The view at Kingfisher lodge in Southern Uganda overlooks Queen Elizabeth National Park, and is absolutely spectacular. We stopped there for a lunch break during our rural village visits, right before a popcorn-sounding downpour filled the craters in the road with sufficient water to drown our muddy Land Rover. We could see huge lakes that blend with the blue-grey sky in the horizon, a massive amount of greenery stretched across the landscape, and we tried to convince our eyes that all large trees were actually lumbering elephants. They weren’t. Next time. The rest of the drive was through misty tea plantations reminiscent of Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands and prolific banana plantations that would challenge Ecuador. Gorgeous…
The abundance of food and farms in Uganda is shocking, when you consider how much of the population suffers from malnutrition. As part of our survey of outcomes from Healthy Child Uganda, we were fortunate to meet the village volunteer educators. We visit Dina’s land in Mabira parrish, where there is evident lushness and plenty. Ripe avocados that taste like sweet fruit. Bananas in bunches of fifty lie in huge green piles, ready to be ground into matoke paste, or what Ugandans call simply “food”, since it accompanies every meal. Squash twice the size of my head. Goats graze on the thick grass as far as the ropes on their ankles allow. Cows with three-foot-long horns on their head gaze at us with stony assurance. So why do her children have a red tinge to their hair, and bellies big with worms/spleens/hunger? Perhaps it relates to Dina’s request that our transition project help women who suffer from domestic abuse. When you husband attacks you with a stick, and you must run to your home village for safety, it is difficult to maintain the welfare of your children or to manage the household finances…
Our other stop that day is to visit Jessica, another village corps volunteer who lives in Katyazo parrish. She is an inspiring example of the empowerment that HCU has created among its’ community. We are here to witness her achievements in income-generating activities, but we gain so much more. Her success lies in the rearing of plump and healthily bleating goats. It lies in her farm, full of banana trees that provide shade for the wobbly chicks following their proud mother chicken in a chattery parade. It lies in the private school she initiated on her property, now quiet of the three hundred children that attend the mud-brick rooms with no chairs and a lone chalkboard. But mostly it lies in her arms. Although Jessica has had six of her own children, the knowledge and status she gained through working with HCU has given her the confidence to adopt three orphans. The tubby girl cradled in her hands is one year old now, a life saved from certain death when she was abandoned at a dusty roadside at one week of age…
Watching the children suffer is the hardest. In exploring the work of the few Family Medicine graduates that completed training before the program lost funding for school fees, the Outpatient Department is bustling and bright with mothers in African-print skirts and headscarves. At Mbarara University Hospital, Francis Mugabi is a gentle giant who moves through the department gathering looks of silent respect. Today he will care for an infant who has suffered burns to his scalp that look like black ash painted on his wailing head. He will treat countless cases of severe malaria, despite widespread bednet dispensation programs. We visit the Health Centre at Rugazi county, where medical students give a narrative of a woman in obstructed labor who could not afford the immense cost of gas to transport her to a hospital to deliver her baby safely. She was put on a public minibus, to suffer the bumpy road with faint hope that she might not join the nation’s horrendous maternal mortality statistics. This rural antenatal HIV clinic was panicking with the admonition that Nevirapine used to prevent mother-to-child transmission was about to run out for the month. This will be a nation-wide concern soon, once the Bush administration’s comprehensive funding ends and the free testing and treatment program, that is completely unsustainable locally, will grind to an abrupt halt. If only Dignitas were modeling their HIV-management style throughout Africa…
Thanks for listening.
Hope you enjoyed a brief visit to Uganda.
Next stop, Tanzania.
No comments:
Post a Comment