Week 4 in Ruhija (June 20th - June 25th)

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June 20^th, 2016



Woke up at 7:45am, ate breakfast, and then headed to the health centre. Loaded some airtime on the way over, and did some stuff for preparing for the village meeting, which we’ve confirmed for this Friday at 11am at the health centre. Left the health centre at 1pm, came back around 1:30pm, ate lunch, and then worked on the meeting. Now that the time for the village meeting is confirmed, we planned some more tasks in preparation for the meeting. In the meeting, we’ll sensitize whoever comes on cervical cancer and its associated risk factors.



Afterwards, I came up to ITFC to charge electronics and at 6pm, went back down for dinner. Made some edits to the corrected report that we sent to Alex, one of our facilitators, and made some calls before going to sleep.



Tomorrow morning, I’m going to see the gorillas with Julius, a local researcher! Rather than only spending 1 hour, which is the limit for normal tourists, I can spend 4 hours with Julius, which means I’ll be able to get my money’s worth, hopefully. =)



Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s blog with pictures of the gorillas and an update on how the gorilla tracking went!







June 21^st, 2016



Today was gorilla tracking day so I woke up at 6:30am, went to a nearby restaurant to buy some eggs for breakfast, and then met Julius, a Max Planck researcher, to head to the warden’s office for gorilla tracking. We walked to the warden’s office, I bought the gorilla permit for $600 USD, and then Julius and I and two park rangers left to go gorilla tracking. We got a ride from the warden’s office to a trail and started our gorilla tracking. The park rangers start by heading to yesterday’s last known location of the gorillas, and from there, start looking for gorilla nests. The nests are bushes that are folded and bent down to create a springy mattress. You can also see plenty of gorilla droppings around their nest. Once we found the nests, we started to look for a gorilla sized path/trail along with the type of vegetation that the gorillas like to eat. We tracked the gorillas for a grand total of around an hour and half before we finally found them. As it turned out, we had to make a giant U-turn to get to the gorillas from their nest spot. Had we known earlier, it would have saved us plenty of time, but that is the nature of gorilla tracking… you never would have known until you actually find them. Once there, we were immediately greeted by a mean female gorilla who charged us. Fortunately, the charging is never really that serious and only meant as intimidation. So we settle in with the gorillas and continue with them as they move along, finding and eating their vegetation. It’s not fruit season at the moment, so they eat almost exclusively vegetation, such as leaves and bark. Otherwise, they’d be on the trees all the time, looking for fruit. We see the dominant silverback almost right away and as Julius later told me, as long as you can find the dominant silverback, you’ll find the majority of the others because they feel safe around him. We followed them for about an hour and half and I get some great photos! One of the females even comes right up to me as I’m sitting and smells my pants as though she were wondering “hmm, who is this new person I’ve never seen before?” That definitely made the trip much more memorable because regulations normally dictate that you maintain at least 7meters distance from the gorillas, not only for your protection, but also due to risk of transmissible diseases. However, since I was with Julius, we could bend the rules a bit more, just like how I could stay longer than the usual 1 hour limit for tourists. Soon after, rain started to downpour. Like us, the gorillas don’t like getting wet as they get cold too, so they sought shelter in the trees or bushes. We stood underneath a tree as well and waited until the rain subsided. At that point, the gorillas started moving out and foraging again so we continued to follow them for another hour and a half or so. Towards the end, we actually noticed an old silverback rejoined the group! This old silverback is the oldest of the group and had been missing for the past 3 months! So when Julius saw him, he was so happy and enthusiastic that this presumed dead silverback was actually alive. However, as this silverback didn’t have any human habituation for the past 3 months, he immediately charged at Julius and I when we got close to him. Now this was actually really scary because the silverbacks are massive and he also made a much more aggressive call as he was charging at us. If I was alone, I think I would have peed my pants. So finally, we follow him around a bit, and at this point, Julius had finished collecting his data, so we left the gorillas and started to head back to the road. The park rangers are actually very knowledgeable and experienced in terms of navigating the terrain and remembering their position in the forest, so we took a pretty straight path (with plenty of uphill and downhill though!) back to the road and headed home. The tracking and time spent with the gorillas left me extraordinarily tired, but if I was going to gorilla track, the 4 hours was definitely much more worth it. In all honesty though, as difficult as it is to put a value on this type of experience, I think it’s not worth the $600USD value, particularly if you only got to spend 1 hour with them. Gorillas continuously move as they forage and the terrain is really difficult to navigate as its on slopes. You have to be in decent fit condition just to find and follow the gorillas and it’s not an “easy” experience by any means. Plus, seeing the gorillas, as awesome of an experience it is, feels like it lacks something. It’s just a zoo in the wild and going to a zoo definitely does not cost $600. Maybe if you could play with the gorillas it would be worth it in my opinion, but because safety protocols and transmissible diseases dictate that we try to maintain our distance, I just felt like something was missing. Overall, things, such as food, clothes, or experiences, in Uganda haven’t felt like they’re quite “worth their value”, but I think that’s because I’m comparing them to my standards of other places, such as Taiwan or Canada or other places that I’ve traveled to or lived in. For example, Rolexes which are similar to 蔥油餅夾蛋 in Taiwan are not done as well, nor are they as tasty. The price might even be cheaper in Taiwan. Same with some fruits or even meals at a western restaurant. But obviously, I have to remember that I’m in Uganda, and my higher standards can’t apply or shouldn’t be applicable for comparison.



