Email 3 from Kampala, Uganda
Email 3
Kampala, Uganda
February 20, 2008
“Jaybalay” (An informal hello in Luganda)
Once again, here we are and we don’t want to let too much time get by so that we have so much to write that it will be difficult to send to you because of the slow, on again - off again internet connections.
When we were here 4 years ago, we began to pay the school fees for the first two children – Herbert and Ivan - with AIDS that Reach Out began to help, and we have been paying those school fees every year since then. We have taken a couple of photos of them with us, and you can see how healthy and strong they now are. Herbert just finished first in his class out of 280 students, and Ivan has had some school problems but he is healthy. It was good to see them; we brought them T shirts from Seattle and a little spending money. Ivan had just had his locker broken into and all his possessions were stolen including his shoes, so we helped buy him new shoes.
At the daily morning prayers, there are three different kinds of drums, and Peter has now become the drummer that plays the major beat while the other two do the rhythm. He will soon graduate to the rhythm section!! (see the photo). Also Peter has done a few prayers in Hebrew thanks to Rabbi Beth of Temple Beth Am, and also a rabbi who just came to visit Uganda as a part of an AJWS delegation. Besides the interest in hearing Hebrew, Peter was teased a bit about now “speaking in tongues”. Many of the staff want to learn more about Judaism, so we are going to have an informal discussion with them next week.
We have been invited into the homes of several of the staff here and we are leaning quite a lot about tribal and clan customs. It is very interesting and very complicated with lots of taboos, rules, special relationships, etc. One of the good things we have seen here and elsewhere in Africa, is that families take care of each other, especially when a sibling dies, and then the remaining sibling or siblings take the children in, whether they can afford it or not. It is in our opinion a fine example of “family”.
Last week, Peter was standing outside where clients were waiting to be seen in the medical clinic and a woman asked to have her photo taken. (see photo) After taking a few photos, Peter sat down with her and they began to speak. She told Peter that she was very frightened that she would die from AIDS and could not sleep at night. She was at the clinic to get her first ARV’s. Peter assured her that the ARV’s would make her healthy and that she would be fine and she asked, “Sure?”, and Peter said “Sure!”. “I feel better already” said the woman. “I like you!”. So what does this little story mean? It means that hope may be the strongest medicine you can give and a kind word never hurts.
The miracle of Uganda is that when you wake up in the morning there is power – electricity. More often than not, we come home about dusk – here on the equator the sun rises around 7 a.m. and sets around 7 p.m. – and there is no power. While we are sleeping the power comes on, and then in the morning it is gone. We are becoming really good at shaving and putting makeup on in the dark. Now you understand the miracle of Uganda. We never used to believe in miracles, but this is one that we do believe in. We are also getting out share of religion: At 5:20 a.m. the Muslim muezzin chants his prayers which we hear loud and clear from a nearby mosque; then we go to work and attend a Catholic prayer service, and we are Jewish of course. Even though the words and prayers are different than what we are used, it seems a nice way to start the day especially with the lovely singing and drumming.
At our apartment we don’t get either CNN or BBC, but we do get Al Jazeera which we watch while exercising early in the morning. It seems it is just like BBC and CNN. The other day they showed a 20 minute film made in Israel with Israeli’s and Palestinians called “West Bank Story”. It is a musical with the same theme as West Side Story and of course starts with conflict; there is a love affair between a Jewish soldier and a Palestinian woman, and then they all get together as a result of a fire that destroyed both of their restaurants. Too bad it is not the real world, but perhaps it will be. Remember the story above about “hope”?
Right now it is raining so hard that our poor community of Kamwokya is flooding! Very bad!! And it is so dark that we can hardly see our computer keyboards. Our little office has one tiny light. The rain is so loud that even though we sit only 3 feet apart, we have to shout
Peter is teaching our boss to use the computer – “an old dog teaching another old dog that you can teach an old dog new tricks”
We spent last weekend about 3 hours from here at Lake Mburro National Park and had a nice relaxing time with some other American that we met here. Saw lots of nice animals – see the photos, and it was nice to get away.
