So, it seems that I'll be going to Kampala again this week for a very brief < 24 hour stay to try to get a few things sorted out and then the plan as it stands right now is that I'll return on Sunday July 13 to begin my 8 weeks, which *should* then finish Friday Sept. 5.
I still have a lot of questions and a fair amount of fears but all in all I am confident that this really is a gift from God, this opportunity to be in Kampala for 8 weeks. Even my confidence is a gift from God to be honest. Just a month ago I was sick to my stomach about the possibility of having to go to Soroti by myself for a week, and here I am excited to go to Kampala by myself for 8 weeks!? I can take no credit.
Questions - housing? food? financing? work schedule? actual work? uniforms? community? language? transportation? church? email/internet? How does one live as a white woman alone in an African city? and the list goes on...I covet your prayers and thank all of you who have been praying, your prayers are unbelievably evident to me throughout all of this!
[Greek]: fellowship, to communicate, community, communion, association, participation, contribution, distribution, sharing.
28 June 2008
Public Apology
So, I need to make a public apology. A few years ago, Nat and Maria Johnson made me my first gin and tonic and I turned my nose up...wasn't a big fan. It was summertime as far as I remember and they had come over to Dana's for dinner when I was still living there before she and Andy got married...we were making something on the grill out back, and Nat was kindly mixing gin and tonics for everyone. After tasting mine I think I said something like, "It tastes like bitter lemonade." My taste buds were clearly failing me.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm in Africa, or if it's the kind of gin involved, or maybe there's something about Evervess tonic, or maybe the little limes we put in them here have a magic about them, but geez louise, a gin and tonic tastes soooooooo good here! Don't worry, I'm not becoming a lush or anything but after a long day, when you're cooking and sweating and winding down for the day, it TOTALLY hits the spot. Now the rest of my family feels this way about a cold beer...yuck. But a gin and tonic - BRING IT!
Last night for instance, I had taken a break from emails/spreadsheets/covering bases for while I'm in Kampala, and was making what turned out to be quite a yummy peanut sauce that we put over rice noodles with marinated stir fried beef, and Pat was on drinks. She mixed up a gin and tonic for each of us and as I was finishing stir frying the beef and draining the noodles I began sipping on my oh so refreshing beverage - and well, it was just what the doctor ordered!
Ashley and Sarah were over for dinner and the four of us had a great dinner conversation - ranging from our reactions to the movie we watched the night before called Shooting Dogs (about the Rwandan genocide), to the parallels we drew from the movie to our own lives here in Uganda, to why the international community's response to genocides in recent years has been so cowardice, to what the Bible has to say about punishment for sin vs. mercy and grace, to why Swedish fish are called Swedish fish. As we wrapped up I lamented both that I won't likely have such dinner conversation in Kampala and the fact that my gin and tonic was finished.
So, Nat and Maria - this is my public apology for my failing taste buds and my failing to realize the fabulous refreshment of the gin and tonic you kindly introduced me to! Next time, drinks are on me!
I'm not sure if it's because I'm in Africa, or if it's the kind of gin involved, or maybe there's something about Evervess tonic, or maybe the little limes we put in them here have a magic about them, but geez louise, a gin and tonic tastes soooooooo good here! Don't worry, I'm not becoming a lush or anything but after a long day, when you're cooking and sweating and winding down for the day, it TOTALLY hits the spot. Now the rest of my family feels this way about a cold beer...yuck. But a gin and tonic - BRING IT!
Last night for instance, I had taken a break from emails/spreadsheets/covering bases for while I'm in Kampala, and was making what turned out to be quite a yummy peanut sauce that we put over rice noodles with marinated stir fried beef, and Pat was on drinks. She mixed up a gin and tonic for each of us and as I was finishing stir frying the beef and draining the noodles I began sipping on my oh so refreshing beverage - and well, it was just what the doctor ordered!
Ashley and Sarah were over for dinner and the four of us had a great dinner conversation - ranging from our reactions to the movie we watched the night before called Shooting Dogs (about the Rwandan genocide), to the parallels we drew from the movie to our own lives here in Uganda, to why the international community's response to genocides in recent years has been so cowardice, to what the Bible has to say about punishment for sin vs. mercy and grace, to why Swedish fish are called Swedish fish. As we wrapped up I lamented both that I won't likely have such dinner conversation in Kampala and the fact that my gin and tonic was finished.
