Just when I was beginning to feel so confident about being here in Uganda, I was viscerally reminded that there is a part of life here I don’t fully appreciate:  sickness.

I stayed in town Sunday night since we returned from Queen Elizabeth National Park after dark (more on that at the end).  Monday morning at around 10 am I had terrible abdominal pain… so I decided to go to the clinic.  For as modest as Ugandans are about dress, they have very small requirements for personal space, even in the waiting room of a clinic.  Plus, budging in line occurs as rampantly as it does at the bank.  At this particular clinic I waited in the main front room first where you go to tell the front desk nurse who you are and I showed her the FSD agreement; Ned, FSD program coordinator, came for moral support.  Eventually (45 min later) a nurse motioned for me to enter a second waiting hall area.  I have no idea how they keep track of who showed up when or who needs to be seen quickest.

There was a long bench in this next room, facing two examination rooms.  The doctors sit inside those rooms and patients enter in one after another – rapidly, since no one wants to lose their place.  It was confusing to understand the order and finally I motioned a nurse over to explain things a little better.  So finally I saw a doctor.  He asked me to describe my symptoms.  The only time he touched me was to place a thermometer strip up to my neck to take my temperature – 39.5 C (103 F).  Somehow it seems strange to see a doctor who doesn’t take your pulse or probe your stomach if you have abdominal pain.  He sent me back to the front lobby area to pay lab fees for blood and urine tests, and then I went back to the lab, receipt in hand to give to the lab doctor.  About half an hour later she pricked my finger and smeared the blood on a slide and then handed me the gauze to stop the bleeding; that makes sense here.

Then I was handed the smallest jar…  I will spare you the details, but it was a tiny jar.  Soon the results were handed back to me and I was directed to go back to the doctor I saw earlier.  Easier said than done.

The waiting room was still packed, so I asked a nurse to tell me when to enter.  She did, but a couple jumped up and inside the room when I was supposed to go…  She told me to go in anyways and the doctor explained the results:  high white blood count which means some type of infection.  He told me that when people (here, small children) get malaria for the first time it first manifests itself in a high fever, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.  So even though my blood test came back negative for malaria, he still prescribed the malaria treatment tablets.  When I told Norah, a Ugandan friend, about this, she was quite surprised to hear that I had never had malaria before – it’s not there at home, she asked.  After some brief Wiki sleuthing, I found this:

“Efforts to eradicate malaria by eliminating mosquitoes have been successful in some areas. Malaria was once common in the United States and southern Europe, but the draining of wetland breeding grounds and better sanitation, in conjunction with the monitoring and treatment of infected humans, eliminated it from affluent regions. In 2002, there were 1,059 cases of malaria reported in the US, including eight deaths. In five of those cases, the disease was contracted in the United States. Malaria was eliminated from the northern parts of the USA in the early twentieth century, and the use of the pesticide DDT eliminated it from the South by 1951. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a major public health effort to eradicate malaria worldwide by selectively targeting mosquitoes in areas where malaria was rampant.^[88] However, these efforts have so far failed to eradicate malaria in many parts of the developing world – the problem is most prevalent in Africa.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria)

So really I don’t know what I had but it knocked me flat.  If it was food poisoning, I would like to bring to your consciousness the wonders of microwaves, refrigerators, and a constant source of electricity — all helpful ingredients towards food safety.  I haven’t left this floor of the building since going to the clinic, and I didn’t really leave bed until today.  It might have been malaria, food poisoning, or some other critter.  Mama Judith came to visit me today so it was nice to see her.  She brought me a shawl to keep warm and an apple.  I have been staying in the spare room of the FSD office which is also adjacent to our program coordinator’s apartment.  Having an indoor flush toilet at a time like this is very appreciated.

On the plus side, the weekend at Queen Elizabeth was great.  Our friend and FSD staff member in Jinja, Joel, picked Krystal, Mike (new intern) and I up on Saturday and we drove to Kasese to stay the night.
On Sunday we woke up at 4 am in order to get the park early enough to see active animals in the morning.  Of course, our guide met us about 30 minutes late, so we had a nice nap in the car.  We got on the road around 7.

The unfortunate thing about national parks here is that basically the only way to see them is by driving around dirt roads.  The savanna was beautiful regardless.  We were looking for lions when we spotted a big bus and a few SUVs in the same area.  We were excited – they must see something!  As we drove closer, however, we saw that everyone was out of the bus.  Highly unusual… until we realized the bus was stuck in the mud.  Perfect.  Our guide hopped out to check it out, so we did too.  It was a bus full of Makerere University forestry and environment students.  The only way to move the bus was to push, so we stepped behind to do our part.  Quite a feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie.  Turns out these were the same people we went on a boat road of the Channel that connects Lake George and Lake Edward, where we saw lots of hippos and some crocodiles.  Other animals of the day included elephants, kobs (deer-like), warthogs, a hyena or two, some monkeys, and about fifty baboons walked along the road beside us for a while.  So it was fun but not really my favorite way to enjoy a national park.  We also saw some zebras on the drive home, through a smaller national park called Lake Mburo.

So I’m hoping to go back home tomorrow, maybe to work in the afternoon, or at least back on Friday.  then I’m planning a nice relaxing weekend at home.  Hopefully my host brother and sister who have been working in Rakai will have time to come visit Namaseenene.

Sending my love to all!

Stephanie

Stuck….

much larger than a deer

Savanna