Kayakin´Tom

I´ve had a really interesting week so far: On thursday was “Marie Stopes” day – a big family planning day at the clinic! A team of doctors came to the Allan Stone Clinic to perform tubal ligations in local anesthesia plus diversion of the patient - “focal local” as they call it here! So this is abdominal surgery under local anesthesia!

The only apply local anesthetics to the abdominal wall and then somebody has to distract the patients, for example asking them questions about their children or asking them to tell some other stories of their life. And it usually works really well! The doctors only wear sterile gloves and an apron but no facial mask! And normally there aren´t any complications. They have a special technique and instruments to perform the task of tubal ligation: with a special hook the palpate the uterus and the cervix and then go behind it to find the tubes and pull them to the surface and do the ligation. And normally the don´t even get antibiotics – and the room´s are far from a sterile environment. It´s incredible what the human body can endure!

One day earlier I went to the local soccer-field to train and play with the local kids! One of the clinic-employees organizes the training – and he´s doing a great job! After the 60 minutes of warm up, gymnastics and stretching I thought I wouldn´t be able to play soccer with the guys – but I could! And it was amazing to see them play – they really are into their sports but always without being aggressive or playing unfair. And this week on Tuesday there´s going to be a soccer game organized by the clinic: staff vs. patients – I´m really looking forward to this!!

After this unique experience I went for a slightly longer kayaking weekend to the Hairy Lemon!

The island is now a little bit busier on the weekends than it was before: Claire and her coach Dennis are still there as are Brendan and Paul. And Jessie and Jörg also joined us a day later.

So with all the good kayakers around my moves are improving every weekend – it´s really great to get tips and tricks from a world champion!

The weather is unexpectedly hot for this time of the year – it´s still supposed to be rainy season but we didn´t have rain for almost 10 days now. And during the day it´s really hot but we usually played a few rounds of frisbee golf - sometimes just making up new crazy routes to play around the island! Every now and then the frisbees go far from the goal and have to be rescued from the wet grip of the mighty Nile or some thorny bushes – including other players who also get stuck there trying to get to the frisbees.

Here are a few shots from last weekend:

Amazing night-sky - can you find Orion?

Dennis Newton @ Clubwave

Dennis Newton @ Clubwave

Fish-eye view of Clubwave

White egret on the shore at Nile Special/Clubwave 

...lookin for some food

Claire O´hara @ Nile Special

Paul Palmer @ Nile Special 

Paul again

and again!

 Brendan Kraiker @ Nile Special in an evening session

And Paul again - clean Blunt off the rope @ Nile Special 

Brendan rippin´ it @ Club Wave

And Brendan again @ Nile Special

Burnie - a long term inhabitant of the Hairy Lemon Island (a fruitbat) 

Early morning view from the island just before going to paddle at about 6:30

same as above...

Claire @ Club Wave just after the sun came over the ridge

Yesterday there was a soccer game close to the local primary school of Kyabirwa (the place I´m staying at) organized by Soft Power Health for children from a small village down the river. 20 of them were brought to the soccer pit in one Matatu (small vans used in Uganda for transportation – they would fit a maximum of 10 people in Europe) and we really had a lot of fun playing with them! And we´ll play again in 2 weeks!

So over all I´m having an extremely good time here in Uganda – enjoying the country and the people and of course the kayaking!