Hey everyone!
As I’m sure you have discovered, I will probably keep my posts to once a week. This way I will be able to keep things stimulating for the both of us. I feel like so much has happened over the past week so I’ll jump right in.
On Tuesday morning I got the best surprise I could have possibly received. The clinic was extremely crowded and I was outside our room trying to organize patients for Twalib when I heard a small voice calling my name. I turned around to find Opio standing behind me with a big smile on his face. He gave me a huge hug, even though he is always embarrassed by this. He looks absolutely wonderful and I am so excited with how everything has turned out thus far. He says he is not in any pain and that he feels 10x better already. The plan is for him to start school in January and I simply can’t wait for him to get back to a normal childhood.
On Wednesday we held the monthly injection clinic and ended up enrolling 13+ patients into the registry, brining us up to 139! We are still in the process of tracking down all of the children that have not returned for their follow up visits and had a few of them return on Wednesday as well. We are roughly half way through finding them but as I have mentioned before, it is definitely a challenging and time consuming process.
On Thursday we continued to follow up with these children and then visited 5 different schools trying to locate more. Unfortunately most of their original screening dates were from 2013, which means they have changed schools, or even moved away from Gulu. When we visit a school with a list of 15 children we usually end up finding roughly 5-6. While this isn’t the outcome I would have hoped for it is certainly better than nothing.
On Thursday night, we had a Spanish night at our friend Travis’s house. One of my roommates is fluent and there are a bunch of us that have had experience in Spanish speaking countries. We have decided to make a biweekly or monthly (haven’t decided yet) dinner where we can practice our Spanish skills and of course, enjoy some good food. We made some excellent tacos this week and ended the evening by watching The Emperor’s New Groove in Spanish. I simply love the Spanish language and am so excited by the opportunity to practice it here. I have not been able to really use my skills since living in Peru, but I am always shocked with how quickly it comes back. Spain is next on my travel “dream list” so it is good practice for when I will hopefully, one day, make it to Barcelona.
On Friday, I spent the morning with the nurses calling as many follow up patients as we could find valid phone numbers for and then visited the remaining schools. The biggest challenge we have faced thus far is the low attendance during the first few weeks of school. Unlike in the US where the first day of school is considered crucial, most students don’t end up showing up for school until around the 3rd week in the term. Twalib and I will both be away starting next week so we are really crossing our fingers that we have a great turnout this week.
In the afternoon I ended up shadowing Victoria, one of the Peace Corp doctors that I met last month. She is absolutely wonderful and has already taught me so much. She works in the OB/GYN department and performs surgical procedures on Wednesdays and Fridays. She let me go to the OR with her in the afternoon and I was able to watch a C-section, cervical cancer screening and biopsy, and a hysterectomy. As I have mentioned before, the resources are few and far between at the Regional hospital I work at, so I was actually quite surprised with the personnel and supplies available in the OR (or so I thought). I ended up having to leave halfway through the hysterectomy and Victoria informed me the following day that the power went out halfway through the procedure and she had to finish using a headlamp since it was already getting dark when I left. Luckily everything went okay and the patient is doing fine.
When I arrived home, I had the most amazing package waiting for me from my second family. Thank you Kleins! The package got stuck in Kampala and they told me that if I couldn’t get it within the week it would be gone. Not exactly sure where…..but someone would have been walking around with a self-portait of Taylor, which makes me laugh just thinking about it. I ended up calling a random taxi driver who then picked up the package from UPS ( they didn’t even check his ID or ask for his name…..) and then he stuck it on a bus headed to Gulu for a whopping $1.25. I still have no idea how this package ended up in my hands BUT it was the best way to end my week. I now officially have enough coffee creamer and hot sauce to last me until Christmas.
On Friday night my roommates and I made homemade non-fish sushi with some seaweed that we got from Kampala and then called it an early night. Actually not sure if everyone called it an early night but I can promise you that I was asleep by 10pm.
On Saturday I went to the gym and then we had a bunch of our friends over for a Saturday morning brunch before heading out to Restore. Restore is a secondary school that is missionary run about 20 minutes outside Gulu Town. A few of our friends work with this school and invited us out for their sports complex opening. They have raised enough money to build one of the first indoor basketball courts in Northern Uganda and the facility is beyond amazing. The started the launch by playing an inaugural game of basketball- Mzungus vs. Ugandans. Lets just say the Ugandans were running circles around the Americans….
On Saturday night we headed to Classic, our favorite Ethiopian restaurant for Ethiopian New Year’s! We frequent there so much that they invited us for a free dinner and they made us literally everything off their menu (including cow stomach….). We were all required to wear white and took part in traditional Ethiopian dancing. According to the Ethiopian Calendar…HAPPY 2008 everyone!
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