Africa - January, 2015 (Day 10)

January 20, 2015

This was Lunch & Learn Day at the clinic.  For the last several months clinic staff have been putting on a lunch & learn session once a month.  Kayoro residents sign up in advance, attend a learning session, and are given lunch.  It’s proven to be quite popular; food always brings out numbers.  Because we volunteers were going to be in Kayoro, it was decided we should take charge of the education piece.  Cammie did an impressive job putting together training materials on various aspects of sanitation.

Jered and I were the Handwashing team.  He read the materials and organized our “skit” in which he served as narrator and I was the “actor” miming the action at his direction (no preparation required for me).  The trainee group was divided into three so each of the three presenting units did our training three times.  In Handwashing we overacted and were silly, and people appeared to enjoy the presentation.  And from the questions they asked, it seems they listened and understood.

 Histrionics

                                                                    More Histrionics

                                     
                                                    Taking a bow

                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                   An involved audience member

While we were doing our presentation for the third, and last, time, Mariam appeared at the clinic.  She had brought me a picture of herself – in the uniform of the Uganda Patriots school club.  She looked snappy in the military-style pants, shirt, and cap.  Her grandmother who lives right next door to the clinic had directed Mariam to take me to see her, which was done.  When we walked up to her grandmother’s house, she was sweeping the ground in front of the cooking hut, bent over using the short broom.  When she stood up, she was still bent over – not unreasonable if, as Mariam and her brother said, she was 100 years old.  While it seems unlikely to me that she could have lived to that age, they were very clear on how old she was.

  

We also went to visit her uncle, with whom Mariam lives.  He is the youngest brother but the one responsible for the family.  I had met her aunt on several previous occasions but never her uncle.  He was behind the house making bricks.  He had hired someone to form the bricks and put them out to dry.

They are piled up to dry and eventually when enough are ready, a fire is built underneath, and they are fired.

On the way back to the clinic, I saw a tree with these beautiful flowers.  They are intended to be decorative -- and are.

  

Returned to the clinic where the formal presentations were just beginning.  This involved presenting plaques to the seven Kayoro groups who had been instrumental in getting the clinic started; a representative from each spoke.  Unfortunately, the standard for speeches in Uganda is long – and these were.  Then each had to be translated into the other language.  David, representing GUW, spoke for a mercifully short time, but it still needed to be translated.  My back was bothering me so I sat inside the clinic on a bench with my back against the wall.

It was finally over and the folk who’d come to learn and lunch finally got their food.  Mariam helped distribute it.  We volunteers, not wanting to eat ugali and gristly meat one more time, elected to leave and got back to the hotel about 2:30.  A cold Coke was wonderful.

At 4 p.m. eight of the volunteers joined Dr. Epaute, chair of the Africa GUW Board (and someone I’d met two years ago) to go to his ancestral home and meet his parents.  I would have found that interesting but was too tired to go for no one knew how long and be social and sociable.  So I remained at the hotel indulging in some much-needed down time.  Apparently Dr. Epaute created a family compound that is very lovely and very upscale for the area; the volunteers who went were much impressed.

During the first part of the day Jennifer was finishing the last step of the grinder process.  The tables, supposedly ready Sunday afternoon, had not been.  However, they were all delivered by Monday.  Unfortunately, four screws (vital to the operation) were missing from one grinder so Tuesday morning Jennifer got and delivered the screws.  Now all four grinders are complete with tables and ready to go.  Here is a picture showing the table designed by David.