My "Niece"

Perhaps the most anticipated and emotional reunion has been with my very good friend Mushabe (Moo-Shah-Bee) Innocent. Last time I was here we made an incredible bond and claimed one another as brothers. Over the past two years we have been keeping in very close contact sometimes talking on the phone for an hour (quite a feat when you consider that with most of the others I can talk for about 4 minutes and the fact that he really knows limited English). For the most part he really hasn’t been doing well since I left him here last and the majority of his problems are stemming from his daughter who was born shortly after I left (July 30, 2008), Nuwassima Aderah. Aderah has just not been doing well and when I talk to him on the phone I never could get a clear idea of what was going on. “She eats but has no power,” he would say, or “She still can’t walk,” or “She has pneumonia”. I kept telling him that he needed to take her to the doctor and when he would and they would give her treatments but nothing would help. His explanation was that she had some curse, something about him not paying enough of a dowry to his in-laws and so now she was cursed? Anyway, my mom, dad and I decided that when I got here one of the things I would do would be to get her help and find out just what was wrong with her.

The day that I arrived at Innocent’s for the first time I thought he might cry. He embraced me like never before just repeating "Doctor, doctor, doctor...". Telling me he had heard rumors that I was around but wouldn’t believe until he saw. He showed me around his place and told me his wife was away and that Aderah was at his mother’s today. I told him I really wanted to meet her so we travelled off to his mother’s house. I had my translator along with me as I was from the field and when we both lay eyes on Aderah you could tell something was wrong. She is very small, she is weak when walking – stumbling over the smallest obstacles, has a big stomach and most importantly she's beautiful! We chatted a bit about her health while she cowered in the corner away from the Muzungu who Innocent is telling is her “Unco”. It was decided that I would search out the best place in town for her to be seen and I would pick them up on Wednesday morning.

Innocent helping Aderah put on the new dress which "Unco" brought from Canada

Aderah in her new dress, you can see she is still not sure of me.

So Yesterday morning I made the trek out to pick them up and brought them back to town to be seen a private hospital which is supposed to be state of the art here in Uganda. It actually wasn’t all that bad other than the extreme amount of waiting it was pretty decent and the cost was very affordable (for me, certainly not for them). Anyway, while sitting in the waiting room chatting, I looked over at Aderah and noticed that she had a jugular pulse (basically could see her heart beat in her neck). In one second the whole picture came together for me- the failure to thrive, the big stomach, the weakness, the cough - she had a heart defect. I tried to calm myself down and wait to hear it from a doctor officially but in my heart I knew. Innocent went in to the exam room and was in for a long time. I stayed outside I pacing the hallway waiting for the news. When he came out he told me the doctor says it’s something in her chest and wants blood work and an xray. I gave him the extra money for the tests and while he went to pay I kept the file. I flipped it open and read through what the doctor had written “HIGH heart rate, irregular rhythm, gallop beats…” my heart sank and I shed a few tears. My mind started to race…How can this be happening? What can I do? She surely will need surgery. Surgery won’t be available here. She’ll have to go out of country. How do I get her to Canada? Wait could she even get surgery in Canada? Maybe South Africa? Or India? I'll need to get them passports, and visas. How much is this going to cost? How risky is surgery?

The tests confirmed what I was fearing and even more. She has congentital heart defects which would most likely be the result of Tetrology of Fallot (although I am not 100% convinced that's the case). Additionally, she has malaria, mild pneumonia and aenemia as well. After a long talk with the doctor we have booked her an echocardiogram for next week along with an appointment with the pediatrician. We will then decide if she needs to be referred to the cardiologist in the capital or not. I then asked about the logistics of it all…IF she does have the said defect, and IF she needs surgery, what do we do? He told me that no one in Uganda currently does the surgery but from time to time visiting surgeons come for a couple weeks to perform these surgeries. When we go for the appointment in Kampala (I’m assuming we'll need the referral I guess) they will have that schedule of visiting surgeons. In the meantime she will be on a whole bunch of meds to try and relieve the symptoms and help make the definitive diagnosis next week.

Innocent and Aderah after a long day at the hospital. She was so good, likely would put a lot of Canadian kids to shame!

Please keep Innocent, Lillian and Aderah in your prayers this week. He is truly an amazing man, father, husband and friend and I just want to help him in anyway I can.

I Wanna Hold Hour Ha-a-a-and!

And walk down the street holding your hand and then cuddle and….I’m a man!

