Day 17

01/02/09

This morning I didn’t have to do laundry. Thank G-d. I came to BCC early, wanting to make the most of my last few days. We went on rounds, saw the same types of cases, which I wish I wasn’t getting used to, and then went to the maternity ward where we found a woman who had miscarried. The doctors did some tests and determined that the miscarriage was incomplete so they gave her some drugs to finish it. I know the woman was sad but the emotions were very different here from what I would expect in the States. Maybe it was because it was more common here, or because they have more children, although I don’t think the latter would make it any easier. After feeling pretty crappy about that, I took inventory of the storage room with a clinic administrator named Judy. We went through everything in stock, from tablet-form drugs to injectables to creams to lab supplies. We recorded everything on the computer and at 1pm, we grabbed a quick lunch of…rice. Then, at around 2pm, I set off, with my heavy backpack again, to the village of Napulu with a woman who administers vaccinations at the clinic. Every Friday, another village is visited and mothers bring their children to get vaccinated. I carried the vaccines themselves in an insulated case on the back of a boda bicycle, and the nurse carried the syringes and alcohol. We came to Napulu and were brought two handmade wooden stools and a small wooden table. Little kids gathered to see the muzungu and I handed out an entire bag of orange sucking candies to the kids. When they finished the sucking candies, which often found their way out of their mouths, onto the dirt, and back into their mouths again, the children filled the wrappers with small stones and put them back in their mouths, pretending to have another sucking candy. It was sad and adorable and I wished I had brought more things for them. Then I took out my camera and took pictures of them which once again fascinated them. I don’t think that most of the children had ever seen what they look like before, not having mirrors or cameras at their disposal. So it was pretty amazing for them to see their images on a small screen, see what their smiles looked like for the first time. They were giggling for hours and, as much as I had to leave early to get to the Abayudaya, I couldn’t walk away. I sat there, recording each injection in a big register book, greeting each newcomer with Mulembe, cama ahoowa, grasila. They loved that I spoke their language and pushed me with more responses until I reached the limits of my Lugisu knowledge. We left Napulu at around 4:30pm, walking back to the road and raching it at about 5pm. I took a boda motorcycle to the house, ran inside and packed, ran back out to catch another boda motorcycle to Nabugoya. There were none near the house at that hour so I took a boda bicycle into town and caught a motorcycle from there. I got to Kakungulu hill around 6pm and took a shower and got ready for Shabbat. My friend Isaac, the manager, welcomed me with a big hello and there were 3 guests from Kampala – one Wisconsin girl volunteering in some small-business-building initiative, her sister, who is educating about AIDS in the Peace Corps. and stationed in Zambia, and an older woman from Riverdale who is volunteering for a few months with the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). We went to the synagogue together, and the Friday night service was as exciting as always. I wasn’t introduced to the community as a guest again and I felt like part of the family. I told the rabbi so after the service. Dinner was potatoes, rice, greens, veggies, and japati, the pita-like homemade bread. We talked and then got tired and I went to bed relatively early.