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Published: April 25th 2009
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Leaving Banana Village
We had no appointments to make on Wednesday morning and so after checking out of Banana Village and a very leisurely breakfast we set off down the Entebbe road towards Kampala. The Ugandan people were all very busy going about their daily lives, which provided some great scenery on our journey. The people are sop enterprising, it seems all of them are trying to make a living in any way possible, each with his or her own businesses, boda-boda or day to day job!
Infant Oral Mutilation
We met with a dentist in Kampala who had supplied three Ugandan dentists to us for our first three clinics. He owned and ran his own practice, which was pretty much to western standards in terms of equipment and the services they offered. We talked about the ongoing problem of Infant Oral Mutilation (IOM) in Uganda and across East Africa. IOM is practiced by traditional healers and is generally the removal of teeth/teeth buds that have not erupted through the gum. Mothers believe that if their child presents a tooth under the gum at an age younger than 6 months that the tooth must be “fake” or that
it must be a “worm” spreading a disease. What can also occur is that if a child presents a fever, mothers believe that these worms or ants that are “bewitched” must cause it. The traditional healer/herbalist will then proceed to remove it by digging deep into the gum with a knife or bicycle spoke to remove it. It causes the child excruciating pain and at worst can cause septicaemia and death.
My main aim of working with Dentaid is to carry out research on the subject and try to come close to finding a solution or at least try to understand the thinking behind the practice from a mother’s point of view better.
After visiting the dental practice we traveled to Mango Tree Enterprises. Mango Tree produces posters and books (general educational tools) out of local materials. Local people also make them and the money is ploughed back into the local community. They made the books and posters we have been using to educate our patients about oral hygiene and I was very impressed by all of it.
The whole minibus fell asleep on the way to Jinja. We were obviously very tired from our three very
busy clinics back in Bwerenga. We made it to Jinja in good time and a credit to Barbara’s driving on Ugandan roads all well rested! We stayed in the Hotel Crested Crane, which is also a hospitality and tourism-training centre, which resulted in very good service at meal times. After a very hearty Chinese meal and a game or two of pool we were in bed ready for our next clinic.
Bakaya was the name of the village we ran the clinic at on Thursday. Once again we were to set up in their church, which was a very small, in comparison to the last place, and a mud hut, so quite hot and sticky! We were so blessed to have such an amazing space for our first three days that from then on it was always going to be hard, as space and light became more of an issue. At hope village I was lucky enough to have a few tables of decent height that I could lay out all the instruments on. At Bakaya I didn’t manage to get any tables but the benches would do! My back did suffer a little as the day went on,
bending down to get different forceps and criers!
For those who were in triage and post op it seemed quite slow as the people trickled in but for us in treatment we were pretty much always busy with someone on the chairs. A lot of children were treated and quite often if they were brave they would receive a present from Michael who had brought over a massive suitcase full of tennis balls, teddies, football shirts and skipping ropes. They managed to put a smile on a lot of their faces after an uncomfortable and alien experience of going to the dentist!
The biggest enemies to oral health in Africa are Coca Cola, sugar cane and lack of knowledge. The parents have not been educated in how to look after their teeth and simple do not know that sugar and sugary drinks cause grave problems. Often we would see children with highly decayed upper front teeth (their 1s) and this is purely due to drinking soft drinks and having the coke flow through these teeth in particular.
That night we had an amazing dinner at the hotel, much to the delight of Paul who cleared his plat
for the first time in Uganda (he was finding the stodgy food quite difficult, as was I). Later we had a few drinks in a bar down the raid called Two Friends for Aliya’s Birthday that was coming up on Monday. This would be our last chance to enjoy a Nile special before Lucie and myself left for Mauritius so we took the opportunity to have celebratory beer!
Bavuma Island
Lucie was going to stay in Jinja to meet up with Beth, as she had been quite ill all week. The rest of the team traveled in the morning to the shore of Lake Victoria and boarded “Gorgeous George’s” boat to the Island of Bavuma. The journey took about an hour and a half and we would be going straight to do a half-day clinic in a nearby village.
The island had no electricity nor running water, it was very basic but I enjoyed it a lot. We carried out three clinics whilst on the island. One on the Friday when we arrived, a whole day clinic on Saturday and a half-day on Sunday after a morning service.
In the evenings we would all wash underneath
George’s home made shower and enjoy the nightly football game before eating some beautiful food followed quite often by a card game. Until this point I had managed to hide my competitive side from the group and then we started playing 7’s! It was great fun and we had a lot of laughs over Michael’s difficulty in getting to grips with the numerous rules!
We returned to Jinja by boat on Monday morning and met Luc at the hotel before Aliya’s birthday lunch. It was very strange leaving the group and heading off in the direction of the airport in anticipation of lying to SA the next day. Even though I had only been with the team for just over 11 days it felt much longer and I hoped I would see them all again very soon. In fact I have already made provisional plans to return to Uganda around the same time next year.
On Tuesday we flew from Entebbe to Johannesburg and would spend one night there before fling out to Mauritius to spend a week with his family.
It was very strange leaving East Africa. I had enjoyed some of the most amazing experiences
of my life in my 7 weeks there. Having tracked gorillas in Rwanda, reached to peak of Kilimanjaro, spent days lazing around on the beaches of Zanzibar and finally treating so many peoples’ pain with the dental team it made me sad leaving but I knew it would hopefully not be long until I returned.
It was comforting knowing that our traveling might be slightly easier and more comfortable from this point on but in some way that is what made East Africa special.
Next stop Mauritius, small island, big heart…
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ajelliott
Aleisha Elliott
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Safe travels in Mauritius! East Africa will miss you! Aleisha