Hinda is hard at work helping with Job Descriptions and trying to deal with the extremely crowded medical clinic and help figure out how to decongest it. The situation is the proverbial one of having a one kilo bag and two kilos of stuff to put in it. Unfortunately, KCCC cannot reduce the number of clients, and the only real answer is more space, so we are working on that, but it will be a difficult row to hoe. The clinic is very small and sees a lot of patients, there is no room for patients who are really sick to lie down and often when one patient is getting an IV drip, they need to be moved to a chair so the next sicker patient can lie down. This morning we heard a child screaming from the clinic, she screamed and cried for some time so we went to see what was going on. There was a 2 year old little girl who was becoming dehydrated as a result of diarrhea so they were trying to give her some IV fluids, because she was so dehydrated it was hard to get the canula placed. Last night we participated in a workshop on report writing and did a presentation on how to write a case study, and Friday night we will do one on Report Writing.
We are also sending a graphic photo of what AIDS can look like. She is 18 and looks more 12. She was living with a family and was being sexually abused, and then when she became sick, the family threw her out, and her real family would take her back. She has very little food and KCCC does not have money or food to give. USAID and the World Food Program have focused their efforts on the north of Uganda, and so this is a major problem. We are finding out how much it will cost to provide some special soft foods for these “desperate clients, and so when we get back perhaps we can start a small fund and hopefully you will help. It is not possible to see people in this condition and not help, and that is why we spent only $1.50 or so yesterday to get her the food she needs. The counselor that took me to see her yesterday is extremely kind and compassionate. Much of that comes from the deeply felt Catholic faith of our co-workers.
As you may know all of the clothes and shoes people wear here is second hand, but I must say they all look brand new and people are always very neat and clean. A woman who is a clothes buyer came to meet Hinda yesterday, looked at her, told her what size she is and said she would be back in a couple of days with some clothes. We will see what she brings.
Peace and love from
Katede Peter and Nabuuso Hinda
Kampala, Uganda
February 20, 2008
“Jaybalay” (An informal hello in Luganda)
Once again, here we are and we don’t want to let too much time get by so that we have so much to write that it will be difficult to send to you because of the slow, on again - off again internet connections.
When we were here 4 years ago, we began to pay the school fees for the first two children – Herbert and Ivan - with AIDS that Reach Out began to help, and we have been paying those school fees every year since then. We have taken a couple of photos of them with us, and you can see how healthy and strong they now are. Herbert just finished first in his class out of 280 students, and Ivan has had some school problems but he is healthy. It was good to see them; we brought them T shirts from Seattle and a little spending money. Ivan had just had his locker broken into and all his possessions were stolen including his shoes, so we helped buy him new shoes.
At the daily morning prayers, there are three different kinds of drums, and Peter has now become the drummer that plays the major beat while the other two do the rhythm. He will soon graduate to the rhythm section!! (see the photo). Also Peter has done a few prayers in Hebrew thanks to Rabbi Beth of Temple Beth Am, and also a rabbi who just came to visit Uganda as a part of an AJWS delegation. Besides the interest in hearing Hebrew, Peter was teased a bit about now “speaking in tongues”. Many of the staff want to learn more about Judaism, so we are going to have an informal discussion with them next week.
We have been invited into the homes of several of the staff here and we are leaning quite a lot about tribal and clan customs. It is very interesting and very complicated with lots of taboos, rules, special relationships, etc. One of the good things we have seen here and elsewhere in Africa, is that families take care of each other, especially when a sibling dies, and then the remaining sibling or siblings take the children in, whether they can afford it or not. It is in our opinion a fine example of “family”.
Last week, Peter was standing outside where clients were waiting to be seen in the medical clinic and a woman asked to have her photo taken. (see photo) After taking a few photos, Peter sat down with her and they began to speak. She told Peter that she was very frightened that she would die from AIDS and could not sleep at night. She was at the clinic to get her first ARV’s. Peter assured her that the ARV’s would make her healthy and that she would be fine and she asked, “Sure?”, and Peter said “Sure!”. “I feel better already” said the woman. “I like you!”. So what does this little story mean? It means that hope may be the strongest medicine you can give and a kind word never hurts.
