Uganda adventure: Day 6

Louis Picard, board member of Bright Kids USA Foundation, is a well-seasoned world traveler, and he sends a message via Pauline that a rule of thumb for jetlag is that recovery may take 1 day for every 1 hour difference in time zones, and that days 3 & 4 are usually the worst. With the 7 hour time difference from home, the good news is that I can look forward to normalization of my sleep pattern any day now (Sue tells me it’s never normal at the best of times). Bad news: perhaps another week of burning the midnight oil and dragging during the days after I return – but my schedule will be decidedly more hectic.

I am up early and stay up to enjoy seeing the little ones off to school.

Shira and Dan with Arnold behind

Sandra

Dan, Sandra & Shira

Rebecca

I just love the individual expressions on these faces!

Friday is one day before our big vaccination clinic, so Rose and I have planned to post more notices around the community. She is lettering them all by hand, so I take a stab at doing my first ever sign in Lugandan. It is surprisingly difficult to copy a couple of paragraphs in a language I do not understand, and Rose chuckles at my frequent revisions. We set out towards banana village then up through the brickworks quarry which has seen the landscape gouged out by decades of hand labour. I remark on a pyramid of dirt the height of a man in a field, and Rose advises me it is an anthill. Perhaps Alicia should fear the ants here more than some of the other critters. It is interesting to see the different types of dwellings clustered along the winding red sand uneven roadway. Folks are generally friendly and wave, and we need to move over for the occasional boda boda. The roadway gets too narrow for any bigger vehicle to negotiate comfortably, except perhaps a jeep or land rover.

Rose posts a notice of our vaccination clinic

Anthills, Uganda style

It is developing into another scorching hot day, perhaps 38 celsius and several locals have remarked about the unseasonable warm weather. I rinse off my dusty feet and just start to cool down again when Angel rushes outside, cell phone in hand, saying we have an emergency, and I must dress to go with Rose immediately. Angel is Victoria’s daughter who comes to BKU 3-4 times weekly with her infant son Hakim. Today she is watching over operations while Victoria has gone to Kampala. “Mama” has received a phonecall stating that Ivan, one of the BKU kids, was badly injured in a road traffic accident and was taken to hospital but not expected to make it. Ivan’s school is overcrowded and new classrooms are being built. In the interim, students attend either a morning or an afternoon half-day shift. Ivan would have been walking to his school around noon, and his route requires crossing the busy Entebbe-Kampala highway. Ivan is 15.

I quickly don long pants and a dressier shirt, and we hurry the 1 km trek to the highway and catch a minivan to Entebbe. A nurse at the ER checks and re-checks records and speaks to other staff, but states Ivan never came through their facility. She suggests we try a medical facility a few blocks up the hill. Sister Immaculate & Rose are frantically making calls, trying to ascertain more details, but the person who called Victoria with the information is not someone she knows. Striding along the sidewalk, I am treated to a couple of unusual sights. Across the road is a tall attractive Caucasian girl with long blonde hair and a flowing hippy style skirt walking along with a guitar slung over her shoulder. Further along, not ten feet away from us on the grass, a monkey casually saunters parallel to our path, occasionally stopping.

The outpatient department at the medical centre has no record of Ivan, and they tell us that all trauma would go to the ER which we already visited. I feel pretty helpless and useless, having no knowledge of the medical/transport/information infrastructure in this unfamiliar nation. Sister & Rose decide the next logical step is to make our way to Ivan’s school and get some more information. Three other BKU boys attend that institution, and surely someone can shed further light on the situation. There is no land-line phone or administration office at the school, from what I can gather, and none of the children have cell phones.

Another minivan ride, then a march uphill in the heat, about a 2 km trek to Ivan’s school where we encounter Richard, the BKU employee who manages the animals. He gives us the thankful news that Ivan is in school and fine. Just to be sure, the ladies summon out each of our schoolboys to see and touch them for their own reassurance. It seems a malicious hoax is more likely than an honest mistake as the explanation for this episode. Victoria’s repeated phone calls to the unknown number are not picked up, and the ER staff had told us there were no schoolboy-aged trauma victims today. Relieved but hot & thirsty, we are thankful for the downhill grade back to the compound, and much more thankful for the joyous outcome.

Ivan’s school is a series of 4 buildings, each consisting of 2-3 classrooms with open windows . One building requires completion of the roof, but classes go on with tarps for shade. Another building in the earlier stages of construction is unoccupied. The classrooms are about the size of our Ontario equivalents, but crowded with benches in front of long desks in crowded rows. I would estimate there are 70 boys in each room. All teaching is done in English, from Primary 1 right through to post-secondary education. Ivan’s is a public institution and I am told that such overcrowding is the norm. Many of the BKU kids attend private schools requiring tuition, and a couple of these which we pass on the walk home appear from the outside to be better appointed with less crowding.

I am awakened from my brief nap to meet a special visitor, a remarkable lady named Hanifa. I will tell you her story in a future post, since I want to confirm the accuracy of my account before publishing it.

Prayer service then bed and a more restful sleep straight through to 4:30 am.