On arrival I could tell Uganda was going to be interesting.
The streets of Kampala are fascinating. There is always something or someone super interesting to look at: a woman with scores of bras hanging around each arm squeezes past a man balancing several packages of toilet paper on his head and then is passed herself by a man whose bike is loaded with dead chickens hanging from the handlebars. Women wrapped in bright fabrics balance huge loads of mangoes or jugs of water on their heads. Little boys rush up to car windows eager to sell bananas as they strive to earn money for school fees. Bodas (motorcycle taxis) flood the streets driving according to their own rules, sometimes (often!) crashing into other bodas. Some guy with a couple of 12 foot poles manages to get himself positioned on a boda and they take off, and some other guy cycles by on his bike with a dresser strapped to his back. Taxi-vans cut you off every few minutes. The speed bumps are massive (our car bottoms out on the speed bumps erected on main roads!), and traffic cops seem always to urge cars forward through red lights or make you stop at green lights.
The streets are made of packed red dirt and contrast beautifully with the many green leafed trees and huge expanse of blue sky filled with white cumulus clouds perfect for staring at.
I have been in Uganda for over 2 weeks already, awaiting the start of our Ugandan placement (which begins next week). And though I hadn’t planned to have these extra weeks in Uganda, they’ve been a real gift. While here I have spent time in rural markets and urban shopping malls. I spent a weekend at a maize farm an hour out of Gulu. I visited a goat farm just outside of Kampala, and a women’s cooperative where women who survived the days of the Lords Resistance Army as well as women currently surviving HIV/AIDS create goods to sell for income (including dolls, bags, jewellery, peanut butter and honey). I got frisked going through security just to buy some KFC (which is wildly popular here, and expensive!) I helped hold, feed, and change triplets and quadruplets! I went to THE NILE! I had a visit with my friend’s friend inside her mud hut. I went swimming in a pool-with-a-view. I’ve eaten a year’s supply of pineapple and mango. I also ate part of the rooster who woke me up every day at 5:30am for the first week of my stay here…
Over these first few weeks my thoughts have regularly returned to Nepal, to the needs of the people in the aftermath of the earthquake, and to my instructor Cathy who is still there offering midwifery care in the hardest hit villages and preparing workshops through MIDSON and UNICEF to train and send nurses to deal with maternity needs in villages that are even further out. I have also been processing the maternity care we witnessed, and considering the midwife I hope to one day be. And now, as I begin to prepare for the next stage of this trip, I am beginning to consider the issues that face the women of Uganda. I wonder what issues will be the same as those we discovered in Nepal and what will be different? Will what I have read in books and articles come to life in the people I meet and the care I observe?
As I near the halfway mark of this experience I know I’m still at the beginning of what I have to learn about global maternal-infant health, and I’m grateful to be here. I miss Jacquie & Emma like crazy, but I am looking forward to reuniting with my classmates Lesley, Zahra and Nancy who arrive Monday.
We will have so much more to write in the weeks ahead, and we may even have more to process about Nepal too. Hope that’s ok. And, if any of you have any questions – feel free to ask!