Anyways, after the tracking, I came home, ate lunch, and played several games of chess with Silas before sitting down to type this blog. My muscles are aching and the weather is cold, but I’ll be fine after a night’s rest. I’ll make some calls after this and then eat dinner before going to bed.







June 22^nd, 2016



Went to health centre today and an unexpected visitor, a doctor from Mbarara University hospital, arrived soon afterwards. He explained that he was here because someone had noticed that referrals from the labor and delivery departments from village health centres were often arriving too late at hospitals for appropriate care and, as a result, the women were dying. He quickly met everyone, including all the staff at the health centre and arranged a meeting in the examination room. He talked about using a portogram to monitor women in labor and, in the event of labor problems, quickly refer these women to the nearest hospital. After the meeting, the day was pretty much written off because the staff weren’t really seeing patients and we still had work to do for our project. So we walked home. As we walked home, Montana, Richele, and I visited a couple craft shops and they bought a few things before we finally reached home. After coming home, we ate lunch, talked a little more about our meeting we’re putting on this Friday, and then I worked out a bit. I visited the pork joint, but they didn’t have any pork so I walked back home. On the way back, I stopped at the community rest camp and admired the view. While I was admiring the view, I put my arms down on one of the wood pillars and felt something crawling on my arm. I looked down and saw 2 ants climbing on my arm and immediately flicked them off. But then I noticed that swarms of ants were rushing out of the pillar! I had accidentally knocked their home and all the ants were swarming out to defend against whatever was knocking at their door. I took a photo and then left the community camp to walk home. I then sat down and wrote this blog. I worked out for a bit as some others were preparing the posters for Friday’s sensitization meeting. Our power ran out earlier, meaning we have no lights, so we ate dinner, chatted for bit and I turned in for a very early night (8:30pm).







June 23^rd, 2016



Went to the health centre as usual, saw some patients, and sat in on a meeting with a ministry of health official, who basically came to scold the group for not doing a good job. Silas reminded me that many of these health workers don’t receive paychecks for 3 months at a time, so why would you work if you’re not getting paid?

It’s easy for me or the other students from Canada to criticize because all we see are the health care workers slacking off, but for Silas, it’s easy for him to sympathize with the health care workers. We stayed pretty late today, until 1:30pm and saw a large amount of patients today. Afterwards, we came home, had lunch, and rehearsed for the sensitization meeting tomorrow and then I came up to ITFC to charge and fill water. I have literally no clean water right now, so it’s quite important that I come up to get some water. After I came back down, which was pretty late (7pm), we had dinner, chilled and then went to bed early.