The miracle of Uganda is that when you wake up in the morning there is power – electricity. More often than not, we come home about dusk – here on the equator the sun rises around 7 a.m. and sets around 7 p.m. – and there is no power. While we are sleeping the power comes on, and then in the morning it is gone. We are becoming really good at shaving and putting makeup on in the dark. Now you understand the miracle of Uganda. We never used to believe in miracles, but this is one that we do believe in. We are also getting out share of religion: At 5:20 a.m. the Muslim muezzin chants his prayers which we hear loud and clear from a nearby mosque; then we go to work and attend a Catholic prayer service, and we are Jewish of course. Even though the words and prayers are different than what we are used, it seems a nice way to start the day especially with the lovely singing and drumming.
At our apartment we don’t get either CNN or BBC, but we do get Al Jazeera which we watch while exercising early in the morning. It seems it is just like BBC and CNN. The other day they showed a 20 minute film made in Israel with Israeli’s and Palestinians called “West Bank Story”. It is a musical with the same theme as West Side Story and of course starts with conflict; there is a love affair between a Jewish soldier and a Palestinian woman, and then they all get together as a result of a fire that destroyed both of their restaurants. Too bad it is not the real world, but perhaps it will be. Remember the story above about “hope”?
Right now it is raining so hard that our poor community of Kamwokya is flooding! Very bad!! And it is so dark that we can hardly see our computer keyboards. Our little office has one tiny light. The rain is so loud that even though we sit only 3 feet apart, we have to shout
Peter is teaching our boss to use the computer – “an old dog teaching another old dog that you can teach an old dog new tricks”
We spent last weekend about 3 hours from here at Lake Mburro National Park and had a nice relaxing time with some other American that we met here. Saw lots of nice animals – see the photos, and it was nice to get away.
Hinda is hard at work helping with Job Descriptions and trying to deal with the extremely crowded medical clinic and help figure out how to decongest it. The situation is the proverbial one of having a one kilo bag and two kilos of stuff to put in it. Unfortunately, KCCC cannot reduce the number of clients, and the only real answer is more space, so we are working on that, but it will be a difficult row to hoe. The clinic is very small and sees a lot of patients, there is no room for patients who are really sick to lie down and often when one patient is getting an IV drip, they need to be moved to a chair so the next sicker patient can lie down. This morning we heard a child screaming from the clinic, she screamed and cried for some time so we went to see what was going on. There was a 2 year old little girl who was becoming dehydrated as a result of diarrhea so they were trying to give her some IV fluids, because she was so dehydrated it was hard to get the canula placed. Last night we participated in a workshop on report writing and did a presentation on how to write a case study, and Friday night we will do one on Report Writing.
We are also sending a graphic photo of what AIDS can look like. She is 18 and looks more 12. She was living with a family and was being sexually abused, and then when she became sick, the family threw her out, and her real family would take her back. She has very little food and KCCC does not have money or food to give. USAID and the World Food Program have focused their efforts on the north of Uganda, and so this is a major problem. We are finding out how much it will cost to provide some special soft foods for these “desperate clients, and so when we get back perhaps we can start a small fund and hopefully you will help. It is not possible to see people in this condition and not help, and that is why we spent only $1.50 or so yesterday to get her the food she needs. The counselor that took me to see her yesterday is extremely kind and compassionate. Much of that comes from the deeply felt Catholic faith of our co-workers.
As you may know all of the clothes and shoes people wear here is second hand, but I must say they all look brand new and people are always very neat and clean. A woman who is a clothes buyer came to meet Hinda yesterday, looked at her, told her what size she is and said she would be back in a couple of days with some clothes. We will see what she brings.
Peace and love from
Katede Peter and Nabuuso Hinda
posted by Peter and Hinda Schnurman at 2:33 AM
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