Ugandan men have to be one of the most touchy feely group of men around and it doesn't take long to find that out. In fact I was reminded of it when I was picked up from the airport by one of
my friends. We greeted one another with a hug and hello then left the airport holding hands, totally
cool and casual, I was a little more awkward with it. Then the other day I went to go and take my friend for lunch. I went to his place of business and then walked down the street holding one another's hands. Okay I should rephrase that.....him holding my hand, my hand hanging awkwardly at my side. Oh it's no big deal it was only for a 8-10 minute walk totally fine right? Yeah that's what I thought too....oh and interdigitating? What other way is there to hold hands?

Snuck this picture while walking down the main street.

Now it would be one thing if it stopped at hand holding BUT you can also see two men cuddling on the street. Sitting on a corner or at a place of business arms around one another embracing one another. Someone tried it with me once but I didn’t last very long at all, just a little too awkward for me still.

A little snuggle fest while waiting for customers.

It is a really different part of culture that we as North Americans associate with something bad so when it happens here your instinct is to feel very awkward and to pull away. However, it is a little bit of a shame that showing "brotherly love", as they call it, in Canada is so taboo. We could likely learn a little from these people, become a little more vulnerable and let down some of our macho walls (I for one am ridiculously macho as I am sure you all know! ha ha)  I remember last time I was here by the time I was ready to leave I was getting more comfortable with it but I find myself back at square one again. I am just waiting for the moment when someone invites me to spend the night at their house and then kicks their wife to the floor so I can share the bed with him (true story, VERY awkward…especially cause she was on the floor in the same room beside the bed).

You might be thinking, Kent seems like you have just chosen to become friends with all the gay people in Uganda. Nope! As I understand it homosexuality is punishable by death here. A little extreme but not something I am sure people would be willing to risk by holding hands in public!

Definite Improvements....

Well I have been out in the field for a couple days now and things here are really looking great! I am so impressed and even proud of these women and children. So many of them are taking what they have learned from our training and other trainings that they have been to and really put it to work. Perhaps the one who has really impressed me the most so far is Franklin. When I left her here 2 years ago she had one pig, sugar cane and some matooke in her plantation. She has worked so hard over these past two years and today is at a whole new level. As of last week she still has her matooke; her sugar cane crop has increased likely by 10-20 times; she has an amazing cabbage patch (no kids, ha ha ha ), carrots, coffee, papayas, oranges, chick peas and likely some other stuff I am forgetting. On top of it all she is making REALLY good profits from all of this. From the last cabbage crop she got 1000 UGX (Ugandan Shillings) which is about 50 cents per head for a totall of 150,000 UGX that’s a HUGE income here. Additionally she sold two of her larger piglets one at 150,000 UGX and one at 170,000 UGX. She now remains with two younger piglets who she hopes to raise up and breed then sell off those piglets. It was so encouraging to see and was a great start to my field work. The other things which I found really neat was that she was growing, harvesting, eating and selling chickpeas. This is so great for so many reasons but on a very almost superficial level just the fact that she is trying something new. People here hate trying new things and generally just avoid it. She loves the taste of them as does her very old mother (which even Franklin is surprised about) I think this could be a new and exciting crop here in Uganda….not to mention the great nutritional benefits of it!

Franklin in her cabbage patch - round 2.

Franklin and I resting in her house.

 Dinah maybe hasn’t impressed me as much but you can’t help but be happy for her. When I left her last year she had one milk goat which I had given her and one pig. When I went there this time she has two milk goats and FIFTEEN other goats! There are goats everywhere, such a great sight to see. The other great thing is that she milked her dairy goats the last time they gave birth and drank the milk (major cultural aversion to drinking goats milk here so that is exciting). She was able to milk it for about 2 months, her kids are now begging for more! She has also started farming chick peas and has some pretty amazing yields, she told me she’s trying to sell them but she has a hard time parting with them! Too funny!

Dinah and the newest member of her herd, 4 days old.



Of course it’s hard not to be proud of those who are my favourite. Janet continues to amaze me all the time. She has such great management skills and is such a hard worker that I think she might just burn herself out! Her and her mother recently acquired a really sick and skinny male goat from the organisation as it was being poorly cared for at its previous home. Janet has been known in the past for her ability to nurse these sick ones back to health and judging by the records here at the office this one was in dire need. I had didn’t know when approaching that this was said goat and commented on how nice and fat he was and that this must be one of her home raised ones. Her mother told me this was the weak, sick goat who arrived on death’s doorsteps.

Janet's mother and the once very sick dairy buck!

With her hard work she has also been able to buy furniture for her house (not common in the village) and she has all new windows and doors purchased she just has to wait to put them in now. On top of all this she continues to care for 2 of her children and 2 orphans as well as run a shop and vie for top spot among the para-vets which I trained last time. She calls me on occasion in Canada looking for help on certain cases. I’ll have to take some more pictures of her next time I am at her place. She’s truly an amazing woman. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention that she has also somehow found time to start a clothing store from her home!

