My Lazy Weekend...

So I am here in Bupoto - my new home for the next 11 weeks. I pretty much have my own "house" or apartment which is pretty cool. The guesthouse here is right next to the clinic, which I had a brief tour of yesterday with Lisa (the doctor). The house is divided into two halves, and each half has two two-room apartments. So you go in my front door (the house has 4 front doors, and 4 back doors) into my living room, which they furnished for me, so it has a couch (really a bed, with a mattress stood up behind it for a back), a cozy chair, table, and a bookcase, where my 38 remaining energy bars have found their home, as well as mosquito coils (light them in late afternoon, nighttime to keep bugs away in the house, since the windows don't have screens), candles (for when the power is out), and a selection of books left behind by other visitors/Lisa put there for me. Then you go through a door to the hallway which goes out the back door, and my room is off the hallway. Out the back door is my porch, which I share with what is now an empty apartment, but when the three residents from Wisconsin get here, i'll share it with them. Off the porch is the bathroom (non western toilet - that means it DOES flush, but it is sunken into the floor, also houses a plastic chair and a bucket for bucket bathing - preferred method to taking cold showers!) and the kitchen (which has a stove... that isn't hooked up yet since we brought it up from town (Mbale) on Friday when I got here, but somehow the connections to the gas tank aren't here, so not working yet). From my back porch, the view is INCREDIBLE (see pic I posted to facebook the other day). Sunsets are spectacular here.
I had thought I'd be able to post pictures directly on the blog... but my iPad is NOT a laptop and capabilities are limited, so I'll get on Doug and Lisa's laptop at some point and upload some.
A girl named Esther makes my food for me... my appetite hasn't been much since I've been here, but the food is pretty good. A lot of stew-like things with rice (first night was a meat stew, which means beef here, second night was a bean stew with tomatoes and onions and stuff in it). Today for lunch she made me pasta with tomato sauce with garlic - obviously the sauce is homemade but was pretty good. Different than the Italians would make it. Once my kitchen gets set up I'll probably do more of my own cooking, but for now its nice to have someone do it. One less thing for me to figure out.
I don't have my Ugandan cell phone yet, but when I do, I'll put up the number (free to receive calls on... w00t). For now the best way to contact me if you want is via email or you can iMessage me at my gmail address (please don't text my phone... I'll just have to pay for all the texts I receive when I turn it on later!)
Yesterday I got a brief tour of the clinic, after I slept till about noon. Today I only slept until 10, and tomorrow I'll try to get up earlier. Falling asleep is super hard with the time change... hopefully I get used to it soon. Last night I ended up iMessaging with my mom for about an hour at like midnight Ugandan time, I just couldn't sleep! Its 8 hours ahead of the east coast here, so its a lot to get used to.
Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk with Sarah (who works at the clinic) and some other people joined in the fun. They took me up to a field from where you can see all the way to Kenya! Pretty sweet. I met a kid who said he had just turned 18 and was SO excited because he got circumcized so now he is a MAN. He had me take his picture to document it. I also went by some houses where all the men were drinking - they drink this fermented porridge stuff that looks like DIRT. Doug (the doctor's husband, who is a scientific researcher, and does a lot of lab stuff and coordinating stuff here, more on him later) said they haven't tried it and he doesn't intend to! So I abstained as well... but they all sit around a pot of this disgusting looking stuff with these incredibly long straws that they make and drink, so by evening they're all glassy eyed. One guy came over and VERY enthusiastically hugged me, the others said oh he's just drunk, sorry. Both nights I've been here, I had dinner with Lisa and Doug, the first night on their porch, and the second night in my living room. They're really nice and its just good to have people to talk to/hang out with. I tried Eagle, the local beer last night - obviously its not refrigerated, but I noted that a perk of that is that the beer can't get warm as you drink it. Not the greatest beer ever, but not bad. No busch light, though!
Today I've been mostly reading, and shooting off some emails to my parents and the three residents coming next week about getting me a Headlamp - they just come in super handy around here, especially to go to the bathroom at night or if the power goes out. We do have solar lights, but if the power is out they'll only last a few hours at night. So I'll have M&D buy the headlamp and send it to the girls in Wisconsin for them to bring.
Then Doug went over with me what I'll be doing with him this week, starting tomorrow. It is the Village Health Team (VHT) training. Doug, Antony, and Patrick (2 Ugandans who work at the clinic) are certified as VHT trainers, so they can train VHT's. Straight out of the packet:
What is a VHT? A team of village members who: mobilize the village members for health activities; keep village health records upt o date and make monthly village health reports and meetings to the village members; promote health to prevent disease; report village sickness to health workers; check for danger signs in village members who are sick; refer village members who are sick or are supposed to go for health care (e.g., immunization and antenatal care) to health workers; help treat simple illness at home; assist some village members take medicines as prescribed (Daily Observed Treament (DOT)
The whole idea behind it is to give people ownership of the project and the clinic and help make things more self-sustainable here. Basically, each VHT's home is a Health Clinic I, meaning people can go there for simple illness, cleaning a wound, etc. A Health Clinic II is a clinic with a doctor, but they can't do maternity cases (no overnight). Our clinic is a Health Clinic III, meaning it has overnight maternity care for women to give birth here. A Health Clinic IV is like a true hospital, overnight for various causes, etc. At our clinic, if people need that kind of care, they have to get a ride on a motorbike down to a city (the clinic will pay for this as part of the referral. So the pack I've been given as 6 Tasks to get through for them to learn about - most of the info they have seen before since they are all Community Health Educators (CHE's) but they just need to go over it again for the "official" training. In Uganda it is very important to people that things are official, with a stamp or seal from the Ministry of Health or other goverment recognized group. So, since I am not a technical VHT trainer, I'll be at the sessions, just observing, helping to keep people on task, and helping keep to a time-table (not a speciality here in Uganda). It will be Monday through Friday of this week, and then probably into the beginning of next week. By March 1, the residents will be here, so my daily routine will probably change a bit.
One other thing I just did... I had to look up how to use html code for the blog... hitting enter didn't make a new line from the iPad (which you might have noticed from my previous entry in Mbale). But Now I know. Hopefully formatting is less of an issue now. That's probably all for now... uploading photos from here may be a hopeless task, but I'll try to do some next time we are in Mbale (probably another two weeks or so).