Uganda - Clinic Day #3

Good morning early morning.  I awakened early (3am-ish) and haven't been able to get back to sleep since.  I gave up and got out of cot around 5:30am to find Mary awake too.  Sometimes the early morning visits are the best.  The roosters, the goats, and several snoring team members making a unique chorus of sound.  I was listening this morning to the roosters starting to crow.  The first rooster called out far south of us and it was nice hearing this ripple of roosters crowing that got closer and closer to the camp and then passed to the roosters north of the camp for as long as I could hear.  Very cool.  By the way, there is a rooster at the home right next our camp that is a talking rooster - at least that is what my 3:30am brain believes.  It sounds to me like he is saying "I can hear you!"  Listen for yourself and see what you think: 

Talking roosters or tired nurse?

As we were in the kitchen making and eating breakfast we talked about the happenings of yesterday.  I spoke of a strapping young man who came in complaining of an STD who repeatedly, emphatically insisted that he had never had sex -  even as I explained the concept of sexually transmitted diseases.  Mike chimed in to say that maybe what he had was the first immaculate infection.  Funny, right?  


Harrison, our med school aspiring high school senior, got quite the education yesterday.  He got to see and palpate hernias (umbilical and inguinal), got to listen to wheezing lung sounds, and demonstrate how to use an inhaler, palpate mastitis, see horrible thrush in a child's mouth, and saw many, many moms nursing their babies.  He told Mary on the first day that this trip has really confirmed his calling to medicine.  I am so impressed with this young man!  He even has managed to not blush when the scrotal wisecracks are passed amongst the nurses (Mary and me).  Unfortunately I don't have many "action shots" of Harrison because we were all so busy in the clinic I didn't take many pictures during clinic time.  Trust me though, this guy is going to be an amazing doctor one day.  

Here Harrison is seeing Dr. Mike work on a woman with a foreign body in her eye.

The medical team: Dr. Michael Boniface, me, Mary Romer RN, Dr. Jeff Jones, 

and Dr.-to-be Harrison Brown.  We worked so well together!

We learned that anytime Harrison had free time and got still he fell asleep.

This is a dangerous thing to do when Mark is around.

Because, you see, Mark likes to stack things on people's heads.

Here's Mark channelling his inner 7 year old.  

Look at the determination on that face!

Harrison can sleep anywhere in any position.  

This should serve him well in med school.  

Devotion was led by the Africans this morning.  The music keeps getting better and more animated. But the highlight of the devotion was when Abraham (the one who has many sons) delivered the message on the Great Commission. 

Abraham challenged us to use our freedom of speech to speak the truth of Christ. 

 He challenged us to make our sharing of Christ part of our work.  Because those that heard Jesus shared what he said is why we know about the gospel.  We have the most noble job of spreading the gospel.  God promises to be with us.  He spoke to the African brothers to share God with the unsaved Africans brothers.  He said that they lived with them and have many opportunities to save them from damnation.  He then challenged the Americans to not fear to speak about Christ.  He said that we are scared to speak of Christ in schools or worry about offending others.  If we know the truth - speak it!  We have the freedom of speech but we fear to speak about Christ!  We then moved into prayer time and spent the "Christ chatter" time praying for us to see the opportunitiess to minister, for the continued safety and health of the teams, our families, and for Steve Hudson.  A closing prayer was offered by Tom Boone.  

7:35pm update:

Well, we finished yet another wonderful day in clinic.  Today we took it a little easier and cut off the crowd at 500.  This put us out of the clinic at 5pm.  Considering the day was started with devotion time at 8am and clinic started right at 9am with only a break for lunch - not to mention fairly warm temps - we were tired and appreciated the break.  Clinic may have been slightly shorter but we managed to see some really cool folks. 

The government inspector and me.  She was the tallest African woman I saw that week!

Keeping the government official happy.

 The government official who inspects mission operations came through our camp.  She was very cordial and was treated like a queen!  She met all of us, seemed happy to have her picture taken with all of the medical folks, ate lunch with us, and shared our snacks.  We really needed for her to be happy, and she was.  I also had the pleasure to treat the mayor of this little town, one of the municipal officials and a Ugandan police officer. 

This officer was actually very friendly but didn't want to smile for the photo.  