So, Nat and Maria - this is my public apology for my failing taste buds and my failing to realize the fabulous refreshment of the gin and tonic you kindly introduced me to! Next time, drinks are on me!
25 June 2008
More interesting than a Muzungu
As I was walking home from the Myhre’s yesterday afternoon, a bulldozer/front-end loader type contraption was slowing groaning it’s way up the road, and alongside of it was a group of primary school boys running and yelling and thrilled to be able to say they saw this super duper machine in action. It doesn’t happen too often but I can say everyone along the side of the road was FAR more interested in this contraption passing by than in me passing by, so I smiled to myself and relished every second of my walk home in peace ☺
The walk in peace was fleeting - this afternoon, they were "how are you?"-ing and "muzungu, muzungu"-ing and running alongside me as I walked up the road...oh well.
The walk in peace was fleeting - this afternoon, they were "how are you?"-ing and "muzungu, muzungu"-ing and running alongside me as I walked up the road...oh well.
Note to Self:
Don’t take zyrtec and mefloquin and a multivit and a viactiv on an empty stomach and then try to gulp down some crystal light and a girl scout cookie as a quick “breakfast” on the run as you run out the door in the morning…let’s just say the girl scout cookie got “tossed” along with all of the above mentioned substances before I even made it out to the road yesterday morning. Poor Jesse was standing by as I said, “I think I’m gonna hurl” and asked if he could hold anything…fortunately I immediately felt perfectly fine and we continued on down the road to the health center.
Spiraling outta control!!!!!!
Ever have moments when you feel like you have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over anything in your life at the given time? Man alive, it hit me like a ton o’ bricks this afternoon. I had just come home from the Pierces after giving Anneliese the shpeal about what happened in Kampala and what my “plans” are at this point and she encouraged me to think about the implications of the whole scenario on the team here and I started wondering if maybe this is really stressing everyone out and they’re just not telling me because they don’t want to stress me out…and I sat down at my computer to try to print out an Excel file for Pat to use at ART clinic tomorrow...I had spent an hour before heading to the Pierces unsuccessfully trying to do it without killing 6 trees in the process. And this second attempt was not progressing well, and I suddenly felt my mind decelerating to a halt (kind of like the Bart car did on the road last Wed.). I had no control over the stupid computer or printer, I have no control over the next 3 or so months of my life with an imposed move to Kampala and the implications that has on my life in finding a place to experience big city Ugandan nursing/sleep/eat/have some friendship and community of some sort, I have no control over the implications this imposed move has on my teammates here or how they feel about how well/poor I handle it, I have no control over the implications of being a fallen woman subject to the curse on Eve that “your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you” (Gen. 3:16b) which is even applicable when I have no husband, I have no control over my tendency to eat as many Swedish Fish as my blood sugar can stand at any given moment, and the list goes on and on.
So what was my solution, you ask? Simple. I stood up from my desk and walked over to the couch and laid down and stared at the ceiling for about 15 minutes. I think I need to do it more often actually. It used to be a common practice of mine, but I haven’t really done it at all since I got here. I think it’s a Lutjens thing…
So what was my solution, you ask? Simple. I stood up from my desk and walked over to the couch and laid down and stared at the ceiling for about 15 minutes. I think I need to do it more often actually. It used to be a common practice of mine, but I haven’t really done it at all since I got here. I think it’s a Lutjens thing…
24 June 2008
impossibilities
So, over dinner tonight, I think I FINALLY articulated something that has been weighing heavy on my heart since I got here almost 5 months ago. I've never been particularly articulate and so it felt really good to put words to this and to say it out loud. I'm not sure I'll be able to recreate it here, but I'll give it a try.
Today, a grandmother came to the Nutrition program at the health center with her orphaned grandchild who is less than a month old. We told this woman a week ago when we gave her milk for the baby that she needed to find a breastfeeding caregiver for the child and that we would provide milk for the baby for the first month while the caregivers breastmilk is coming in and then provide the caregiver with a bit of nutritional support every month until the child is a year old. Well, she came back today without bringing a someone willing to breastfeed the child. The babies weight has come up, so she's doing a good job, but the agreement was that she'd bring a breastfeeder back or we wouldn't be able to help her. We cannot supply formula/milk for every motherless child in this area, we just can't. We can't feed all of these kids until they're a year old, but how can you possibly fault this hardworking grandmother who looks as old as my grandmother and probably walked miles to get to the clinic this morning in pursuit of good care for her grandchild? And the situations like these are endless.
