Kayakin´Tom

Uganda - finally back again!

After a short night at an hotel in Entebbe I jumped onto a previously arranged car to get to Bujagali and meet Felix or Gertrude, who own a boardinghouse. It was a journey of about 3 and a half hours – traffic police control included: We had the kayak inside the car on the passenger seat and the police officer said: “ What is this? What is a kayak? … This is not good … but it´s OK. Move on!“

My first encounter with the local police...

When we came to Bujagali the driver didn´t know the right location, so we had to go the clinic and ask for directions. So I met Dr. Charles today – instead of tomorrow. When we finally found the boardinghouse Gertrude showed me to my room, I unpacked a few things and walked back to the clinic to join the staff for lunch. Before that actually happened, I got first instructions in the lab.

Dr. Charles, the manager of the clinic, decided that I would spend my first week at the lab to see what tests there are available and how the would be done. There are not that many – mainly strip tests and microscopy. Though it´s not always easy when several things we needed to do those test where out of stock. And supplies usually take a day or two to arrive.

I´v been integrated into the lab-team pretty fast and carried out most of the tests on my own – except microscopy for malaria parasites – which you can´t really learn in a week.

 I´m staying in the blue house

On the first weekend I had arranged to go to the Hairy Lemon Island to do some kayaking. One of the drivers who usually works for the clinic agreed to get me there. The dirt roads were in an OK state so we got there pretty fast – I even managed to get a few surfs on Nile Special on friday evening – it was so amazing to be back on that wave! And the warm welcome to the Island by the staff who still remembered me from my last visit in march earlier this year – almost felt like coming home!

That weekend I met Harry – a Scottish kayaker who would join me on the Hairy Lemon for the next 2 weekends. At this time of the year the Hairy Lemon is still very quiet – only a few visitors and almost no kayakers are around.

In the following week I started to see patients with Dr. Charles and trying to get used to prescription practice here in Uganda. I´ve been doing some reading – but textbooks vary from what is actually happening here – mostly because of limited diagnostics. So usually the treatment is very broad to make sure an infection is sufficiently treated. Major complaints of the patients are infectious diseases – malaria of course on the top. And AIDS is a huge problem although Uganda is still a model country regarding the HIV epidemic.

Clearly also getting more and more a problem are the diseases of civilization like hypertension and diabetes – although the treatment varies again from what I´m used to: mostly older drugs that are no longer in us in Europe are prescribed due to the lower cost. And that is one of the bigger problems in Ugandan healthcare: cost! It is really amazing what they manage to do in the clinic with reduced possibilities.

The second weekend I went back to the Hairy Lemon Island – to get some more water underneath my kayak! And again I managed to get a few rides on Friday evening. And this time two other kayakers had arrived: Brendan from Canada and his buddy Paul from the US. Both quite used to big water and big waves, because they use to paddle the Ottawa river in Canada a lot! So the Island once more turned into a kayaking paradise! The waterlevels were good – low in the morning for surfing Club Wave and higher in the evening so we could surf Nile Special! With Brendan and Paul always keen to give advice it was really fun to be there. During the lazy times we played a lot of Frisbee Golf (like golf – just played with a frisbee along a course) or watched Paul´s amazing kayaking videos. Unfortunately those weekends are short and on Sunday evening I always have to go back to Bujagali and get ready for the next week.

This was also the weekend where there was a total solar eclipse in northern Uganda! In the southern region it was still good to watch – though after the moon covered about 60% of the sun clouds moved in and we couldn´t see the eclipse any more.

Paul on Club Wave

This week would be a lot more stressy than those before: On one hand I had to get into medical practice, on the other Dr, Charles asked me to do a presentation for him in a local bank and then In the clinic to. Unfortunately the internet at the Nile River Explorers Camp (which is free to use for Mzungus) is sketchy at the best times so it was hard to get by good facts on stroke in Uganda. And to make a presentation in an easy understandable way but also suitable for medically well trainied personnel at the clinic wasn´t easy. But it worked out and the presentation was well received – at the bank and at the clinic.

I also started seeing patients on my own with one of the nurses translating for me. I still had to ask my fellow doctors now and then – especially regarding referrals to hospitals or other specialists but otherwise – with the assistance of the nurses it went quite well.

On Thursday I joined a team from the clinic to go on the Family Planning Outreach – which was very interesting to see and also an adventure due the heavy rainfalls in the Jinja area. Some parts of the road got flooded and uite a few cars got stuck in there. Luckily we didn´t have to go into Jinja that day and only witnessed the chaos from a safe distance. The Family Planning is all about different methods of birth control: from shirt term (Condoms) to long term (injections and implants) to permanent (operation) and goes along with immunization of babies.

On the weekend I – of course – went to the Hairy Lemon again to meet the two boys and to celebrate Harry´s last weekend in Uganda! And we did get a party started on Friday evening with a few other visitors – young people from Austria and Germany who work in Kampala and spent their weekend on the White Nile. And it was a great party, I can say!

On Saturday we ran the river from Kalagala to the Hairy Lemon – Harry guiding us down (cause I dind´t remember all the various channels – and showing Brendan and Paul the famous rapids of the White Nile. We had a great day out on the river – always having in mind that in a not to distant future all those rapids could be flooded due to another dam being built downstreams. This would have an huge impact on the local tourism business and all the connected jobs – but is totally negated by the government. The local companies are now trying to raise the awareness of people – tourists and Ugandans alike – to this issue and we kayakers eagerly join in to spread the word!

Unfortunately this weekend the waterlevel wasn´t high enough for Nile Special but we had an awesome session at the Club Wave on Sunday morning – and due to the advice by Paul my moves are getting better and better!

This time of the year still being wet season doesn´t help with the waterlevels at all – it only makes the dirt roads slippery and at some points so deep that it always is an adventure to be out there in a car: you never know if you´re not getting stuck in the mud. Which didn´t happen yet – but only due to the immense driving skills of the local drivers.

So three weeks have gone by and here is my first blog entry from Uganda – I´ll try to do more reegular updates!

For more information: http://www.softpowerhealth.org/