I found this to be true of several of the Africans - 

all smiles before and after photos but not during.  

 The pastor's conference ended today and so several of the pastors also came through clinic.  I had the privilege to see one of the female pastors, although I didn't know she was a pastor until it was time for her to leave and I said "God bless you" to her and she very emphatically blessed me and thanked me for coming all the way from America to see her countrymen.  She blessed me and my family and praised God for all of us.  One her way out of the clinic she stopped to thank the interpreters, the pharmacist and all of the pharmacy helpers.  She was all smiles and truly was a joy to serve.


Mary had a very cute little old man that we dubbed "The Human Fossil". 

Another fellow who smiled until the camera came out.

Notice the pink framed reading glasses he was given today.  

He rocked those frames!

He was such a delight - animated and engaging - and so tiny!  

 He was 93!  Steve Hudson of MedReach told me that he had never seen an African that old.  With a life expectancy of around 47, the 70 year olds that we have seen are considered very old.  And why was he at clinic today?  He fell off his bike!  Unbelievable!  He was charming and spry and a joy to talk to through the translator.  The best part was when I jokingly asked him what plans he had for the second half of his life - Mary's translator Santo took my question to mean did he know where his eternal life would be spent.  Santo then very sweetly and sincerely talked to him about making a decision for Christ.  The old man said that he wanted to make sure that he spent his eternity in heaven.  He listened to what Santo had to say to him and asked if we could pray with him so that he could ask Christ into his heart.  We of course obliged him and he left a happy man.  Such a joy to meet him. 

Santo very sweetly engaging this gentleman.

Santo explaining to me that he desired to know Christ and to spend his eternity in heaven.

What a powerful witness our translators have been to our patients and to us!

  Over and over again I have been impressed with the professionalism and witness of our translators.  They are very open with their faith and are bold in their willingness to share the gospel.  They set the bar very high for the rest of us!

Before dark we all got the opportunity to walk to the nearby village about 500 yards away.  It was like walking through National Geographic magazine yet very organized - sort of a village main street. 

This woman, with her baby strapped to her back, 

was running the grist mill when we came by.  

It's 5 o'clock somewhere and these gentlemen were enjoying 

their adult beverage of choice, probably homemade.

Lots of motorcycle and bicycle repair shops around.  

With their roads I don't doubt that these guys do a steady business.

Ladies working outside their shop. 

I haven't seen a treadle sewing machine in a very long time.

The gang's all here!

Everyone came out while we were walking through.  

It was obvious that we were the evening's entertainment for them.  

I don't imagine that they see white folks too often.

 There were homemade brick and adobe buildings on a relatively small scale - the average building was probably 8x16 and looked to be two rooms - the front room being a store, the back room probably living quarters.  There were stores, bike repair shops, grist mill, and grain storage.  Several folks came up to us and wanted us to take their pictures. 


 After taking one rather inebriated man's picture he was very insistent that I marry him.  When I showed him my wedding ring and told him I was married he said he didn't mind that I was married.  My funny nurse friend Mary told me that my reputation for checking kids for inguinal hernias and undescended testicles had preceded me.  Hey, a girl's gotta be known for something, right?  

The gentleman on the right?  

He's the one that got away.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch we had lots of eggs and bananas left to use up before they spoiled so I scrounged through the trunks of kitchen supplies and managed to find a can of cream.  With a little bit of a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix, cinnamon and sugar, and some shortbread cookies I managed to come up with a semi-decent banana pudding.  Not great, but not too shabby.  Mark cooked dinner for us that was wonderful.  We had pan fried summer sausage with pan fried potatoes with peppers and onions.  Yum. 


After dinner several of us gathered around and had an opportunity to meet as a group to share experiences and chat for a while before scattering to our tents for our baby wipe baths and bed. 

 Mike and Nancy - finally feeling better.  

 Mark

 Brenda

Sweet Jerry

Steve solving the problems of the world via cellphone.

Harrison and Patricia chillin'.

Heidi, who I managed to catch without a smile on her face. 

Sorry about that Heidi.

Roy, the man with a million stories (and all of them interesting!)

