct medication very quickly if I became too sick.

What's the best thing to do when you're feeling awful? Go work in a medical clinic around lots of other sick people.

The clinic is about a 15 minute drive from the compound. It's a small building with maybe 6 or 7 rooms plus a waiting area. There was no electricity or running water the whole time I was there. Most patients don't have beds, it's mostly thin mats on the cement floor, even in the children's room.

Without any medical training I wasn't able to do anything too advanced, but I took the vital signs of the people waiting for the nurse. I learned to take blood pressure, and also took people's pulse, temperature and weight.

Most of the patients were children. Several kids around here have never seen a white person and many were terrified of me. Axel calls it taking their mzungu virginity. A few days ago a ten year old girl saw me and when I waved she started screaming and ran away from me crying. Axel told me he once went for a run to the outskirts of the village and a boy on the side of the road ran screaming into the forest. Axel could still hear him screaming "ooooo ooooo oooooooooo" long after he'd disappeared.

The simplest things are the biggest ordeal when it comes to children and medicine. Putting a thermometer under the kids arm results in wailing and thrashing about and most kids have to be restrained by the parent. With most children, taking their pulse was impossible as they wouldn't stay still.

When the child's temperature was over 38.5 degrees, I gave them 5ml of liquid paracetemol using a syringe in their mouth. Most times the child would have to be held down by a couple of people and their mouth would be held open while I squirted the liquid in, then someone would hold their nose to force them to swallow.

For children too small to stand on the scales, there was a set of scales and a harness hanging from a tree outside the clinic where the babies were weighed.

Working with me at the clinic were Goldis and Arianna. At one point Arianna told me she wanted to introduce me to the most beautiful woman in the world, and brought me into a room to meet one of the nurses. I don't remember her name, but I learned quickly that she was looking for a mzungu boyfriend. She was possibly the most beautiful girl I've seen here, but I declined her offer. She spent a little time trying to persuade me, saying she wouldn't mind if I had several girlfriends or wives, but gave up after a while. I'd be a little nervous about hooking up with locals anyway, given the HIV rate around here.

On Thursday I had a meeting with a woman called Christina, who is the Ugandan representative of Canadian Feed the Children. I met her in Mengo Hospital as her father had acute malaria and she was visiting him there.

The hospital was in an area of Kampala called Namirembe, a richer, well maintained region that was nicer than anything I've seen in Uganda. Christina's father was looking quite well when I arrived, he was sitting up and drinking milk. He used to teach Lugandan in Oxford, England, so his English was quite good, and he had lots of advice for me about how the world works and the way mzungus think. He taught me a few Lugandan words.

Over lunch Christina told me about the sort of work Feed the Children does, and she said she would show me around the projects underway in Uganda. She is also going to try and arrange a meeting with the national director of Foster Parents Plan. I'd like to pick up some work with a few different NGOs while I'm here, so I'm hoping a few opportunities will come from these meetings. I've been sponsoring a Pakistani child through FPP for a while now, so maybe that will improve my chances.

There has been an influx of new volunteers here, we've had 5 people from the United states in 3 days. I like having the regular turnover. There has been some silly politics amongst the volunteers and I've got the impression that a couple of people have been angry with me, there's been some passive aggression flying around. I don't feel any obligation to address problems that people won't discuss with me though. If it's any of their business then they can talk to me about it, if it's not their business then I don't care about their opinion, and it's easy to not let it get to you when there's new people coming in all the time.

Two of the new volunteers arrived late on Wednesday night, and Axel and I decided to give them a lasting first impression. I pulled my pants down low below my ass, put my shirt on backwards and inside out and tied a knot in the front. Axel dressed in a turban and sari, and we went to meet them. We shook hands and they didn't even blink.

Traffic stories: coming back from Kampala a few days ago our matatu hit a cyclist and knocked him off the bike. He didn't seem badly injured. On a boda boda the day before the driver drove too close to a matatu and I smacked my knee on the back of it. The same day Axel and Goldis saw a pair of sandals with pools of blood in them and streaks of red up the street. Apparently there are stiff penalties for boda boda drivers who get in accidents, a by-law introduced to try and calm the traffic. The boda boda driver had crashed and ran away to escape punishment, spilling blood all down the street and leaving his bloody sandals placed neatly beside eachother on the tarmac.

This journal entry seems to just be a collection of random stories, so I'll add two more before I go: walking around late in the village last night, the only light came from the stars, fireflies, and car headlamps. The cars kick up a lot of dust along the dirt roads and when someone walks in front of the headlights, their shadows in the dust clouds look like ghosts walking the streets of the village.

Axel was also telling me how he was given his name. It is part of his Swedish tribe's culture to hold the baby upside down while the name is chosen. It had been raining a lot the day Axel was born, and so his family chose the name "Pule", which means "comes with the rain". His second name is Axel. Upon being named, Axel promptly urinated in his own mouth. He goes by Axel, not Pule, because Pule means fuck in Norwegian.

Rafting and bungee-croc-death has been postponed until next weekend. Tomorrow is paintball. Now I'm going swimming at the pool in the Sheraton hotel. Man, life is tough...