Kampala Whirlwind, vol. 2

Thursday 19 June
0700 – We woke up and had a few minutes to sit and enjoy the morning view (see photos) from the porch. I told Jennifer I could just sit there all day, but it was not meant to be – we had important appointments to keep.
0730: We were off, an entire hour and a half before our 9am appt. at UNICEF. But we needed every minute of that hour and a half to make it across town to the UNICEF building and we signed in at the front desk at exactly 8:55am. When we made it up to the right floor, we were buzzed in to the office area by one of our contact’s coworkers who said that our contact with whom we had the 9:00 appt. was in fact running late this morning. So we sat. We used the nice bathroom, we were offered a variety of hot beverages, we made phone calls, we loaded airtime onto our phones, we read all of the things posted at our contact’s desk, I found the Nurses Council’s phone number and saved it on my phone for quick access if needed later in the morning, we discussed the plan for the day…
0945: Our contact person arrived and we progressed with our meeting, making it clear we had to leave by 10:30 to be sure to have enough time to get to the Nurses Council by 11:00. We discussed our nutrition program and she made suggestions and gave us some information about UNICEF’s guidelines for nutrition, and in the end we came up with a plan for 3-6 months of F75 and F100 formula to be delivered to Nyahuka Health Center. We were encouraged and satisfied with her requirements of us and she seemed satisfied with our answers and plans for the use of their resources. Praise God.
1030: We rush out of the UNICEF building (super spiffy building by the way), and take off for the Nurses Council building. Now, keep in mind that I had been there once before but in my wide eyed first trip to Kampala which didn’t really involve me trying to remember where everything is. So, when I no longer recognized our surroundings I made use of the phone number I had saved and called the office, it turns out we were just around the corner. So we pulled up, Jennifer and I go in and I sign it at 10:55 for my 11:00 interview appointment.
1130: I looked at Jennifer and told her she should just go and try to actually get something done instead of both of us just sitting there. I had no idea how long I might end up being there. So, she took my picture in front of the statue of the nurse out front (see photos), and off she went. I went back and sat down. Luckily there was a tv in the waiting room, and I had copies of both the New Vision and the Monitor newspapers to read but after exhausting the interesting articles in both of them I turned to the tv that everyone else in the room was watching. It was a random channel, a little bit of PBS, a little bit of ESPN, a little bit of CNN, all kinds of things really.
1400: I’m still waiting…still watching tv, shifting back and forth in the chair that I initially thought was pretty comfortable but no longer held in the same esteem. The most interaction I had with the people in the room (some of which looked like they were African, some of other nationalities) was during a program about lions and leopards and their relationship to one another and interactions and mating patterns and survival techniques, etc. Well, the leopard dropped her antelope kill down from her perch in the tree and right into the mouth of the lioness waiting on the ground…a big gasp/sigh went up from all of us spectators and we looked at each other and smiled when we realized that it wasn’t the coverage of the women’s triathalon in Vancouver, or the potential Budweiser takeover, or the discus thrower from Estonia trying to make it to the Olympics in Beijing, that had all of us gripped and intently involved, but it was our dashed hopes for the underdog leopard to outsmart the lion. Then the secretary changed the channel from a story about an aspiring soccer agent to live coverage of the Ugandan Parliamentary sessions involving discussions of the past and potential use of DDT to attempt to control mosquitos and therefore malaria.
1450: The lady who I talked to several weeks ago, who insisted that I come for the interview, and who hung up on me when she called to tell me when the interview was, called me into the conference room where a half dozen or so Ugandan women and nurses in leadership positions sat. They warmly welcomed me and asked me to sit down. They were looking at my college transcript and my CV and other documents I had submitted for their review. The asked me questions about my education, about what a “credit hour” is equivalent to (I think from looking at my transcript they thought that I had for instance only taken 1 “hour” of Anatomy and Physiology in my nursing education. I explained that in fact I had taken 3 hours of lecture and probably 3 or more hours of lab every week for an entire school year of Anatomy and Physiology. Thankfully they seemed satisfied with my explanation but I think that was the hardest question to respond to effectively, why 1 “hour” doesn’t actually mean 1 “hour”. Anyways, they asked about my work experience and what I was doing in Bundibugyo. And then they asked me to step outside and that they would call me back. So I obediently complied, not wanting to cause any raucous. Then they called me back in and dropped the bomb. After asking which area of practice I preferred, they explained the following policy of the Council. That in order for a nurse licensed outside of the country to get a work permit as a nurse, they are required to be registered with the Council. In order to be registered with the Council one must spend 8 weeks observing Ugandan hospital care in a Kampala area hospital with the oversight of one of the Council board members. They listed several hospitals and asked which one I would like to choose to do my observation in. My heart had, by this point, sunk to the bottom of wherever hearts sink to, and I had to back pedal a bit to help them understand where I was coming from. I explained that this was all new news to me, that I had never been to any of these hospitals and that I had no idea which one I would like to choose. I clarified exactly what they had just told me, discussing potential alternatives and/or lack thereof, discussing what exactly my 8 weeks would look like (a question to which I still don’t really know the answer) and they told me I should go home and think about whether I wanted to continue to pursue this. I thanked them for their time, gathered my things and left the room.
1500: I call Jennifer to tell her that I’m done and she was just finishing her third appt. since leaving me about 3.5 hours before. She asked if everything was fine and I told her “not really” but that I’d meet her down on the main road.
1600: We eat falafel at the Lebanese restaurant in the food court at the Garden City Mall, and then head down to Uchumi, the grocery store in the mall, to pick up things we and others on our team needed, then off to the tile place.
1630: My mom calls while we were eating just to check to see how our day went, and I told her of the days events and my mixed emotions.
1655: We find the tile place, in rush hour traffic, Jennifer goes in and they close the door behind her and lock it since business hours are over. We got there just in time.
1755: After purchasing the tile Scott had asked Jennifer to buy, we headed to Quality Cuts to get meat to freeze and take home with us to Bundi. I jump out of the car and run in, just before they closed at 1800…we got there just in time.
1930: After eating ice cream for dinner, we returned to where we were staying and plopped back into the chairs on the front porch, once again enjoying the beautiful view…After a bit of email and internet chatting, my battery died and so I just sat and watched Kampala nighttime. I was thinking about what happened, about the doors God kept opening for Jennifer, and about what seemed like a closing door He had given me, wondering what He was up to in it all.

