Hello again from Kisiizi

Sorry its been a while since I last blogged, a combination of being busy here, enjoying myself and lots of power cuts during this week. Kisiizi doesn't have many power cuts as it has hydro electric power from the waterfall. It seems that a lot of Uganda suffers from power cuts regularly during the day. But here we have them only occasionally apart from this week when their have been a few problems. A few years ago they had a power cut here for 3 months, imagine that. I don't complain when it is for 3 hours!!!

I have had a great 2 weeks working on the wards. I spent a day on maternity where I saw lots of babies (funny that!). At the end of the day the sister asked me if I'd like to deliver the next baby, she was serious!! I came up with some excuse about that not being very safe for the mother or baby!!! The women here deliver their babies with NO pain relief and no screaming or shouting, they just get on with it often with no one there apart from the midwife.

I have also been out on community visits. Not like the community visits I do at home. We drove to a village, down a mud road, where they have some community buildings that are opened up. Before long the place is buzzing, with people selling and buying fruit and veg, getting their babies immunised and weighed, adults having HIV tests and counselling and also anti-natal appointments. It was great fun and interesting to see. I loved being involved in that. They also do community teaching about HIV or malaria prevention.

At the weekend I away to Queen Elizabeth National Park. We (me and a dutch medical student called Maarten) went early on Saturday morning with a hospital driver caller Augustine. It was a 4 hour drive on mainly bumpy, pot holed mud roads. It will be strange to get home to England with the roads being very smooth and relatively pothole free!! Again I was treated to some lovely scenery on the way as we travelled over hills and through valleys. We stopped on route at some hot springs. It was full of Ugandans bathing and relaxing. We didn't join them in the hot springs, didn't fancy showing all to a group of strangers!!! Just before we arrived at the park we stopped at a look out over the national park and could see the park stretch out before us as far as the eye could see. It is a large park that lies in a western rift valley, near to DRC Congo.

On the road leading to the park we saw an elephant and some monkeys. The monkeys hang around for passing cars and beg for food, they seemed to quite like kit kats!! When we arrived we booked onto a boat trip on the kasinga channel. This is a really long stretch of water that joins lake George and Edward together. On the boat trip we saw lots of hippos, it was like moving through hippo soup, they were everywhere. Mostly submerged but then there would be some bubbles and up came a hippo for a breath of fresh air. They are very large and cause the most human casualties at the park. We were quite safe in our boat! Along the edge of the water we saw elephants playing, buffalos drinking, crocodiles, antelopes and loads of birds.

There were some very strange noises outside my window in the evening, it sounded like a large person in wellies squelching through the mud. I was a little worried for a few seconds as I thought someone was trying to get in my window!! But I soon realised that it was a warthog eating grass!! They are very noisy eaters. The next day was an early start to catch the animals before they hid or took shade from the hot sun. So we were up at 6am and on the road or game drive by 6.30. We saw a beautiful elephant, they are so large and Augustine jumped and reversed the car very quickly when we bumped into him (not literally!). They are very careful around elephants as they will charge the car and squash it if they are provoked or protecting their young. We also saw many herds of buffalos, Ugandan kobs, water bucks (both antelopes), a stray hippo and lions lying in the grass about 10 metres away from our car (they were drooling a bit, thinking we looked like a tasty snack!!!). On our way back to the hostel we had to stop to let a herd of elephants cross the road, so amazing to see. It was so great to see these animals in their home as their guest!! A great weekend.

I am now getting into the swing of things here and have arranged some teaching sessions on pain control in palliative care. I have taught the student nurses and will also do a session for the doctors and the staff nurses also. This week I have spent some time in the operating theatre where I saw someones hand sown back on after he had half chopped it off cutting wood!! I also had a day in rehab where I saw them correct club foot. They manipulate the foot back into the right position, without giving the child any anesthesia. It is very painful for the child/baby and they scream the house down. Needless to say doing talks on pain control here seems a bit futile when they seem to put up with so much pain and suffering.

Thats all for now, I could carry on writting more but will leave it at that for now and put some more on soon. I have only about 10 days left here now and will be sad to leave as it is beginning to feel more and more like home.

Thanks for reading, love Penny