Precious Uganda Moments

I woke up this morning and realized that in exactly two weeks, I’ll be boarding my plane for home. It is truly amazing how quickly my time has passed here. According to an email from my dear sister, I’ve been not good at keeping people posted on my adventures this week, so this is going to be my quick attempt.

I took a break from pharmacy today and spent the entire day teaching the grade school kids at one of the Catholic schools in Fort Portal. It was entirely exhausting, but absolutely worth it. The kids here have some sort of extra special happy energy and it’s contagious. They LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to sing. And when they sing, they’re not quiet about it. Every song has clapping or dancing or stomping or some sort of silliness to it. So what did I teach them? Songs from my American childhood of course! I can honestly say it’s the first time in my life I willingly stood in front of groups of people and sang solos (it might be the last too – Americans would be far more judgmental of my pitiful singing voice). The older kids caught on at lightning speed. So we moved on to stories of Christmas and fun question and answer sessions, all while I taught them the appropriate way to say American words.

The P2 class (2nd graders). These little guys were probably my favorite. Cutest songs and smiles. 

 Picture time was absolute chaos. One of the classes literally ran their teacher over when she asked them to stand for a picture. Another started standing on desks and on each other and trying their hardest to touch my hair. I was told by one little girl that I have hair like the Virgin Mary. Haha.

When the time for pictures came, chaos ensued. That mob of children standing on desks behind me were all fighting to touch my hair and hold my hand while this picture was happening.
The picture below is a few of the P4's who refused to go outside and play. The little girl on my right pleaded with me that I would greet my friends and family in the US for her. Adorable! 

 

When I left the school I had about 400 kids yelling at me, “Thank you, Madam, Kelly! Please come back soon!” Such a fun day!

The P5 class (5th graders) - a much calmer group than some of the younger students

Moving on (or back I guess). This past Saturday I went to a traditional Ugandan Introduction ceremony – meaning that a woman was introducing the man she has chosen to marry to her family for the first time. The people have tribes here, and thus elders as well. So this man arrives with all of this relatives (families are huge here) and they sit across from the woman’s family while the elders talk back and forth – the woman’s family deciding if the man is suitable for their daughter. The man’s family has to bring piles and piles of gifts. There’s traditional dancing. There’s a huge feast. It’s an all out party – similar to the actual wedding ceremony in America (the wedding itself isn’t as big a deal as the introduction here). The introduction lasted literally 8 hours. For the first 6, we sat the entire time. No lunch until 5 pm!

Can YOU dance with 5 pots stacked on your head? Becasue these girls did it, and sang too! I'm pretty sure it was some sort of magic....
The picture on the bottom left is my friend Tony - not much of a smiler for the camera, but precious in his party clothes all the same.

                                        

This is the bride. She cut the cake with her brother and then offered it to the elders of her family - part of the tradition. I'm sorry for the poor quality of photos. The pearls around her neck were one of the many gifts from her groom.

I was also able to visit the true village land of Uganda last week. BANANA TREES EVERYWHERE! I would have never dreamed Africa would be so green. I guess I always think Sahara desert  - but this is far from desert land. It is a gorgeous country. People are everywhere – regardless of how far from town you go. There’s no road without people walking and motorcycels and bicylces flying through. The village people have very little in terms of material wealth. The houses probably wouldn’t even qualify as houses in the US. But the people, are the happiest I’ve ever met. It’s an incredible place!

BANANA trees ....EVERYWHERE!!

 

 

Some of the children we met in the villages

This week I’m working at the government hospital. It’s super busy with hundreds of patients, because services are free. That means long lines, sometimes poor service, minimal availability of medications and tests and exams. The healthcare system here honestly breaks my heart – especially knowing all of the knowledge and medication that is out there. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to know treatments are available but to often not have access to them here. I’ve teared up and cried more than once seeing patients suffer and wishing I could bring them home with me and find for them the treatments that I know could heal them….

Eating Grasshoppers

While there are new things to experience and adjust to every day here in Uganda, yesterday I did something I would have never in a million years considered doing elsewhere. I ATE GRASSHOPPERS. I was so freaked out and grossed out by the idea that the whole thing was caught in pictures (my face doesn’t adequately show my fear). These insects are considered a delicacy here. They travel up from the Saherra Dessert and are only available for a month or two. People catch them, pull their wings off, and then fry them and chow away…eyes and all. Once I swallowed my pride and picked one of the dead bugs up to finally put it in my mouth….

I discovered they actually weren’t that bad. Maybe even almost good. I’d be more apt to say that if they didn’t look and feel so nasty in my hands.

Besides eating insects what have I been up to you ask? Well I have a new best friend. Albert, from my last post, one of the pharmacy nurses’ sons, comes to the pharmacy after school every day (around noon). I had brought a coloring book and crayons with me from the US and gave it to him on Saturday. His joy over this simple gift was too beautiful for words. Just look at his little face!

