Uganda 2023 Day 7

Uganda 2023 Day 7

Today we woke up at 4:30a to finish packing our carry on bags for our trip to Karamoja. There were four rooms, mine included, that had to move any items they did not want to take with them, to other team rooms. This is because there was a team coming in for two days while we were gone. My room had to move our stuff down stairs to Radost and Elena’s room. We had to have our bags by the door by 5:30 at the latest. We did have breakfast before we left. It was a fried rice that had bacon, eggs and peppers in it. Then Richard and Ivan picked us up so we could head to the nearby airport. We arrived before they opened, it just gave us time to talk. Dr Andrew pulled up while we were waiting. He said, “I hurried to get here and they are not even open.” We did not have to wait long for the doors to open after that. Although, we did have the wait did the security guard to arrive. While waiting, we met a lady going to the same area. She is the director for an orphanage near where we will have clinic. Finally we got to load the planes. I was with Dr David (the copilot), Chloe, Bethany, Destanie, Jodie, Yoan, Mark, Radost, Dr Andrew, Algena, and Lany. The rest of the team was on another flight. I was excited to see the pilot for my plane was Remington. He was my pilot for last years trip. The views are so beautiful during the flight.  Our plane left after the other team, but we arrived in Moroto first. They had to fly further north and pick someone up before coming to the Moroto airport. While we waited, Jodie started talking to a man there. He was waiting on one of the other people that was on the other flight. Apparently, she also has an orphanage there. They are from New Zealand. We waited just over 30 minutes for them to arrive. Then we loaded the vehicles and headed for our hotel.

Once at our hotel, we got our room assignments, took out bags up, and loaded the vehicle with water before heading to clinic. I was shocked that the clinic area was not overflowing like last year when we arrived. Although, we still saw 237 patient.there were a group of kids standing at the gate singing and dancing as we drove in. The adults joined in a little when they came closer. The girl in the lead had a different colored skirt and the Karamojung jewelry. We were able to watch for a little while and then had to start church services and unload our supplies to get clinic started. Nick and Destanie hurried to start kids church after the supplies were unloaded. Thus year, we broke kids church down into two groups per day. One before and one after lunch. It is so helpful due to the heat and need to conserve energy to make it through the day. For the first half of clinic, I mostly went to church service. I also walked around to the different groups and saw what they were doing and took a few pictures. After lunch, I was with the kids. I was with Lany and Radost. Lany planned the time with a rotation of songs, messages and games. It worked well to do a rotation due to attention spans. Sometimes other team members would come over for a few minutes to watch and joined in on the dancing. We did not get through our whole list because we were running low on energy and so were the kids. We decided to release them a little early since all the church services were over, but they had to stay away from the clinic area. While waiting for the providers and pharmacy to finish, we did cleanup of chairs and trash. I also took some pictures of and with kids. I tried not to take to many before as it becomes a big distraction. While I was taking pictures, some of the team went down to where we have church and handed out mosquito nets. By the time they were done, the providers almost were too. While waiting to leave, I was talking with Dr Andrew. He pointed to where Dr David was and said, “how old do you think that is?” I said, “I don’t know. Maybe 90 years old.” Then I said, “probably 50.” He said, “Really.” Dr Andrew then realized I was talking about Dr David. Then he said, “No, the tree.” I started laughing so hard. We decided the tree was at least 100. Then he said his youngest child is 37 years old. I told him he had to be lying because he can only be 40. Then he was trying to get me to figure out his real age. I said 57, but that is because I could not believe he would be older. A couple other team members were walking by and they also guessed 57 because he looks so young. He would not tell me his age. He said, “I will tell you tomorrow.” He would not budge in waiting for a day. 

Then it was time to go. I sat on the bus next to Alma’s translator, Olive, she is so sweet. Olive is going to University and was born in Karamoja. We talked the whole way home. Once we arrived, we were told we had 10 minutes to take care of everything and get to dinner. Dinner was so good we had buritoes. I sat at the table in the back because Pastor John had been sitting there. I wanted to be with at least one Ugandan. Pastor John did not come back because by the time he was ready. The table had filled up. I sat with Dr Andrew, Dr Brian, Julias (seeds of leadership Dr), Moses, Joel (an American) and I know there was one other ugandian who I can’t remember was there. After dinner we got our morning assignments. Then Alma and I headed to our room for bed.