Rugazi Health Centre 4

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Day 11- the journey to Rugazi village....07:00 am the six of us are all packed up again and walking over to the university from the residence. Life Lesson 3: pack light because at some point in your travels you will have to haul luggage for a far distance and possibly up and down sets of stairs (got in my cardio for the day hahaha). Best part was hauling heavy luggage accross the busy highway, lets just say it was a bunch of women running like mad and screaming. Once at the university we sat around for 2 and 1/2 hours for everyone to arrive and arrange luggage. Once everyone was assigned to their bus, lugagge and other equipment was packed, we managed to leave at 10:00 am. My group managed to be assigned to the "menopause bus" (this is what the Ugandan students call it becasue it's the very first bus purchased when the university first opened in 1989). So large luggage and items were packed on the open roof rack on the top of the bus and the rest was packed in the back of the bus. For us students well lets just say that there was so many of us that some people ended up sitting on the floor of the bus. We could barley make the hills and we had one assigned pit stop, one stop was to drop of another group of students at their assigned health centre but the other 2 stops were because it was a very hot day our bus was over heating. One stop was at a tea plantation.

We arrived in Rugazi at 15:00, unloaded all our luggage and waited for someone to great us and show us to our hostel. Luckily our hostel is located right at the health centre and to our delightful surprise is quite nice and has running water, power, laundry room, indoor bathroom and shower. Though we do not have hot water. The first challenge was to set up my "princess net" aka mosquito net, I was able to screw my hook into the window frame, which has worked well all week!!!! So the hostel has two rooms with two bunk beds and 8 rooms with 2 beds each in them, the boys took one room with the 2 bunk bed and the other is used for storage and im in a room with 2 beds bunking with Gena (canadian student). once all unpacked and settled in a group of us decided to go explore the community, which was wonderful. Life lesson 4: when a Ugandan asks if you want to go for a walk do not wear sandals because you will end up trekking through hills,on this occassion we walked for an hour in flip flops. My feet were completely dirty and well it was a little difficult climbing hills in flip flops yet they are doing it!!!! Even though I was physically out of breath the view was beautiful and worth every step. Once we made it back to the hostel we had supper at 20:30 and had G-nuts (ground nut in a paste form), matoke, rice & cabbage. In the evening Gena, Lindsay, Heather and I tried sugar cane for the first time and well I kind of felt like beaver chewing on a piece wood. What you do is bite chunks of the sugar cane from the branch and chew and suck the sugar out which was really sweet but I would of loved to have watched us trying to bite chunks off. Today I also learnt how to greet people and respond back to that greeting- "agandi" and "indyaho"

Day 12- 06:30 am awakened by a rooster cawing....sigh I dont think I will get to sleep in these next 4 weeks. News of the day no running water= no shower and no indoor toilet!!! Ok here we go my first time experiencing a latrene...Life Lesson 5: maybe pack some Vix with you. For breakfast we had cakes (muffins) and porridge. Then we were off to 10 o'clock mass, we figured this would be a good way to introduce ourselves to the community members. The mass was spoken in local language but I managed to pick some common catholic practices and I enjoyed the fact that they made it personal and incorporated tradition dancing into their morning mass. Overall is was very enjoyable. For lunch we had matoke, rice and beans. We lounged around for the afternoon and in the evening we all sat down and planned out our budget and weekly menu.

Day 13- First day in the health centre!!!! 06:30 wake up call by our neighbourhood rooster-never fails!!! For breakfast we had a new dish called Katoga (green bananas, irish potatoes and gnut sauce) it was good. Went to clinic met another group of student from another university (clinical Officers-I believe there are equivilant to our Nurse Practitioner) and met Ida our site supervisor, she also toured us around the health centre there is, out patient department, HIV clinic, peds, maternity,general med, minor and major theatre aka OR. I got assigned to pediatrics with Mike a Ugandan med students, my plan was to just observe today and well that did not happen. I assisted in diagnosing children, inserted IV cathlons/cannulas, IM injections, IV pushed medications, and experience my first febrile seizure case. We were to go tour our villages for our community portion of this course but our tourguide was not available so Mike and I went back to the clinic and continued our work. We had supper around 21:00 and for the rest of the evening Gena, Heather, Lindsay and I learnt how to make chapati's for breakfast tomorrow. For the Ugandan students they played there music all night and watched movies as us Canadian student put in our ear plugs and settled in for the night.