The kid that comes to my door every day and says "give me bread," "give me your money" who has become accustomed to the Bazungu living on the mission being generous and merciful and so comes to see what he can get from you today. I don't want to be taken advantage of, I don't want to hurt these kids by enabling them to grow up thinking that they can just go to the nearest white person for their provision, I can't provide for each kid that comes to my door, I get so frustrated and feel so overwhelmed. But how can you fault them when they see what I have compared to what they have?
The big umbrella organizations like UNICEF or EGPAF or the like that have all kinds of top-down rules and regulations and standards for how you, the small NGO, are to use their resources...these parameters and regulations feel so limiting/constrictive when you're sitting in front of a woman with a child on death's doorsteps who happens to not fit the criteria. But do you fault them as organizations for having rules and regulations as to how their resources are to be used, or requiring reports of how you are using their resources even though the reports are painstaking and time consuming and just downright annoying? No, because it's not wise of them to just hand out resources left and right without any guidelines on how it is to be used, and it's unwise to ask for accountability for how it is being used in the field...But these are not the people sitting with the woman with the sick child who doesn't qualify...
We look at the Babwisi and say "they don't trust each other...they seem to have such strong communities but no one trusts each other so what kind of community is that?" But how can we fault them for not trusting each other when we have a hard time trusting them because of their behavior/deceit?
EVERY situation, and EVERY encounter I have here seems t0 have these impossibilities in them...it's exhausting and overwhelming and should be driving me to the feet of my Savior. Come quickly Lord Jesus!
Today, a grandmother came to the Nutrition program at the health center with her orphaned grandchild who is less than a month old. We told this woman a week ago when we gave her milk for the baby that she needed to find a breastfeeding caregiver for the child and that we would provide milk for the baby for the first month while the caregivers breastmilk is coming in and then provide the caregiver with a bit of nutritional support every month until the child is a year old. Well, she came back today without bringing a someone willing to breastfeed the child. The babies weight has come up, so she's doing a good job, but the agreement was that she'd bring a breastfeeder back or we wouldn't be able to help her. We cannot supply formula/milk for every motherless child in this area, we just can't. We can't feed all of these kids until they're a year old, but how can you possibly fault this hardworking grandmother who looks as old as my grandmother and probably walked miles to get to the clinic this morning in pursuit of good care for her grandchild? And the situations like these are endless.
The kid that comes to my door every day and says "give me bread," "give me your money" who has become accustomed to the Bazungu living on the mission being generous and merciful and so comes to see what he can get from you today. I don't want to be taken advantage of, I don't want to hurt these kids by enabling them to grow up thinking that they can just go to the nearest white person for their provision, I can't provide for each kid that comes to my door, I get so frustrated and feel so overwhelmed. But how can you fault them when they see what I have compared to what they have?
The big umbrella organizations like UNICEF or EGPAF or the like that have all kinds of top-down rules and regulations and standards for how you, the small NGO, are to use their resources...these parameters and regulations feel so limiting/constrictive when you're sitting in front of a woman with a child on death's doorsteps who happens to not fit the criteria. But do you fault them as organizations for having rules and regulations as to how their resources are to be used, or requiring reports of how you are using their resources even though the reports are painstaking and time consuming and just downright annoying? No, because it's not wise of them to just hand out resources left and right without any guidelines on how it is to be used, and it's unwise to ask for accountability for how it is being used in the field...But these are not the people sitting with the woman with the sick child who doesn't qualify...
We look at the Babwisi and say "they don't trust each other...they seem to have such strong communities but no one trusts each other so what kind of community is that?" But how can we fault them for not trusting each other when we have a hard time trusting them because of their behavior/deceit?
EVERY situation, and EVERY encounter I have here seems t0 have these impossibilities in them...it's exhausting and overwhelming and should be driving me to the feet of my Savior. Come quickly Lord Jesus!
23 June 2008
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.
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.
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