 

He now walks into the pharmacy and searches immediately for me, grins, grabs his coloring book and pulls up a chair as close as he can next to me. Yesterday I had my Ipad out for drug research, so when he came, I turned a Disney movie on for him and he thought it was pure magic. He kept alternating between beeming at the computer and turning to grin at me. I taught him to give high fives (I hope that’s culturally acceptable) and he can now recognize fish (He was watching the little Mermaid) – in his words, “FEESH!.”

Tomorrow I get to talk to one of the sisters who teaches in the grade schools. I asked if I could come work with the children a day or two and we’re setting that up tomorrow. I’m super excited! I’m also going with one of the pharmacists on a patient home visit. This man was just released from the hospital, but is not well still. I have been labeled the American asthma expert and am being summoned to his home to manage his case.

Random fact, but people here have no idea what daylight savings time is, which means that I am now 1 hour farther from home than I was before all of you Americans fell back and hour.

One more.  Here in Uganda, people don’t “honk” their horns when cut off in traffic, they “hoot” them. J

Uganda Happenings

I am sitting under my mosquito net inside my “master suite” here in Uganda. My lights are flickering and likely to go out any minute. Apparently sometimes the people in this village of Fort Portal sometimes go months without electricity. My preceptor, Sister Rovina, left me "special seeds" tonight to keep coachroaches from coming. Such a friendly gesture, but until she placed them in my hand, I had never considered the possibility of coachroaches and I got entirely freaked out. Hopefully they really are magic seeds.

Meanwhile, three days of travel was waaay too much. When I arrived in Uganda late Tuesday night, we stayed in the capital city of Kampala. It is a giant dust bowl of what seemed like millions of people and an equal number of taxis and motorcycles flying everywhere. The people drive on the left sdeide of the road here, like in Britain, and between that and absolutely no traffic rules to speak of, I am completely amazed there aren’t daily traffic accident deaths – it’s honestly a miracle! Regardless of the hour of day, people are out swarming the streets everywhere in this country. It was a 5 hour drive from Kampala to Fort Portal and the road was never empty of people walking that entire journey. Fresh produce markets are everywhere and if your vehicle is stopped, you will be swarmed by children and adults trying to sell you their produce.

A tiny glimpse of traffic in Kampala. This does not do the scene justice at all. But just know that this was not a traffic jam and people are not moving slowly and their are 80 more motorcycles within sight flying in and around cars.

People don't just carry fruit on their heads - they carry heavy boxes of pharmacy record books too. Quite Impressive.

Bananas are the staple of the diet here in Uganda. I am not exaggerating when I say they eat them with EVERY meal. I was told that without a banana the meal is not complete. They cook them in so many ways I never knew were possible. But I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know there was more than one type of banana in existence...and I may wish they didn't exist anymore at the end of my 6 weeks. :)

The adults here speak English if they’ve gone through school. The kids who haven’t had a lot of school speak very little English, but they are all so happy to see white people. The little kids get so excited and wave excitedly, yelling “Hal-lo!” Because they don’t understand me and I can’t speak Rotoro (I’m spelling that like it sounds…) we find other ways to communicate. I taught a four-year-old to make funny faces today and he absolutely adored seeing his image on my camera. His mom told me I was his new best friend.

My new friend, Albet

The pharmacy is sooo much different than in the US. People don’t need prescriptions to get their medications and we as pharmacists get to be their doctors. Actually, nurses get to do the same. Pharmacists don’t even have to be present all the time for medications to be dispensed. I also visited the hospital today. That was super humbling. No IV lines. No sterile rooms. Very little equipment or staff or medication availability. Eight hospital beds in one general ward. We visited some patients who thought that I was an American doctor who was there to offer them miracle treatments. That was so humbling to see and so disappointing as well to realize the disparity between the facilities and practices we have in the US and those they have in Uganda. If only we, being so privileged, could be as happy and grateful as these people!

Virika Pharmacy - Sr. Rovina at the dispensing window helping the Bishop of her parish.

Visiting patients at the hospital. They were all excited for pictures and asking me to help fix their illnesses.

I am off to learn how to wash my own laundry. Should be an interesting lesson...

Falling into the Rainbow

Yesterday was my last big adventure here in Alaska. And it was absolutely an adventure. The weather has changed dramatically in the short time I've gotten to spend here and after record breaking sunny days, the rainy season has found its way home. Apparently some summers here are days and days of incessant, non-thunderstorm rain. I was blessed to experience one of the most gorgeous Alaskan summers to date this year, with a record breaking stretch of sunny days and temperatures above 70 degrees. So, when the rain settled in this week, I didn't feel cheated at all. It is actually kind of enchanting to me. I've been in love with the clouds in this place since first arriving - they seem to sit teasingly, low as if we're somehow closer to the top of the world and maybe even Heaven. And when the rain comes, it casts wisps of misty clouds across the mountains and turns the world around us into a dreamlike wonderland. And thus was the setting of yesterday's adventure.

