Monday 1st July. Day 8. Kagando hospital, orphanage and boat trip

We visited Kagando hospital in the West of Uganda (around 6 hours drive from Kampala), where Andrew and Sarah worked when they first came to Uganda around 21 years ago.  They still visit regularly.  Sarah showed us around the hospital, and everyone was very welcoming.

I met the physio whist we were there.  He is called Ochom Kenneth, aka 'Ken'.  He is doing a fantastic job, being the only physio at the hospital, he sees all the inpatients and some outpatients from as far away as Congo!  So he has to know everything about everything.  He also has very little equipment to do it with - he showed me his home made traction equipment.  It is now my mission to get some equipment out to him with a student physio who is visiting from the UK in August.  I think I'll try and get our physio department to help with some fundraising - beware RD&E when I get back!  He says he never gets any visitors, so he really appreciated our visit.

After our visit, he was going to see a man with polyneuralgia which was so bad that he could not walk when he first saw him.  Now he is able to walk with crutches.  He showed us a woman on the surgical ward who was burnt from her neck to her chest.  She had refused to let her husband take another wife, so he put a mosquito net around her neck and set it on fire.  You hear about shocking stories like this too frequently here. 

We are so lucky in the UK to not have to worry about paying for treatment.  He says that some patients spend around $15 to get to the hospital, then they need to pay for their treatment, so he never turns anyone away, and always tries to help everyone.  Being the only physio there, he hasn't had a day off for ages, as he says the queue will only get bigger.  He needs help.

Karen talked to the administrator and the finance team to find out the costs that patients have to cover, so that we can think about how we can help in the future.  Some patients cannot afford their stay, and often have to sell family items to afford their hospital stay.  

After that, we went to see the Nzirimbi orphanage. Andrew and Sarah have been personally involved in the orphanage for years, and even have one of the dormitories named after them.  A lady called Dorothy started the orphanage years ago, and has gradually built it up with new land and buildings funded from a church in Leamington Spa.  They now look after 110 children, mainly from mothers who have died in childbirth and their families cannot afford to care for them.  Again, we heard some sad stories of children being left in rubbish dumps / saved from being sacrificed.  Millie (Dorothy's sister) kindly showed us around, and we met some of the children.  

We gave them some of the book and toys we had brought with us - kindly donated from friends in the UK.  They loved them, and we caused a bit of chaos!  Thank you so much to Millie and the children for giving us such a wonderful welcome.

Then we were on the road again, heading south, passing the equator, and driving to the Kazinga channel, which joins lakes George and Edward in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in the West of Uganda.  We went on a boat trip and saw water buffalo, elephants, hippos, crocodiles.  Totally amazing, and a total contrast to our morning.

We camped in the park, and heard snuffling and scratching noises around our tents!  I think it was warthogs, which we had seen earlier in the campsite.

Sunday 30th June. Day 7 - Lakes, lunch and Kagando

We leisurely got up at 8am, and packed up.  We went to another crater lake to see the monkeys there while Andrew and Sarah moved their bee hives, which has been an ongoing scary saga!
The lake we went to was lovely.  Vikram pretended to be Gollum from 'Lord of the Rings' on a rock by the lake! Hilarious - he could have been an actor.

There were loads of monkeys in the trees.

We met Andrew, Sarah and Naomi there, then went to yet another crater lake for a quick swim before lunch at a wonderful resort (Kyaninga).  We had not had a shower for ages, so we washed in the lake.

Lunch was delicious.  We then went separate ways - Vikram, Woan-Yi, Andrew and Naomi drove back to Kampala, whilst Sarah, Karen, Alex, Bex and I drove to Kagando hospital - in rural West Uganda, near the Rwenzori mountains.  Sarah gave us a quick tour of the hospital, before we had dinner, a bit of Ugandan TV and an early night in the hostel there.

Saturday 29th June. Day 6 - chimpanzee trekking.

We got up extremely early to go chimp trekking in Kibale rainforest.  When we went outside (to get to 'the pit'), we were greeted with an amazing view from Andrew and Sarah's balcony - it looks out over Lake Mbajo, with the Rwenzori mountains in the distance - the sun was about to rise.

Vikram drove us over extreme lumpy bumpy roads to the chimp centre.  We met our guide (Farida), and walked us into the rainforest.  We walked a long distance, it was quite hilly.  We heard the chimps before we saw them - they call very loudly, and drum on the gigantic roots of Banyan trees - this apparently is the 'chimp telephone' system, according to Farida.

We learnt a lot about chimp behaviour from Farida - shocking to hear about some of it - not publishable, in case my children are reading!  We saw some funny behaviour - one male chmip was waiting for the female to come down from a tree, but she wouldn't come to him, so he had a bit of a strop.  A 'chimp domestic'.

 Then we saw another male chasing a smaller male up a tree, showing whose in charge.  

Meanwhile, Vikram and Woan-Yi went for a walk around 3 nearby crater lakes.  They picked us up from the chimp centre, and we went for lunch overlooking another lake.  We looked at the menu, and all chose, but when the man came to take our order, he said we had to chips and vegetables, as that would be quicker!  It still took over an hour to come though, by which time we were playing silly games - who could hop / skip that fastest (Alex won), and what we could wear for a masked ball in the evening!  A monkey came to see us there too!

After our prolonged lunch (which was quite nice, considering it was chips and vegetables), Vikram drove us to the 'Top of the World'.  The Mitsubishi got stuck in a massive trench whilst trying to turn a tight corner, so Bex video'd the moment and we all took photos!  Helpful!  Vikram wants me to stress that it's only a 2 wheel drive!

The 'Top of the World' is a beautiful view point over 3 crater lakes.

We returned to Andrew and Sarah's lodge, then some of us went for a swim in the lake.  Sarah and I ended up swimming all the way across and back - the hypnotherapy is still working (I was scared of swimming anywhere except in a pool a few months ago).

Altogether a fab day - thanks to Andrew and Sarah for organising everything so well for us.

Friday 28th June - Day 5. CoRSU and Fort Portal

We spent the morning at CoRSU, starting with the ward round.  The complicated splint that I had made in theatre yesterday seemed to be OK, so that's good.  Then I had to assess a lady with with increased tone in her arm.  Needed to do a full muscle and sensory assessment, then made a splint, which was not easy, as her high tone kept making her hand close.  It has been a morning of difficult splints - that one, followed by a young lady with a 2 week old flexor tendon and median nerve injury, who was in so much pain that I could hardly touch her, then a tiny splint for a one year old who wouldn't give me her hand or stop crying! By this time it was 2pm, and I had missed lunch, but Christine found me some on the private ward. We had a memorable lunch, surprisingly consisting of rice, matoke and peas!   Vik, Woan-Yi, Alex and Andrew were in theatre operating on a mixture of birth anomalies and severe life threatening infection, after their ward round.

Then we were off to Fort Portal in Western Uganda for a weekend of fun.  It took 4 hours to drive there, and it was dark by the time we got there.  Being on the equator, it gets dark very quickly at around 7pm every evening throughout the year.  Here are some photos I took on the way there.

We had a fun evening with DJ Chan in charge of music - she's a natural.  A bit of singing and dancing with beer and wine.  We slept inside tents inside the house due to bugs!  Enormous moths amongst other things, but we felt safe tucked inside the tents!  There was no running water, and a short walk to the loo (which freaked Alex out with all the flies looking up at him from the 'pit')!