Anthony would like me to issue a disclaimer for him: he had NOTHING to do with this blog post, did not approve of the photos selected, and wants the world (or at least our little part of it) to know that this is no longer his blog, now that school is over.






A Batwa mother, with a cup of millet porridge.

This photo is from our visit to a Batwa community with Fr. I. It was an amazing day, an opportunity we could only have imagined having, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Anthony and I are handing out some of the school supplies collected by my niece Anna, at her school in Cincinnati, to children who come to the Saturday morning orphans program here at St. Francis. They learn skills, have some fun, and get a hot meal. **********OK, I'm really messing up this blog and can't get the text where I want it. The photo below this one and on the left is of John sitting in front of the newly painted wall in the nutrition room. The recipes for f-75 and f-100 are painted directly on the wall, with picture instructions. The painting was done by Casey, Diana, John, and two UK students (I don't use non-family names without their permission).

Louie, with a sister-friend, who cooks at a local school and is an herbalist. She is teaching him about local medicinal plants.

Anthony is grilling what we Americans would call "cow corn" or field corn, which is a staple here. It's a taste and texture that really grows on you (and is a real jaw workout!). He likes it cooked over the isiguri.

These birds are the crested cranes, the national bird of Uganda. They are beautiful, noisy, and this pair often feeds in the land just adjacent to our house. In this photo, they are right in front of the house next door to ours, where our fellow American lives.

A doctor friend planned a huge birthday party for his wife, and the whole hospital community became involved with the food preparations. These ladies are peeling carrots and potatoes, sorting rice, chopping,

seasoning, and tending dishes over open fires and isigiris (clay charcoal cookers). It took all day, but the end products were delicious.

Roasting a goat for the party. The gentleman in the middle is the true chef; the others are just enjoying the photo op. He makes a delicious ginger-lemon-garlic marinade and tends the spit carefully.

Preparing an intestine dish for the party.

Photos of Just Stuff

John is weighing a baby that was being discharged. The baby is about a month old and was brought into the hospital by his 14-year-old sister, who takes care of him since his mom died when he was born. He was malnourished and weighed 2.3 kg, which is less than 5 pounds. John makes the special formula that they use for dehydrated or malnourished babies (which are only 4-6% of the pediatric patients). The sister was given formulas to take home. She is from the village we went to on that outreach when we first got here, the one that we have photos from, on a previous blog.

This is our kitchen sink. We have to heat water for washing dishes. The drain leaks; good thing the floors are concrete.

I'm holding a banana. They're really good if you buy the right kind.

There is a bee-keeping project in Kisoro, and quite a few bee-keepers around. This hanging round thing is a traditional beehive, alot different than ours at home. The honey here is stronger, mostly from the eucalyptus trees. On a warm, sunny day you can really hear the bees buzzing in the trees and almost feel the vibration of them, it is so strong.

This is how grass is cut here. They call it "slashing." They only get paid about $1 a day and it is hard work.

This is John in the outdoor shower at Bushara Island Camp, where we spent the night after Easter. You tell the people who work there what time you want a shower, and they deliver a 5-gallon bucket of warm water to your campsite and fill up the green tank. I didn't use it, because I don't like showers here.

This is the mixer my Dad fashioned to make whipped cream on Easter. It consists of a hand-drill, and 3 forks, held together with duct tape. The cardboard keeps the forks at a proper distance and keeps paint flecks from dropping into the whipped cream. A real whisk is coming with my aunts. We can make real whipped cream now because we now have access to fresh cow's milk (delivered in a liquor bottle).

This is my (Anthony's) bed. I don't use the net for mosquitoes so much as for all the other creatures, crawling and flying, including mice, spiders, millipedes, crickets, and beetles. The mosquitoes don't seem so bad compared to them.

Pediatric Care in and around St. Francis Hospital, by Anthony's mother!

Wish I could lighten this photo from this end. This little girl has been in the hospital for weeks, being treated for endocarditis. She has two weeks left of her treatment and so far it's looking pretty good for her. Lou buys ceftriaxone for her in a Kisoro "Human Body Shop" since it's not available in the hospital dispensary. And here it costs about $1.25-$1.50 per vial, as opposed to $56 per vial in the U.S.!
By the way, we are still learning this blog thing, and it's Martha putting together this blog and doing the typing. I can't figure out how to get typing above the first photo. But I wanted everyone to know that it's not Anthony talking this time.

Louis and Sr. Emmanuel are examining this patient, who has both a bowel obstruction and glemerulonephritis (inflamation of the kidney), both secondary to worms that have just consumed the child's body. There are horrible worm stories that can be told; many die from them. Sr. Emmanuel is originally from Rwanda, she came here to join the convent many years ago. She is a DEAR, and so good to Lou.
This premie weighed 1.43 kg at birth, and is now up to 1.60. Yea!
We encountered a woman while at Bunyonye Island earlier this week, who is caring for a newborn whose mother and twin died in childbirth. The father is very poor and unable to handle an infant, the paternal grandmother was feeding the baby cow's milk and unboiled lake water, and the child wasn't doing well. This woman, Evas, offered to take the baby and asked for feeding advice from Lou. We helped her get enough formula to last a month or so and he helped her with information on how to adapt cow's milk for better feeding.