 Everyone expressed the thankfulness for this mission trip.  It is hard work but very rewarding.  Being a Martha-, not a Mary-type personality, I am much more comfortable and joyful doing this kind of work for Christ.  I do not have the gift of teaching or evangelism, but I most definitely have the gift of compassion and helping.  I feel like I am in my element here.  Also, being the listmaker that I am, I am making notes for next time.  I have talked with both doctors - the wonderful African Dr. Michael Boniface and the infinitely patient American pediatrician Dr. Jeff Jones and the fearless pharmacist, Penny Pickering and have requested that after this clinic we correspond via  email and come up with a really comprehensive list of medications and supplies that we need to do clinic.  All are on board to help make this happen.  

Uganda - Clinic Day #2

Hallelujah, I slept last night!  Having the quiet night in camp and having not had a decent night's sleep since two nights before leaving home I was grateful to finally settle down enough to rest well.  Good thing too because we have had quite the day!  

a beautiful sunrise to start the day

My day got a really nice start seeing the Southern Cross constellation this morning when I woke up.  It was really bright and easy to spot.  

Today it was the American camp's time to lead the joint devotion.  Patricia started things off by leading the group in some of our favorite choruses which the Africans jumped right in on and began harmonizing.  Tom Boone from our team then led the message using Psalm 124.  He spoke about the Lord being our help.  Sometimes problems seem too big but God will show Himself if we are faithful to look for Him.  Sometimes it takes suffering in our life to see just how good God is.  He followed that passage with I John 5:5 which states that if we live in Christ we don't just endure the world, we conquer the world.  Powerful.  Then one of my favorite parts came:  Fredrick, the leader of the African group, led us in our prayer time.  He asked for prayer requests and then assigned a different request to different parts of the room.  Then the Christ chatter began.  After the devotional time everyone gave their reports from the previous day.  The Jesus film team reported that they went to a  Nyinga 1 village and showed the film to 250 people.  Of those people 150 prayed the prayer of confession.  Of those 150 people 80 stayed afterward for the first follow up with the team.  The evangelism team reported that during clinic yesterday 144 people made professions of faith, 70 pairs of glasses were given out and approximately 445 people were seen.  These are amazing numbers and we were expecting more people to show up today because yesterday had been the local market day.  

After the meeting was over we got set up in the clinic and began seeing patients.  They had been lining up to be seen since before we got out of our tents.  We had a very steady stream of folks all day long.

My most excellent translator, Stephen with one of our patients for the day.

Stephen speaks 6 languages.  Impressive!

BTW, he also had a voice just like Johnny Depp.

one of my cutie-pies for the day

Dr. Mike hard at work

our pharmacy in action

  In fact when we broke for lunch at 12:30pm we still had probably 500+ people to be seen.  It seemed like a daunting task but we just worked really hard to see everyone and help them the best we could and kept at it until everyone had been seen.  The last patient left our clinic just after 7pm.  What a long, busy day - but what a sense of accomplishment!  Mark totaled up all of the clinic slips at the end of the day.  We managed to see 683 people!  Steve Hudson of MedReach said that this might be a record number.  It felt like a record-breaker to me!  

Mark had to use all of his math skills counting up the slips

We saw 683 people!

After locking up the clinic we all headed over the the kitchen and ate dinner and  just sat around talking about the day.  

Here's an interesting tidbit:  there might not be electrical power, internet, or flushing toilets anywhere close to where we are but I have cell service as do many of my team members.  I have been able to keep in touch with my family back home which has been such a blessing.  Mission trips are very meaningful but they are physically and emotionally draining.  Getting sweet notes and hearing about what everyone's day was like back home has been a true Godsend for me.  Some of the notes have been funny, some just the mundane stuff of life back home, and frequently it has been loving messages of encouragement.  I have the best family.  

Uganda - Clinic Day #1

What an amazing day that the Lord made!  

After a fitful night of sleep (noisy African neighbors, less than comfortable cot, baby bladder) I was concerned that I was going to have a difficult day.  But God had a most definite plan for our mission team.  We started the day with breakfast followed by our devotional time with the Africans.  We all gathered in one of the school rooms - all 50ish of us - to sing praise songs and to hear a message from one of the African pastors.  The most amazing part to me was when the leader of the African group, Fredrick, led the group in prayer.  He prayed for a while and then he gave the group specific things to pray for.  He first asked for prayers for the people we serve and then the most amazing thing happened - spontaneous prayers aloud  were being raised all at once.

