Blogs from Western Region, Uganda, Africa - page 3

Hi everyone! The last week has been jam packed with travel across the country in a giant green mystery machine-esque van. This week has been filled with emotional lability. It began when we had to leave Rugazi and I had to say goodbye to what had become my Ugandan family. Leaving the health workers, community members, and Ugandan students that we had lived with for the last month proved more difficult than I expected. Then our supervisors picked us up to travel to Kampala and Gulu to administer preliminary surveys and attend meetings for their research project on health-seeking behaviours in adolescent girls. We stayed in relatively lavish accommodations and ate at fancy restaurants; this incited waves of guilt. I left people I cared about and who grew to care about me, for what? To live ... read more

Hello bloggers and family, So again I must apologize for the 2 weeks it has been since I last updated, life in Rugazi is busy. We are working mornings in the clinic and then in the afternoon we head out to the community to work on our project. This last Tuesday I woke up pretty sick, along with a few of the other Canadian students, so we ran some blood tests and we all tested positive for a bacterial infection. So it has been an interesting few days hooked up to intravenous (IV) fluids, but 24 hours after starting antibiotics and I am back to my crazy self. I never imagined myself running IV fluids from the bars in my window in a village in Africa, but a new experience nonetheless. I hate that I haven’t ... read more

The last two weeks have been jam packed. We completed our community health training at MUST with the Ugandan students. The days were full of classroom learning and our evenings were spent with Kenneth and Resty (our Ugandan friends) exploring Mbarara, enjoying local restaurants, street food (lots of rolex), and night life. That weekend we embarked for Rugazi again, this time accompanied by our Ugandan counterparts. We have spent the last two weeks at the same health centre I described in my last entry. I have found myself establishing a niche on the maternity ward. I find I can be most useful there and I am learning so much from the midwives, who are all so good to me. The mothers and babies are also incredible. I'm in awe every day of the resiliency of the ... read more

Hey bloggers and family, I apologize, as I have been terrible these past weeks at keeping everyone up to date on my life in Uganda, I have been in Mbarara for the past week doing the LCP training (which I actually don’t know what that stands for, but I think its leadership community project). This training was essential for our community project as we were introduced to and worked alongside our Ugandan counterparts, so all our learning was done together and we have already begun to build relationships. That’s not to say it wasn’t a long week of sitting in a lecture from 0815-1700hrs each day but we survived nonetheless. The Ugandan students Ken and Resty who accompanied us to Rugazi last week were our teachers for the sessions, so that made the learning more enjoyable. ... read more

After 2 weeks of being delayed (due to the professors at MUST going on strike), we finally came to Rugazi. I have absolutely loved being in the clinic as I’ve been able to assist in physical assessments and observe procedures being done, however some days have been hard. The night before last I got woken up at almost 1:00am to see if I wanted to observe a C-section. I had never seen one before and wasn’t sure what to expect. I ended up fainting before they even cut through the adipose tissue. Once my sight came back I continued to lay on the floor of the OR for a few minutes until I felt comfortable standing again. I got up just in time to see them take the baby out of the uterus. The baby wasn’t ... read more