Day 2

Bright and early we are off to the hospital for a tour. We wake up slowwwly, well ok I wake up slowly. We make our way up to the hospital on the top of the hill. Don’t worry though it was not that far. Only about a ten minute walk. We get there and everyone we meet is greeting us – you are welcome – they would say. Very polite, caring people.

We meet with the head doctor, Doctor Kenya, (yes just like the African country!) and most of our supervisors. They will materialize later next week!

Ok off we go, tour of the hospital grounds. Now in western countries our hospitals are usually floors or levels. Well, here in Africa for those of you that do not know they are separate buildings. These buildings are all original from 1929 and it would seem that nothing has been done to them since. Now imagine the buildings in your hometown from those days, if they are still standing most have been kept up or rebuilt. This is something that even a picture could not describe.

Our first tour is the children’s ward. You walk into the ward and you see many people mulling about. Some children with parents and some on their own. As we move further through the ward we come to a second area with many young children. As we come around the corner you see this little child being dressed by what we would assume was their mother. As she changes the child’s shirt you can see how thin they are. The spinal cord looks more like a row of large beads on a thin string.

Now if that doesn’t make want run over and just hold the child then keep reading. Once you start to look around there are at least a dozen other children that look just like the first one. As you keep looking you will come across something that resembles a child’s body on a bed, just sitting there. How this child is sitting I have no idea, just skin and bone. If the wind blew they would most defiantly fall over like a set of dominoes.

As you can imagine all the wards that we visited were like this. The women and men are separated into their own wards. The TB & HIV/AIDS ward, accident victim ward, men, women regular ward, mental health ward and finally the maternity ward. There are a few wards that we simply did not have time to visit but we had enough for one day.

Thankfully we were able to see where Erin will be based out of for her practicum USDC (Uganda Society for Disabled Children) and Carli’s which is at Uganda Cares.

Then we go and have lunch and debrief with everything that we saw & heard. So much to do with so little time!!!!!!!

Not to mention the fact that we are suppose to start our practicum in the morning! After what we took in today and the fact that we have not had a chance to settle in or get over our jet lag, our wonderful supervisor was able to talk to them and let them know that we need at least one more day of rest. Besides that we didn’t even have a chance to get TP. Well for those of you that have not realized this yet there are FOUR girls living in the same place ….. we NEEDED TP (toilet paper).

After that long day off to bed we gooooo……