 Totally uninhibited in spiritual expression

"Christ chatter" praying

This "Christ chatter" was so moving and Spirit-filled.  Fredrick then asked for prayers for our mission team followed by prayers for our families back home, and finally for the leader of MedReach, Steve Hudson.  Just when it seemed that it couldn't get any more moving the group sang a song in their language that was just beautiful.  It is very inspiring to watch such uninhibited spiritual expression.  Then the pastor got up and spoke a short message about healing and deliverance. 

  Fredrick had Mark introduced the American team and then he had the African team introduce themselves.  This African team is quite diverse.   There are representatives from several different regions to help with the translations.  As it turns out the camp is in a mixed area - many tribes are represented because of migration due to the rebel actions in their home regions.  He then gave the statistics for the Jesus film showing from the night before.  There were approximately 600 people who showed up to view the film, 250 who prayed the prayer of confession and 160 who stayed after the showing for the first follow-up where they receive further clarification and are introduced to the local pastor.  Wow - very cool.  The devotional time was ended with a rousing African rendition of Father Abraham - led by a man named Abraham, who coincidentally has many sons. 

Mary and I met with Dr. Mike Boniface in the medical room before starting clinic to go over some details about some of the medications and diagnosis that we would likely be seeing in clinic and getting more medications added to the pharmacy stock.  We were able to get the clinic started at about 10:15am and were a little slow to start.  Mary worked with me for a couple of patients until she was comfortable enough to jump in and see patients solo.  To her credit she jumped right in and did an outstanding job. 

just like a duck to water!

Mary's team was rounded out with Harrison, doc-in-training 

and Santo, translator and wonderful Christian witness

 Our second doctor, Dr. Jeff Jones, arrived at camp shortly after we started seeing patients.  

Dr. Jeff arrived, quick introductions all around, and then started right in seeing patients

Unfortunately, Penny Pickering, our pharmacist that came with him arrived at camp sick.  She spent the day in a Zophran-induced sleep trying to get over her illness.  I am happy to report that this evening she said she was feeling much better.  Maybe tomorrow she will feel well enough to help.  We saw a wide assortment of patients today - 278 in all - with diagnoses ranging from common colds to Elephantitis!  Crazy, right? 

folks started lining up early

We saw many, many women with babies strapped to their backs.

 We were all finished with clinic by around 6pm and thankfully our dinner was ready and waiting for us when we made it into the kitchen.  Grilled Velveeta sandwiches never tasted so good!  (I know several of you are thinking "Velveeta - yuck!"  Keep in mind that with no electricity there is no refrigeration.  All of our food for this week has to be non-perishable.  

Mary and I noticed that there was a large group of men playing soccer in the field just down from the school yard so we decided to take a walk down there and chat about all of the wonderful things that we experienced that day.  While we were standing on the edge of the field we were approached by two men.  The one who spoke knelt down to us and told us that he and his friend were not going to be able to attend the clinic because of their work being too far away.  They didn't need to be seen but heard that we were handing out bibles.  They wanted to know if we would give them bibles.  Of course we wanted to help so we walked back to the kitchen where the bibles were being stored and got the bibles they wanted.  You have never seen two more grateful men.  We were humbled by their desire for the gospel and were glad to oblige.  

Give some guys a ball...

and a fútbol game will break out. 

Once it got really nice and dark Heidi, Patricia, Mark, Mary and I walked out into the middle of the schoolyard, a field really, and gazed upon the most magnificent starry sky.  I have never had the opportunity to see so many stars!  When the sun goes down here there are no light pollution to distract us from seeing the stars.  The moon was just a sliver so there wasn't moonlight to compete with the star show.  With not a cloud in the skies it was truly a wonderful sight.  I brought along my Ipad so that we could use the Star Walker app to be able to identify the constellations.  That was really nice, but after a few minutes we turned it off and just stared at the sky.  No app can compete with the real thing!  We ended the night with a shooting star!

I had better get to sleep.  We are going to have a long day tomorrow - expecting a larger crowd for clinic.  Camp is much quieter tonight as the Jesus film is showing in another village.  All I can hear are the tree frogs and crickets and the Africans laughing and talking in the background.  An altogether lovely sound.

