Sarah was given the opportunity to share her knowledge of
Family Planning with a number of captive audiences this past month, including
the River of Life Church “marrieds”, the antenatal clinic (all patients and
staff), the paediatric staff, and the nutrition unit (staff, students and
parents). Fortunately it was not quite
like being thrown into the lion’s den, despite some anticipation! In fact all the objections that were raised
were done so in a very amicable way, and no blood at all was spilt (which is
always a good thing!). She did, however,
have to chuckle out loud, when one of the “anti-family planning” group argued
that if family planning was present, the world would become devoid of
people. Yes, dear Sir, I am sure that
that is very high on the world’s list of concerns right now!!
There has been lots of work on the health front, and we have
been involved in some useful outreach work, offering free health checks to
children in various settings. School
children, street children, orphans, and then children in the poor trading area
of Nyendo have all been checked, weighed, prodded, and treated for various
conditions that they seem to have contentedly carried around with them for
weeks or months – chest infections, ringworm, even pelvic inflammatory
disease. Since these are opportunistic
checks, it is a bit concerning to think that these conditions would otherwise
have been left untreated.
Of course, none of this work would have been possible
without generous donations by those amongst you, enabling us to buy the
required medication. In addition, we
have benefited from the kindness of the Royal College of General Practitioners,
who very generously funded the purchase of a resuscitation doll (aptly called
“Mukisa”, which means “Blessing”), which Sarah has been using to train up our
nurses/doctors. Since she has had to do
more resuscitation here than ever in her life before, it seems rather
appropriate that we train up our staff, so this equipment is a blessing indeed!
May saw Operation ARK (Acts of Random Kindness) reach its
fifth anniversary, as Timmo and Geraldie ran around like headless chickens
organising over 100 youth from local churches, hitting the streets of Nyendo
and Masaka to clean the filth, spruce up people’s houses and shops with a lick
of paint, and give out boxes of food to some of the neediest families. All in all it was very successful, although
having arranged with the Masaka town clerk to clean the centre of town on one
afternoon, we discovered he had then become worried about the possibility of
publicity about “local volunteers doing what paid street cleaners should be
doing”, and in a fervour of activity organised his staff to sweep, scrub and
polish as if the queen of England was about to visit, on the very morning
before we arrived! Having nothing to do,
we returned to Nyendo, where there is never a lack of grime to deal with!
We have since decided that any time we feel
the town is looking a bit shabby, we will simply tell the town clerk we want to
come the next day with our army of youth to clean, safe in the knowledge that
in a fit of panic he will then quickly mobilise his street cleaners to do it
instead!
Of course, no blog would be complete without the mention of
our pride and joy, the lovely Mr Magoo and Texas Pete. Many of you commented that perhaps naming
female chickens these names was an odd choice.
Well, you get the last laugh, since it turns out that Texas Pete is a
fully fledged male, so his name at least has certainly been a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Our three month wait for eggs continues..........
