An Explosive Start to 2014!

We have met the start of 2014 with a hearty dose of food poisoning (ok, wine poisoning, but due to sharing one of those tiny bottles from the plane, so it must have been off), so it has literally been an explosive start to the year! Having recovered we felt it was high time to report on our previous month, having shown impressive neglect of our blog of late.  First things first:  

WE HOPE YOU HAD A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND WONDERFUL NEW YEAR! 

We haven’t produced a Christmas video this year, mainly due to lack of time, and the fact that we were back (albeit briefly) in the UK at Christmas.  We had a wonderful time with our families – Noah was adored by all and the feeling was mutual!

Now for a brief wrap-up of what we did before we left......  Well, it’s been all change on the Baby Unit, with three nurses being hired and trained.  Just as well, as we’ve had teeny babies galore, and they need to have a nurse devoted to them.  The Baby Unit also did a CME (Continuing Medical Education) presentation for the rest of the hospital, and it was fantastic that head nurse Cathy volunteered to teach a portion – and did an excellent job!

On other medical work, baby Noah and Sarah did some health checks at the local “Nurture Baby home” (with visiting medical students Katie and Lizzie) – though Noah concluded that health checks were over-rated and demanded to be taken home after a couple of hours.  We also performed health checks for a group of street children, as part of a programme organised by a former White Eagle (Ssemakula).  Sarah was blessed to have the help of two visiting doctors (Emma and Dan), and it was also great to be able to follow-up the children, since Ssemakula was able to arrange for them to attend the dentists to have some teeth pulled out.

As for home sweet home, since our last blog, we’ve welcomed a number of new beasties to our clan.  The first (and by FAR the most annoying) is new puppy Kibuto (which means “fatty”), who incessantly bites our ankles and scratches us, which is wearing thin.  We’ve been spraying her with water, which seems to help, but any wisdom from more knowledgeable dog owners would be most welcome!  MUCH more delightful are 5 new little friends who we only discovered 3 days ago – 5 sweet little chicks, the fruit of Mr Loverman’s unmerciful and relentless violations of Shabba. 

However, Uganda is a place where there's always a challenge waiting around the corner and having gleefully taken every chance to show off our new brood, we awoke this morning to discover that a wild beast had attacked in the night, killing Shabba, one of the chicks, and breaking another one's leg. The lame one was compassionately dispatched by Timmo (with the aid of a hoe), whilst the other 3 have made the move from the chicken house into Chez Crow and are now inside a box complete with homemade water bottles to keep them toasty! We have names in mind, but will wait to see if they survive first....

The newest members of the tribe
(but how long will they last...?)

On the bright side....

•     You are floored by a rabid attack of food poisoning... but on the bright side... what better way to reduce on the inevitable post-Christmas indulgence paunch?
•     Your son screeches in your ear for 2 hours at bedtime.... but on the bright side... your nights are less likely to be disturbed by the rabid motley crew of prayers who live next door due to the resultant sensorineural deafness!
•      LET IT BE KNOWN: THERE IS NO BRIGHT SIDE TO TEETHING!

You know you’ve been in Uganda too long when...

• 

      You find rat poo in the bottom of your cup of hot milk having just finished drinking it, and to be honest, you don’t really care!