Anthony flat out refused to have his photo put in this blog, especially a photo of him holding an orphan. I snuck this one in, just to show you the beautiful island we visited on the day after Easter, after lunch with the Bishop.
Louis teaching the nursing students. He's giving two formal lectures each week now, as well as informal teaching on the ward. He didn't know he'd be doing any teaching, but is happy to do it, and sees it as one of the most valuable ways he can maybe help improve health care here. Any thing the nurses learn, they take with them wherever they go to work, some to hospitals, others to remote out-stations and clinics in villages. You can imagine that he's quite good at teaching.
Last week I (Martha) helped Marie distribute albendizole at the local schools. April is Children's Month in Uganda and all children aged 14 and under receive a free tablet of albendizole, which is a de-worming medication and an essential health action in Uganda. This is the classroom for the oldest grades at the gov't primary school: can you believe how many children were in it? They were such well-behaved children, too. I counted about 130 students in his classroom, and that day we distributed 1195 doses at this particular school. Louie laughed about how many piles of worms were going to be excreted the day or two after this!
John with baby Michael who weighed less than 2 pounds at birth and is now flourishing. He was taken under Marie's wing and bottle fed after his mother died in childbirth. He's now living at Potter's Village, an Anglican-run orphanage which keeps babies and small children until they are strong enough to be cared for by others.
Here's John making the F-75 pediatric feeding formula (75 calories per ml), from a recipe developed by the World Health Organization to use with malnourished infants and small children. We are still missing some of the key ingredients, but the formula still seems to be helping the babies who are using it. Because of a refrigeration problem, John makes it every morning and delivers it in flasks to both the pediatric ward and the surgery ward.
Obviously, this patient isn't a pediatric patient. This photo was taken when I went on a home visit with the head HIV counselor from the public health service (St. Francis Hospital). The counselor listened so patiently to this gentlemen, who had a large infected wound on his back, and tried to convince him to come to the hospital for care.

... Outreach to Rubuguri

This is the library for the secondary school we visited. They told us they have one textbook for every six students.

Last week we went to a town called Rubuguri to hand out workbooks to orphans. It took us about 2 hours to get there, and the car ride was quite an experience. We saw a ton of cool scenery and lots of interesting people. When we arrived, we had a long tour of the Parish and schools and then distributed the workbooks, pencils, and pens to the caretakers of the orphans. When it was all done, the leftover pencils were given to the schoolchildren who had crowded around to watch. You would never think that anyone could be as excited as these kids were just to get 2 pencils. It really makes me appreciate what I have.

The car ride back was even more interesting than the first one. Along the way, our driver stopped to pick up several groups of hitchhikers. One group consisted of 2 men from the army (complete with machine guns), a woman and her baby, two large suitcases, a 5 gallon water jug, and a live chicken. All in the trunk of a medium sized car! We also saw lots and lots of cows and goats walking in the street. Although at some points I thought I might die, speeding around corners on dirt roads along very high cliffs, not knowing what may be on the other side, we made it back safely.

Last week we went to a town called Rubuguri to hand out workbooks to orphans. It took us about 2 hours to get there, and the car ride was quite an experience. We saw a ton of cool scenery and lots of interesting people. When we arrived, we had a long tour of the Parish and schools and then distributed the workbooks, pencils, and pens to the caretakers of the orphans. When it was all done, the leftover pencils were given to the schoolchildren who had crowded around to watch. You would never think that anyone could be as excited as these kids were just to get 2 pencils. It really makes me appreciate what I have.

The car ride back was even more interesting than the first one. Along the way, our driver stopped to pick up several groups of hitchhikers. One group consisted of 2 men from the army (complete with machine guns), a woman and her baby, two large suitcases, a 5 gallon water jug, and a live chicken. All in the trunk of a medium sized car! We also saw lots and lots of cows and goats walking in the street. Although at some points I thought I might die, speeding around corners on dirt roads along very high cliffs, not knowing what may be on the other side, we made it back safely.

This is the biology teacher and the chemistry teacher in their laboratory. Most school don't have them.
This is an exceptionally nice classroom compared to others. Notice the dirt floor. Often 5-6 children share one desk. And there's no electricity and the lighting is really bad.
...The walls of the school were covered with educational drawings. Some of them were really funny, such as this one of the diagram of a dry cell battery just below the respiratory system.
...John and Anthony handing out the blank notebooks, ten books per child, to the guardians of the AIDS orphans (who are often the orphans themselves). There was a lot of tension that we would run out of the notebooks before each person had received their share.
....These students are waiting in line to receive their pencils from the AIDS orphans program.

Greetings from Mutolere, Uganda from Anthony

This is our house here in Uganda. It's large, concrete, and hollow-sounding.

There are a lot of bugs and other crawling things in our house. Luckily, we have mosquito nets over our beds which keep not just mosquitoes out, but tons of other bugs. One morning, there were about 60-75 BIG spiders crawling around in our shower, but once we sprayed them, they were dead in a few minutes and we just wiped them down the drain. My dad found a huge, odd bug in their bedroom that looked like nothing we had ever seen before. It had six long legs, long antennae, and a large abdomen. Another thing inside our house is lizards. They’re not quite as common, but sometimes you’ll see one just running across your bedroom floor. There are lots of other interesting things, but those are the most interesting. -Anthony

******************This woman is teaching children at the Saturday morning orphans program how to weave mats. There's a photo a bit further down of some of them practicing their art.
This is the view from our front door, and some of the neighbor children who cut through "our"yard.
Nursing students performing a traditional dance at their Women's Day celebration. It was a lengthy celebration program but very enjoyable and entertaining.
******************Children learning the art of weaving floor mats.