My Side of the Mountain: Weekend Recap

Saturday

I couldn’t come up with a creative title for this blog post, my apologies.This last week has been a busy one, but it has been great. Yesterday was the monthly nutrition assessment at the KIHEFO nutrition clinic. This event is held on the last Saturday of every month. Those children that are brought back are assessed (weight, height, arm and head circumference) to see their progress. KIHEFO cooks a meal with meat and rice to entice the caretakers to make the journey back so we can check up on these former patients. I got to help weigh the babies, and I got to give the presentation that I gave to the students at Rubira Primary School on Friday to the mothers. It was a great lesson, and very interactive. The volunteers even offered their own advice to the other mothers on how to make balanced meals to keep the children healthy. It was great to see this community so interested and willing to learn, and willing to make such a long walk back to the clinic.

In the afternoon, I got to go to another health camp that KIHEFO volunteered its services for. KIHEFO partners with a pentacostal church in Kabale to encourage the congregation and the preachers to seek medical attention in addition to seeking healing through prayer. This partnership is only one of many ways that KIHEFO has been able to plant seeds in the community to gain trust in biomedicine. This medical camp was specifically for those of the Batwa tribe, also known as Pigmies, who are an indiginous people in Uganda. They speak their own language and are often shorter than other Ugandans. This free health camp was a rare opportunity for these people to get medical attention. I got to see patients with one of KIHEFO’s nurses for the afternoon.

Rob, Adrienne, and I at the Nutrition Clinic

The weighing equipment, provided by UNICEF.

Sunday

Today we took a day trip to Kisiizi, an area around 80km (an hour’s drive) from Kabale town, within Kabale district. Here we got to see a missionary hospital, Kisiizi Hospital, which was originally constructed as a leprosy hospital when Uganda was a British colony. The hospital is now a missionary hospital that receives half of its funding from the Ugandan government, and the other half from churches and other foreign aid groups. The facilities of this hospital were amazing. They had pretty much everything: operating theatres, a maternity ward, a mental health ward, a children’s ward, an HIV/AIDS clinic, and more. They have a system in Kisiizi where for 20,000 Ugandan shillings per year ($8 US) an entire family can be medically insured, meaning that if any member of the family falls ill any number of times, they are completely covered for all medical expenses at Kisiizi hospital. This is a great way to encourage locals to invest in their health so that they don’t have to wait several years to be seen when they fall ill, and is something that many private clinics are trying to implement in the area. In addition to seeing the hospital, we got to see Kisiizi Falls, a waterfall where women who became pregnant out of wedlock were pushed to their death by their own brothers. Legend has it that the last time this happened, the woman pulled her brother with her, and the tradition has not been continued since. While this story is incredibly sad, the waterfall was beautiful, and the entire trip was a great way to spend the last Sunday of my time here in Uganda. When we got back, my friend Adrienne and I went for a beautiful evening run around Makanga Hill, which ended the day nicely. I can’t believe this month has gone by so fast, but I am excited for my last week here in Kabale. Below are some pictures.