June 24^th, 2016



Today is the big day for the cervical cancer village meeting. We left at little later than usual and arrived at the health centre around 9:30am. When we arrived, I was surprised to see that a ton of people were already there! I’m not sure if it was because they knew we had a meeting today, or if it was because they knew a bunch of drugs had arrived Wednesday night. So at 10am, we hold an information session with the health care workers to test their knowledge of cervical cancer as well as prepare them to translate for us later. From what I gathered, it seems they were actually all quite knowledgeable. By then, it was around 10:40am so we quickly set up our talk and ask people to sit around our presentation spot so that we can start around 11am. Not too many other people showed up after 11am so I’m quite surprised the people were following our muzungu time. The meeting proceeded quite smoothly and successfully, with some minor speed bumps along the way, such as the talk taking a little longer than we expected and a few people leaving before we could finish. During our meeting, we did a pre-sensitization/education survey, our sensitization/education talk about cervical cancer, and then a post-sensitization/education survey. The surveys were conducted to assess awareness levels of cervical cancer, in addition to how well the people received the information we presented. A lot of people were asking questions too so that was encouraging. However, not everyone necessarily received the information exactly as we intended it. For example, we were hoping everyone would understand that the greatest risk factor for getting cervical cancer is to have multiple sexual partners. Most people that I surveyed seemed to learn that the greatest risk factor was hygiene and circumcision, which are risk factors, but not the major risk factor. After we returned to our home and ate lunch, we did a debriefing and discussed what we could do to improve learning and the overall meeting. We talked about increasing the speed we talk, about not losing stuff in translation, avoiding certain things such as condoms if we visit churches, and how to emphasize certain risk factors or decreasing risk of cervical cancer.



Before lunch, I returned some stuff I borrowed from the community rest camp and talked to tenielle on the phone. Afterwards, James, Richele, Montana, and I began a busy afternoon to say goodbyes and donate some stuff to groups which we felt most connected to. We bought 2 big bags of rice and some beans for the orphanage and the girls went to a nearby craftshop to get some souvenirs for friends and family. During that afternoon, we basically ran into everyone we wanted to say good-bye to, including Happy, Gideon, Eliab, Sergeant Odongo, and Julius. Julius actually arranged a meeting with Dr. Ricky, a Ugandan vet from Makerere University and we talked for about an hour about his work as a vet and vets in general in Uganda. He said that most vets work in large animal practice, but many have moved away from it because farmers will just buy their own antibiotics and inject them into their animals until they finally get the right one and their cows recover. They’d rather do that than pay a vet. So vets in Uganda have started to move into small animal surgery (starting to grow gradually), pharmaceuticals, and a little bit more into wildlife. He also said vets are really not respected here because they’re massive drunkards. They get a considerable amount of money, but they all seem to drink like crazy with the money, which is quite funny. He’s currently working with the gorillas, but he’s worked with chimps, lions, elephants, and also a project called PREDICT, which looks at rodents, birds, and primates living near humans and routinely catches and tests them for potential zoonotic diseases.



Finally, around 7pm, I get back home and find that Happy and Gideon and another and chatted and played some games and I showed them some magic tricks. They also brought with them a huge jerry can of African honey! One of our MUST students said that the honey probably cost around 100,000 UGX, which was more than half of the value of what we donated to them (we gave the orphanage roughly 180,000 UGX worth in food)! I felt bad taking it, but in traditional Ugandan fashion, it was a gift and it would be impolite to refuse the gift. We must have really left an impression with the orphanage, but I like to think it’s because Happy and I shared a connection and she really liked me that we got the amazing gift at the end. After they left, the MUST students and Canadian students gathered around a fire and drank some beer. I called and talked to Stella for a bit and then I ate dinner before going to sleep.







June 25^th, 2016



Today we got picked up and went back to Mbarara. The driver said he’d come at 10am, but he actually got there at 9am! So we quickly packed up, bought rolex for everyone, and then left in the pickup truck to go back to Mbarara. The drive itself took almost 4 hours, but the driver took a different longer, but more stable route with a much more beautiful view. After getting back to Mbarara, we settled back in and then went to Café Ark, a nearby very fancy restaurant to enjoy a meal and then relax for the rest of the evening.



At this point, I’ll probably just blog post any interesting things or thoughts or events rather than keeping a daily blog.

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