All in all it seems that the women and children are doing better and really benefitting from the project. They aren't without troubles however but certainly are improving. Unfortunately it seems once you get more what do you want? More...hopefully they don't turn into us!

The New Haircut!

So everyone here loves the hair of a Muzungu. Whether it is arm hair, head hair or even awkwardly enough chest hair! Ha ha. I love getting haircuts here because it is such a big event for them, that and the fact that it costs me $0.50 to get one (no joke). So today I went to a barber who's been wanting to cut my hair since last time and it was such a good experience well minus the actual haircut. As soon as I sat in the chair people kept passing the shop and screeching when they saw a white man sitting in the barber chair. As they passed they would ask the barber “Do you know what you are doing for a Munzungu?” and he would reply that he was a professional and knew how to cut any hair when in fact the answer was clearly NO!. Then people would stop in and try and get a look and feel of this white man’s hair. It’s a really bad picture here but you can see that there is a little boy and a woman. I think they both stayed for the whole event….totally enthralled!

 

The barber did the whole thing with the electric razor and cut it like a black man’s hair. I don’t know how to explain it but the best I can do is say that they trim ever so perfectly around the whole border of your hair. You can see from the side view picture how straight the edges around my ears and particularly at my temples are. He also did it around my widow’s peak to accentuate it I guess? I now have little tiny short hairs at the front of my head that I can’t help but keep playing with! Even if it grows back in a little weird I think it was worth the experience.

You can actually see the tan line from where he removed the hair at the front!

Not the welcome home I was wanting...

Well I was so excited to get here to Mbarara and so far it has been the worst part of the trip yet. When I arrived here last night at about 9 pm I got a hotel room and went to the kitchen to order some food. It was pretty late to be eating here but she found some food for me. Turns out I should have left it hidden. Ha ha ha. I didn’t sleep a wink all night as my stomach was talking well rather yelling at me for what I had fed it! I felt really nauseated and my stomach was churning and making all sorts of terrible noises. I spent half the night laying on the bathroom floor feeling like I needed to vomit but never actually getting any…what would you say “production”? I felt awful and at about 10am I decided it was time to try the old finger down the throat trick…still no production. Hey desperate times call for desperate measures right? I went back to bed for a couple hours and then decided that I felt better and could go down the market/trading centre where I used to hang out all the time on my previous trip. There were many people who I saw and who were so surprised to see me. There were a couple who had to do like a triple take! Ha ha ha. They were so shocked and really having to think “Am I seeing who I think I am seeing?” Surprising them all was so great that I was getting pretty excited and moving around a lot visiting all my old stops (many of which are actually gone). Finally I stopped at Laubin and Susan’s (the mother and father of Kentina) for a visit. She brought me a bench to sit on and we were chatting away outside their shop when all of a sudden….”Production” and I mean like real production! Now if any of you have seen me vomiting it’s not good. I so rarely get sick that I actually have a sort of phobia of it. I freeze in one spot, can’t move and pretty much start crying. So as you can imagine this attracted quite an audience…how embarrassing! I guess at least I was outside and I was at a shop where I knew the people really well....not up town or something. The other good thing was the second it was all out I felt like a million bucks and we all had a good laugh about it. Well except for maybe Susan who was left to clean it up. They were then trying to feed me all these local remedies but I wasn't willing to try.  So I have been in my hotel room for most of the day trying to sleep this off and am on my third tablespoon of rice in as many hours. The plus side is that I think I chose the nicest bathroom in Uganda to get sick in!

In other news my memory of the local language has not only impressed others but also myself. I remember way more than I thought but maybe am getting a little over confident. When asking a lady today about her rice I inadvertently asked about her penis! This was shortly after having vomited all over her shop. All in all a humbling experience!

Thank God I'm a Country Boy!

Or at least a small town boy!

I was in the capital city of Kampala for 5 days and for me that was about 4 too many.  I am back in what the people here are calling my “hometown” Mbarara. The capital city is so dirty ad so full of people that you can just feel your brain starting to wind up and get stressed out. I seriously don’t know how people live in that place. There are slums everywhere and the traffic is absolutely unreal. There is bumper to bumper traffic on almost every street you turn down. You can see the picture of a road here that is crowded with the taxis that carry people around the city. 

