Musawo

I decided to take the day off after getting back from the islands yesterday afternoon. There are still a few restaurants in town that I haven't tried; this particular coffee house (indulge) has free internet if you buy a meal. I thought that I'd take a moment to recount my experiences of the last seven days.

I left for a small island by the name of Lingira on Monday morning, it takes about an hour and a half to reach it by boat. By boat I mean a rickety wooden craft that is powered by a single outboard engine. I met up with the We International team once I reached the island, almost all of them are from Wisconsin. I spent the rest of the day getting settled into my room on the base; it wasn't as bad as last time, very few bugs and access to power during the day.

I spent Tuesday familiarizing myself with the base and the villages on the north end of the island. It was that day that I met a gentleman named Cornelius, he serves as the clinical officer for the entire island. He had heard of my training and suggested that I train several of the community members in first aid. As we developed the program, we decided that the best course of action would be for me to train several people well enough to pass on the knowledge to the rest of the community. I'm actually returning to the island this Thursday to finish the training of six community health workers.

Wednesday morning I got on a small boat owned by the clinic on Lingira and traveled another hour and a half into the bay to an even smaller island. That morning/afternoon was basically three hours straight of young children being placed in front of me, me giving them shots (mostly DPT and measles), then moving onto the next.

Thursday and Friday were a bit more relaxing, I sat in on several meetings being run by the team already on the island and made a quick supply run for the island staff.

Saturday morning I met with my class of six for the first time, the training that I had to offer took about four hours. One issue that I ran into was that they didn't seem to understand that when practicing abdominal thrusts, you're not supposed to use as much effort as you would if you were actually trying to help a choking person. I have come to admire the enthusiasm that my students usually show during class, they have a desire to learn these basic skills that I seldom see in my US students.

Sunday I had the unique opportunity of attending a Ugandan church service, quite a lot of singing and drumming.

This week I don't have a lot on my plate, I'm trying to wrap up the last of my secondaries for my med school apps. Just a quick update on that; out of 18 schools, 17 have requested that I fill out secondary applications.