Day 14- 06:30 our trusty and loyal friend mr. rooster gives us our daily wake up call (ok this is getting annoying) On the plus side we had tastey chapati's for breakfast. Back to peds today where I helped Gena do her very first nutritional assessment and she rocked it!!!! It all would not of went smoothly without Norman (ugandan student) translating for us, so thank god for him. After that Ben, Mike and I focused on assessing a very acutely ill and newly diagnosed HIV patient (who is in denial of the diagnosis). They were so dehydrated that is took us several attempts to insert a IV cathlon and shortly after our IV was inserted and stabilized the patient accidentally pulled out the IV cathlon. So back to square one, trying to insert an IV and due to our time crunch (expected to be in the community after lunch) we were unable to get one but on the other hand I was able to palpate a vein along side a clinical officer who later successfully inserted an 18 gauge (before we were using a 22 guage) IV where we palpated.

In the afternoon we were suppose to go to the community to do some research but our tour guide once again was unable to make it. So instead a group of us decided to go for a trek back to the twin lakes and we also went and visited "the cave" where people went and bathed in the water when they were ill. The trek was 4 hours long and a long the way we bought some Jackfruit which is very sweet and sticky. Another cardio day and lots of wonderful things to see and we managed to get back to the hostel before it got too dark.

Day 15- 06:30 hello rooster!!!! (I kind of wish a had a sling shot right now) Breakfast we had spaghetti, it wasnt our request and well it was very good but definitely strange to have it during breakfast. Back to the ped's unit, I worked with the clinical officers, gave meds, removed IV's and assessed patients it was a little bit of a slow day plus I'm struggling with getting a grip on their systems they have for documentation completely different from the Canadian system.

In the afternoon went to a local market for groceries it was us four Canadian's and four Ugandan students. It was an hour long walk then 2 hours shopping were we bought eggplant, cabbage, onions, millet flour, pineapple and 2 live chickens. A community member introduced herself and then decided to give me a free po-po (papaya), so for dessert that evening we all enjoyed a nice ripe papaya!!

Day 16- 06:30 am the rooster wakes us up and back at it again. I continue my work on the ped's and general med units. Throughout the morning my stomachs starts feeling off and I was down and out for the afternoon but by evening I managed to get better. Thank god for my wonderful roommate who went out and got me ginger beer, which was absolutely wonderful!!! Once I was feeling better a group of us decided to go to Kingfisher lodge which is a resort overlooking Queen Elizabeth National Park and some mountains...very beautiful view. Anyways it's a 20 minute ride on bodas from Rugazi. We toured around the resort and Heather, Lindsay, Gena and I decided to book a room for the 14th of June (I'm very excited because it has a pool and we are planning on going to visit Queen Elizabeth National Park as well). We got back in time for supper and finally discovered who has been playing music every night till late in the night. First off one of our group members decided to pack their subwoofers and has been blasting music every night and last night it was playing till 05:30 in the morning. It is like living in a constant rave which is wonderful in the afternoon but not so wonderful at night or early morning. Though I do love waking up to "It's a Whole New World" from the Walt Disney movie Aladdin (just a little ironic).

Day 17- 06:30 wake up call from rooster- must refrain from yelling at it. Breakfast bread and butter sandwiches-once again I did not make the weekly menu hahahaha

Today at the clinic I focused on cleaning and organising the stock room and saw my first burn patiet, who was burnt by steam on their forearm and hand (severely burnt).

In the afternoon at 15:30 we went to Nahkatunga Village and did our community research. During this we meet two of the VHT (Village Health Team) which they split our group up and we went to community members homes and interviewed them about whath they think are the most prevelant health issues in their village. Basically their concerns are on malaria, water sanitation, cough & flu, typhoid, womr, etc. The village has access to two health centres and Rugazi is one of them but is the better one out of the two but unfortunatelt is a 20 minute walk up some very steep hills. On our way back from the village we decided to take a short cut which in my mind was not a good short cut because it was basically mountain climbing up a very very steep hill (thank god I was wearing runners). Definitely got my cardio work out that day and it just constantly reminds me that I should definitely be in shape before doing anymore trips!!!! That evening once we were back at the hostel we had a late supper and then played card games all night. The best thing was introducing spoons to the Ugandan students hahahaha they just went crazy for the game and got very competative maybe next time I will record it because it was too good.

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