Sarah in Uganda

The Medical Mission from Chicago has been here for the past two weeks and it has been absolutely crazy around the Clinic. So many patients come every day to see the doctors from Amerika and are willing to wait for most of the day in order to be seen. Rather than being cranky and rude like patients would be in the United States, the majority are happy to have been seen and thank us on their way out after receiving their medications. It has also been interesting to see the perception they have of American doctors. Many think that they can fix any problem and as a result we have seen some unusual illness that people have waited for many, many months to get checked out. Despite this perception, the doctors have many of the same limitations as the nurses do. Although they have a much broader knowledge base there still are not the facilities for surgery that many of these patients need. So invariably the worst cases are sent away with a little medication to help offset the pain and a referral to the hospital in Masaka which the family likely can not afford to go to for treatment. Most of the cases are heartbreaking because you know that even if they can find a way for treatment most likely the ailment is so far advanced that the quality of life is going to be extremely diminished. There are definitely a number of cases that I am going to carry with me for a while.

Other things that have occurred in no particular order:

1. We attended our first organized football match (we’ve been to a number of pick up games). It was part of a tournament that is organized by the challenging candidate for the Member of Parliament elections that will be occur in March (side note: this orginally read November but I was misinformed, the elections are actually being held in March). Pretty good campaign tactics if you ask me. The Ddegeya team was playing in their second to last prelim game. Elliot got to ref the first half but then was accused of throwing the game for Ddegeya and got canned. It was far and away the most entertaining game of football I had ever seen. Mayhem erupted after Ddegeya finally scored with dancing and fans running all over the field, kids doing cartwheels, and even one super fan doing a jig in the goal. It was also fun to being routing for a team wearing familiar garnet and white Union jerseys. I was amazed at how far the guys could kick the ball without shoes. The Ddegeya goalie did not have any shoes on yet he was able to punt the ball way over the midfield line (Claire, I challenge you to learn how to do this ;) ).

2. Despite meeting a handful of Ugandan patients named Sarah, many people have trouble pronouncing my name and as a result on a regular basis I am called either Stella or Shaarah. It’s better than being called Harriet when your name is actually Elliot so I’m not complaining.

3. I bought a metal chest to hold all my clothes and thoroughly confused all the locals who assumed I had to be going to school since that is the only reason they could think of to buy that particular chest. In fact when asking for a metal chest they did not understand what I wanted but when I started asking for a suitcase I was presented with a number of different options.

4. Last Sunday I tagged along with the doctors during their outing to Lake Victoria. The fishing village was much more what I had envisioned when I thought about living in Africa. Around Ddegeya even though the homes are small they all have a significant amount of land surrounding and space to sit in front of the house to prepare the food for cooking, do the laundry, or let the kids run around in. The houses in the village on Lake Victoria were all extremely small and crowded one on top of the other with narrow streets in between the rows of homes. The shore was lined with fishing boats that resembled oversized canoes and all the men were preparing the nets so they could set out around 4pm that day. Swimming in Lake Victoria is not advised to my dismay so we walked along the shore for a bit until we got to a bit of beach with no boats but many cows. We hung out there for a bit before all piling back into the pick up truck and heading home.