Saturday Stories
Categories : Africa, Missions, Travel, Uganda, photos |
A welcome change of pace today. The two doctors on the team, myself and Jess, went over to the Watoto Babies Home - Bulrushes, to do some checks on a few of the babies, whilst the rest of the team went back out to the villages to do various things.
The Bulrushes babies are in pretty good shape, considering these are orphans who a few months back were abandoned, some in terrible conditions. Like all Watoto children, they are well taken care of. Nevertheless, put 40 to 50 babies in the same building, especially ones who may have pre-existing illnesses, and various health problems are bound to develop. We saw about 15 or so this morning, most of whom fortunately had fairly minor problems. After that we spent a while just hanging out and playing with the babies which was fun. One of the babies I saw today I remembered from when we were here briefly in July. His name was Junior and when he was first taken in as a premature baby he was very sick with HIV and PCP pneumonia. Well, three months later with a bit of feeding, some antiretroviral medication, and a lot of love and good care, and he is doing well - gaining weight, smiling and in good health, as you may see in the first picture below. I continue to be incredibly impressed with the standard of care provided in the Bulrushes.
After we were finished there we took a walk along to the Garden City shopping mall for lunch and shopping. A call to the rest of the team revealed they are hours away from meeting us here so we decided to take a walk down the hill into the Kampala CBD before coming back here to the internet. Here’s a few photos I snapped on the way around. They’ve really been working hard preparing for CHOGM, the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, which is happening here in a couple of weeks - so much that asking a person if they are “ready for CHOGM” is a standing joke around here. From the state of most of the works though, I doubt if they will be ready on time. I’m not sure if our Prime Minister is still planning to attend CHOGM in the midst of the current election campaign, but I hope he does, if only for the chance to see a bit of Uganda on Australian TV back home.
The bottom picture is yet another local restaurant sign 
Finally, I’m going to try and upload a few pictures from the clinics during the week, which I will add to that blog entry, so go back and take a look at that.
