Muzungu! Muzungu!

There is so much I feel I havn’t communicated on here at all!

I don’t think I’ve even mentioned things like how we get our milk delivered to the door fresh from a farm nearby, then we have to boil it and pour it through a sieve to pasteurise it our selves before we can drink it. Or the fact that the toilet is a pit latrine outside the guesthouse (and when we used public toilets last weekend we had to take a tub of water in with us to use as a flush! Not what you call the most pleasant experience but memorable none the less!!) And how everywhere we walk little kids shout out “Muzungu” (which literally means ‘white person’ in Luganda) and they wave madly until you wave back! ...To begin with you feel a bit like a celebrity and now it feels totally normal!

Physio wise, I’m getting into the swing of the normal routine and I’m starting to be able pick up on the odd word the physios say when speaking to the patients! It is a lot more relaxed than home time-wise with a few hours chat after lunch most days! I am learning lots, the physios are very knowledgable about a lot of the conditions that they see, although there are some dodgy ideas here too - such as treating a patient with abdominal pain with ice, that was interesting! When I asked about it the physio just said it may have been some kind of muscle spasm which ice would help!! Anyway, here’s a couple of examples of patients I’m seeing everyday at the moment.

This last week we’ve been seeing a guy who is about 16 years old who is in hospital because his Father burnt him as a result of him being accused of stealing. I’ve no idea whether he did steal or not, but he has been burnt all down his back as well as the side and back of his left leg leaving raw flesh. To begin with he was kept at home with no treatment until his wounds went septic and he was taken to hospital. You just can’t imagine it happening in our country but apparently this kind of story is quite common here, where people take things such as stealing into their own hands. The boy only really has one position he is comfortable in which is lying on his front leaning slightly to the left with his left leg bent so his open wounds arn’t touching the bed. Unfortunately our job is to try and get his joints moving to prevent contractures which is very painful for him. Today I had to bend his leg and straighten it while he was crying out in pain but I know that it was for his own good.

Another patient I have seen everyday since I’ve been here is Isaac. Isaac is a five year old boy who has been in hospital for three weeks but they have actually just discharged him without really knowing what was wrong with him. It’s such a shame as he really is pretty ill. I think he came to see the physios originally because had fluid building up in his stomach which was pushing the diaphragm up and causing him to have trouble breathing. He couldn’t actually lie flat to sleep as he was having so much trouble breathing. So we had him blowing bubbles etc to try and get him doing deep breathing exercises. In the last week we’ve really just been playing with him to engage him in something as he’s been stuck in hospital for so long. He always looks so serious, like a wee old man! More recently the doctors have discovered some sort of mass on his liver but the family doesn’t have enough money to find out what it is or to spend anymore time in hospital and I think it would be too major an operation to carry out here to remove it. In the last few days after he was discharged and waiting for transport home, we took him through to the rehab department while we had the nutrition group in and we got him playing with a football so that he was moving around. I’ll miss seeing him everyday, we had good fun together, he’s helped me learn to count to 10 in Luganda with some of the games and puzzles we were doing!


I find it really hard to age people here, I would’ve said Isaac was about 3 and the boy who got the really bad burns about 12 but I discovered their real ages with the notes! And one of the nutrition kids who come along most days I thought was about 1 and a half and it turns out they are actually 3!


Oh and exciting news! For those of you who know I booked an extra week by accident... I’m so glad I did!!
It turns out that on my very last weekend here there is a childrens club for kids age 5-12 which Kiwoko Hospital runs from the Fri to the Sun. Both the physios are involved in it, so they asked if I would like to join the team! It’s called ‘Ekisa’ which means ‘Grace’ in Luganda and it sounds like we are basically going to have lots of fun playing games, doing crafts, drama and singing songs to teach the kids about the gospel. I think that they used to have teams of people coming over from the UK to run it but this year the Ugandans are running it and there are only 3 ‘Muzungu’ helpers. So, I’ve just been to our first team meeting tonight which is very exciting! I’ll be on the team which has 5-7 year olds which I’m sure will be good fun! The majority of it seems to be pretty well organised with the schedule all planned by the two main leaders already, then I think we'll have more to plan in the next month within the smaller groups.

Prayer wise it would be really good if you could just pray for wisdom for how to encourage the Christians I meet here. There is a lot of superficial Christianity around (like when you go through towns and see buses with ‘God is Good’ and ‘Hosanna shopping centre’) And because it’s a Christian hospital which was started up by a missionary, then there are a lot of the people and students we are working with here have basic understanding of Christianity and often know right things to say, but it can be hard to tell sometimes whether they really are committed Christians. The two physios are Christians and I’ve had some good chats with them which has been good!
And more practically, just for the physio aspect that I’d have the confidence to use and share the knowledge I have to treat/help patients, and also that I’d be able to take on lots of new stuff that I’ve not learnt about at Uni really.

Off to Jinja this weekend to go whitewater rafting with other students at the guesthouse and to say Cheerio to Sarah as she moves on to work in an orphanage there for a few weeks, can’t believe how quick the two weeks we’ve had together has gone!