I sat for 4 hours with only disappointing results, while Jennifer trecked around Kampala like a rock star, everybody she encountered basically offering her whatever she wanted to benefit the children of Bundibugyo. But as soon as I left that office, as I walked down to the main road to meet Jennifer, I was thinking to myself, “How can there be good in this? How can I look at this situation and see God’s hand in this?” And I realized, it would be a really amazing opportunity to get to see how a large hospital functions here, to see how things are done, to see what the nurse’s role is like. I thought back to my experience studying abroad and how fascinating it was to learn from the nurses at Hadassah and to see how they looked at things so differently than we did as Americans. I also thought, I’ve been talking all about how I’m a city girl at heart, and that this might be a really cool chance to get to spend more time in Kampala, seeing what’s there, getting the chance to get to know more people, people doing all different kinds of things…I thought of the email I’d received not long after my arrival here of a friend’s friend who was going to be in Kampala for the year with IJM, and how I had thought it would be cool to get in touch with her and see what IJM is up to here in Uganda.

So, that’s the scoop. I still don’t know any details, but it looks like I’ll be heading to Kampala by myself for 2 months, as soon as next week, maybe more like 3 weeks from now, we’ll see. I have to find a place to stay, pick a hospital and figure out what exactly I’ll be doing there, I have to make sure there are people in place to take over my usual responsibilities here in Bundi for the 2 months. Needless to say there’s a lot of details to be settled, but all in all, I really think that what looked at first to be a closing door was instead an open one, it just took a little bit to see it that way. But now, it’s pretty clear.

It’s my teammates here that will really take the hit…the hit of added responsibilities, the hit of trying to juggle their own work plus mine. I’m the one that will get to reap the benefits, the opportunity to see more, the experience of something really different from here. The flip side to the benefits I’ll reap by being there though, is the disappointment of not being able to be here. I’m not looking forward to 2 months by myself…but I think God has something good for me in it.

Friday 20 June
0800: After a good night of sleep we take off for home, with a prayer for safety and for a less eventful trip than 2 days before. A quick stop at the Patisserie (see photos) proved to be very satisfactory, and then a stop at MAF to pick up trunks the interns brought from the US but were unable to get onto their little flight to Bundi on their arrival a few weeks ago.
0930:We actually head out of the city, headed towards Bundi. It was a very uneventful trip comparatively speaking, for which we were both very grateful.
1645: We pull into the Myhre’s driveway of sorts and from Scott's initial comments it seems that the rest of the team was quite distressed about the results of my interview. It has taken several conversations and likely several more to explain what really happened and what will be happening as a result but I’m really thankful for their concern. God just chose to answer all of our prayers in a very different way than any of us hoped or expected.