  

 

Imagine the land you dreamed up in any fantasy book you've ever read or in any Lord of the Rings type movie you've seen, and then place youreself in that world complete with the fuzzy borders that TV shows use when taking us inside someone's dream. That's what I felt was happening to me yesterday. The fuzzy borders were present as the misty clouds surrounding us. And it felt like they were the borders to this dream we'd been dropped into. The feeling was inhanced by the complete stillness around us. I was with two dear friends, the hike was 11 miles roundtrip, and for the first five miles, the only other sign of movement was in an occasional bird flying away after an ominous howl. The breeze was so subtle I'm not even sure it was there. Instead we had the steady companionionship of a light rain. The rain painted the grass and wildflowers aronnd us with a hint of sparkle so that their colors seemed to radiate with an unearthly glow. It was stunning. We walked through a gorgeous mountain valley, crossed a field of slippery boulders and ended up standing in an impossiblely perfect scene of two lakes - one with a greenish glow from the moutains surrounding it and the other a distinctly clear and reflective glacier lake.

 

 

 

 

And the most magical part? On the return trip, while discussing the magical nature of everything we'd seen, we decided the only thing missing was a rainbow. We turned the next corner and found the missing piece - a glorious, vibrant, shining rainbow. Low set and perfect in its colors. So low I felt like I could touch it. So distinct we could trace its source to the lake beside it. So perfect in color and timing and position its only source could have been our loving Heavenly Father. More than any place I've ever been, I've been in constant awe of the beauty of His ceation while here. And yesterday added a whole new dimension of awe for me. Without any other living soul around us, there's no question that rainbow was a gift just for us. From a loving Heavenly Father who knows and loves us perfectly and deserves more gratitude and love in return from us than I feel even partially capable of giving. I feel beyond blessed to be a daughter of this glorious creation!

From the Storybook of a Nebraska Farm Child

It's hard to believe I've been in Alaska for a full month now. It's even harder to believe that one week from now I will be packed up and ready for my flight back to Nebraska. I have so much to say about the great things I have learned about myself and about my profession while here, but I'll leave that for next week. For today, I want to post on home. Perhaps it's because of the incessant rainy weather here this last week. Perhaps it's the various heartaches of dear friends around me. Or perhaps it's simpy a deep rooted love for family that has manifested itself in a bit of homesickness, but whatever the source, the reality is that I am so grateful for my family and for the beautiful and blessed childhood I can claim my memories from.

I called home last Sunday. My brother Andy answered the phone and told me Mom would not want to talk to me that day because they were in the middle of freezing corn, and thus she was cranky. Freezing corn. Something that every Midwest farm child can relate to. Long days of husking ear after ear of golden kernals and boiling and cutting and cooling and measuring and bagging nearly a hundred bags of fresh sweet corn. Corn that your Grandpa and Dad and brothers labored relentlessly and tirelessly over. I used to not be excited for corn freezing days. They were long and messy and people did understandably get quite cranky. But, after three successive summers of being away from home and absent for this ritual, I find myself longing for the serenity and simplicity of those corn shucking days - my dad tuning his static-y turck radio to old country music, my Grandpa listening to me complain about worms in too many of the ears of corn while he joyfully and delicately brushed silk from his perfect ear with a toothbrush, my dad eating handful after handful of the corn that he cut (that was supposed to make it into the ziplock bags and not his mouth) so that my mom never ceased to win the battle of who made the most bags from each cutting.... There's something so magically storybook perfect in all of it....

This is me many years ago with my dear Grandpa Starman - a man of faith, strength, character, diligence and love. He passed his loyalty to his faith and his work on to his son - my Dad - and I am forever grateful to him for his example and love and for being such an integral part of my childhood on the farm.

 

I wrote a semi-professional poem about this special, cliche, Nebraska childhood experience of freezing corn back in my days of college English courses. My newest mission shall be to see if I can find that little piece of art.... :)

The Winding Path

I spent a lot of time at the hospital this week. It was an intense week on the pediatric floor, so a good portion of that time was spent feeling rather incompetant as far as pharmacist knowledge goes. I am struggling with feelings of having been prisoner to pharmacy school and endless hours at the library for the last three years of my life, and despite the time I served, still feeling like I absorbed nothing of the important details. It's really entirely overwhelming to step back and think about how much I am supposed to know as a doctor of pharmacy and how much I feel like I do not know.