    

 These taxis are supposed to carry a maximum of 14 people and in the city they aren’t too bad about overcrowding (15-17 people is ok) in the villages though they can crowd them up to twenty five plus people. You can see in the second picture that there are a few people walking in and out of traffic as well. The cars aren’t moving overly fast but they aren’t putting along either. If you want to cross you just go and hope for the best.   

There are also the “boda-bodas” which are the motorcycles that also act as taxis whipping in and out of traffic so nearly scraping their handle bars along each vehicle as they go. I like riding the bodas but sometimes you just have to close your eyes as you can’t believe that they are actually going to make out with you alive. (Karlee, this is the city that your foster child lives in just not the exact area)

 The other interesting thing is that you can imagine if you are trying to turn on to the street with all these taxis bumper to bumper there are very few chances to pull in. So what do you do? Just go whenever you feel like it, all you need is enough space to get one headlight in and you are golden. The crazy thing is that with all these vehicles and people and bikes…..very few accidents. It’s quite the event to witness or experience with your eyes closed as well.

So I am really happy to be here in Mbarara and can't wait to get around to see so many of my friends.

Safe and Sound

Well I am here in Uganda now. I arrived last night at about 8 pm and it was relatively uneventful. The only real glitch in the whole thing was that my suitcase was 9 lbs overweight. I told the lady at the counter that I would just pay the extra amount and leave the extra 9 pounds in as it was too much effort to squeeze anymore in my carry-on. She then told me that it would be a base cost of $150 ($50 for each airport I was passing through), and I figured that I could find a way to jam a little more into my carry-on. It meant that my carry-on was so full it wouldn't fit in the overhead things but it was worth the lack of foot space for $150.

Here in Uganda things are great but still a little surreal. Maybe its the little bit of jet lag or maybe it's just because right now I am staying in the noisy unfamiliar capital with my friend Titus and his family. His uncle is a very generous man who has a whole bunch of his orphaned nieces and nephews staying with him. Last night was a tough sleep as I am just not used to all the sounds that are going on outside. There was so many cars and horns as well as people going in and out of their gated compounds. Because the city isn't overly safe Titus's uncle has a place that has a locked gate complete with broken glass along the top of the fence to keep people out. Everytime that I heard someone rattle their gate I thought someone was coming into our compound and I would look out the window. I was also greatly distracted by the world's largest cockroach which was hanging out right next to my head and I was worried that it was going to end up crawling across my face at some point! I didn't sleep very well or very long but I am hoping that tonight I will just crash and have a really good sleep. I plan to head to Mbrara on the weekend as I would like to do a few things in the capital Kampala yet.

On the road...uhhh...plane again....

just can't wait to get on that plane again....

Well here I am....four days and I fly back to Uganda. Hard to believe I was there two and half years ago already. Parts of me feel like I was there yesterday, other parts of me feel like I was never even there. I am so looking forward to seeing the looks on those peoples' faces when I come waltzing up in the middle of town without them knowing. Although some will know....I wanted to surprise the whole crew but the cat got out of the bag. Oh well no harm done. As one little old lady who came into the clinic said...."If I were one of them I can guarantee you I would have a heart attack!" Well if that's the case...that's a little more of a surprise than I was wanting to give them.

I will be heading back to Mbarara town again and doing some unofficial work with the same project I was working with before. I hope to do a few very small projects as I am sure you remember things in Africa DON'T MOVE FAST! ha ha ha. I think if I try to accomplish too much I'll just end up frustrated. My plan is to do a few community meetings on the benefits of goats and particularly goat's milk. Do some goat monitoring/inventory for the project and some serious visiting. Last time I was in Uganda I didn't take as much time as I should have to just enjoy the life there so this time I hope to do a little more of that. I also look forward to seeing where the project is at and how much those kids have grown (if they recognise me that is). Ugandans are kind of like us "white folks" in the fact that we often think all Asians look alike or all east Indians look alike. I have been in contact with a few of my friends in Uganda and one lady (Janet, if you remember) told me a story that her son (Hosea) walked up to this tall Muzungo (what they call white people there) and just hugged his leg. The Muzungo was a little startled but stood there and then he heard Hosea say...."Kenty?" ha ha ha. The Muzungo knew who I was so it made some sense to him but I thought that was pretty darn funny.

Anyway, I really hope to keep this blog up to date again and share with you this amazing adventure. It won't be as long this time as I am only heading out for one month. But I feel blessed to be even given this much time to leave my job. Please keep me in your prayers and thoughts as I travel in this country once again. As always I love hearing from back home and look forward  to sharing stories, pictures and life with you when I return.

Cheers!

Lesson for today: Many people asked me how to pronounce Muzungu when I got home last time. So here you are - Mah-Zoon-Goo