And I think about that and then step back further and wonder what the heck I am doing in Alaska. Let's be real, that's a super far journey to travel just to find a hosptial to have my limited pharmacy knowledge tested in! But, regardless of the length of the journey or how absurd it may seem, I feel like this was always meant to be. Guided by the skills and knowlege of the staff here, I am slowly starting to feel some sort of my passion for the profession restored. I'm working with pharmacists who truly care about the patients they are treating and who apply that same care to the students they are teaching. And while it doesn't necessarily take away the fear of knowing nothing, it does finally restore that desire I started out with in wanting to know everything and in feeling like I am capable of making it to... well at least an admirable point in pharmacy knowledge... :)

 

It's somewhat like I've been walking through this dense, endless forest for years, and finally, the sun is starting to shine through. And Alaska is doing that for me figuratively and literally (I took this photo on a quaint little hike yesterday afternoon). There is just unequivacol soul searching potential in walking through a stunningly silent forest with a good friend - so quiet that even conversation seems inappropriate. It was as if we were created to go there and to release all fearful, failure-worthy, or entrapping thoughts in the safety of the shining and all-encompassing green foilage (don't think we didn't relate the scene to every fantasy movie we'd ever seen :).....).

 





We ended up in this pseudo-Alaskan-rainforest land after having many other hiking efforts thwarted. We had brought a little map with us that promised a nice service road up to the top of a breathtaking mountain, with the promise of a free ski lift ride back down if we made it to the top. We searched for this road but instead wandered through an enchanting maze of roads leading to hidden vacation homes. Once we realized the real road was not to be found, we returned to our starting location and discovered where we had missed it. Feeling hopeful, we set out again, only to discover the trail - and all other trails on that side of the mountain - was closed due to construction (with risks of explosion and death ahead...). Plan B? Take the nice ski lift man's advice and drive to the other side of the mountain for an upward trail there. Upon arrival to this other side, however, we were told that the ski lifts were closed due to wind and that hiking up, though beautiful, would be a treacherous feat in light of the requirement to hike back down the sleep slope in it's increasingly soggy condition (enhanced by the rain now falling..).

So we took an entirely different trail. One that didn't climb up at all, but instead weaved through the dense forest and opened up to a magical river.

 



So what it comes down to is that my life is one giant lesson on journeying. People might steal your bike in Alaska (yes this happened to me as well) hindering your daily travel routine, or the road you thought was real might not be a road at all, or all of your paths might be blocked. But, as my pharmacist mentor said to me this week, "You'll find your niche. It might take awhile, and the road might not be as straight as you want it to be, but you'll get there."  

 

 

These are from my kayaking adventure last week. My friend Kristen posted them, and they are so charming that I couldn't help but to share them here.

 

looking classy with those rubber boots....

Just traveling up the ocean shore...Lewis and Clark style...

 

 





PIctures Worth a Thousand Words

Two weeks into my Alaska experience, I still think I'm dreaming every time I go exploring. I paddled through ocean waters that literally sparkled so tangebly in the sun today that I felt if I reached down into the freezing waters I would be able to pull back a handful of diamonds...


...This after hiking through a forest of dancing wildflowers and breathtaking mountain views last night....

What words could even begin to possibly describe this scene?!

The beauty is just too impossible for cameras. My camera could never capture the feeling that is present in standing humbly in so many places that are so perfectly beautiful that I feel unworthy to stand as an imposter in their scenes. My camera doesn't capture the bald eagles majestically circling above us or the sounds of the ocean waves capping around us as we paddle down the glistening water between moutain and glacier cliffs that I sheepishly imagine I can actually photograph. I've been standing in these scenes with complete childlike wonder. so humbled and so in love. And so in awe of our Heavenly Father's creations and of his love for us. I have so, so very much to say, but words fail me. So I'm going to let pictures tell you only pieces of a remarkable story....



Top Left: A real live glacier as seen from a tiny tour boat. Top right: The place that made me believe that those crazy gorgeous puzzle box top photos are actually real places. Top middle: Paddling while operating the foot pedals for direction in steering turned out to be quite the challenging task... I'm not exactly ntaturally gifted in the area of being super coordinated... :)

Top: Doll Sheep. Traffic actually backed up on the highway for crazy tourists to snap pictures of them. I did the unclassy thing and rolled down my window as my friend kept driving slowly by...

Below: God just saying hello....

 

 

 

As if the beauty itself weren't enough to make my mind spin with awe, I met an entire bus of Nebraska people - 53 of them!! My California pharmacy student friend absolutely thought I was crazy for my ridiculous excitment over this fact, but how fun?! These people liked my enthusiam so much that they agreed to take a picture with me. Nebraskans = kindred spirits. :)

As promised, a photo of my little black bear friend from last weekend. Look how class he looks - nose up and everything!