Uganda - Travel and Arriving at Camp

Greetings from Uganda!  We finally arrived last night at 10:30pm after 19 hours of flights since leaving Huntsville on Sunday afternoon.   Thankfully all of our personal and mission trunks made it through all of the flight transfers (a miracle unto itself!) and we were able to skate through customs without anyone having to have their bags searched. The closest thing we had to a hassle was that when Mary and I were going through security in Huntsville we had our carry on bags searched.  I was expecting this to happen because I was hand-carrying all of our electronic blood pressure cuffs, temporal scan thermometers, and my otoscope. I imagine that all of these look pretty weird on X-ray.  It turns out that what tripped us up was the quart-sized ziploc bag of batteries to run the equipment.  When we went through security in Amsterdam we were sure to pull the bags of batteries out with all of our liquids and electronics and we skated through with no problem.  

Here's Mark, already directing with the finger.

Going through customs at Entebbe Airport.

(We were all a little punchy by this time.)

In Kampala when we all piled into our 4-wheel drive bus with all 24 of our trunks and our personal bags we received the very good news that the new camp location was only 4-6 hours away!  Considering that our team was facing a 13 hour bumpy ride to the camp near the South Sudan border we were much relieved.  We also were told that since we had a reasonably short drive to arrive at camp the next day we would sleep in a bit and not leave the Tick Hotel until 9am.

Our room at the Tick.  It might not be fancy but after 19 hours of flights it 

looked pretty comfy to me!

Ominous name, no?

The terrace at the Tick.  

Parking lot with armed guards. 

 Notice how Barney Fife is leaning on the barrel of his gun.  

I hope this thing isn't actually loaded.  

We piled back into the bus, with our African bus driver extraordinaire John, and headed north.

The First Presbyterian clown bus.

We were really packed into this bus with all of our gear. 

Don't we look chipper and well-rested?

  Mary, the other nurse and very good friend, and I got to sit up front on the ride to the camp.  I loved this because it gave me a great vantage point to take tons of pictures.  Granted, they were shot through a windshield but I got lots of pictures of the Ugandan countryside.  We found, just like in other trips, that if you smile and wave 95% of the time the people quickly smile and wave back.  Just call us First Presbyterian's goodwill ambassadors. 

Never met this kid, but I loved his homemade Elton John frames.

Bathing hole near the road.  Clothing optional.

 We went from very well maintained roads for the majority of the trip to less-well maintained roads to well maintained dirt roads to oh-my-goodness-are-you-sure-this-is-a-road dirt roads for the remainder. 

 Well-maintained dirt road

bumpy, bumpy, bumpy

 Our camp is in the central-western part of Uganda near the Nile River.  We are told that there is a government Sudanese refugee camp nearby so we are likely to see many Muslim refugees in our clinic.  Our camp is set up adjacent to a two building school. 

This school building is where we set up our kitchen

 This is where we set up our evangelism, triage, and clinic/pharmacy rooms

This building had phrases for healthy living stenciled onto it

We were very close to our neighbors

 We are using one building for our kitchens.  Yes, kitchens plural.  The American mission group has their kitchen and the African employees have their own kitchen.  With all of the problems with water and soil contamination we can't risk eating their food.  Not to mention they probably would have trouble digesting some of our food too. 

kitchen and gathering room

   All of our tents are set up just outside the building.  Next to this building is the other building that we are using for clinic.  We have triage set up in one room, evangelism in the next room and the pharmacy/medical area set up in the other room.  

 our tent 'hood

We arrived in camp midafternoon and our very friendly African hosts were waiting for us to arrive.  They very quickly and efficiently unloaded the bus and delivered the trunks to our tents.  We took time to get our personal gear organized and set up before setting up the pharmacy. 

Our room for medical/pharmacy.  Just getting started with the amazing Dr. Mike Boniface.

 Jerry and Roy worked to get the reading glasses organized to start handing out tomorrow.  Dr. Michael Boniface, the African doctor that we will be working with this week pitched right in and helped us set up the pharmacy.  We worked right up until it was time to stop and eat our dinner.  The Here's Life for Africa guys fixed us a very tasty rice and beans dinner in our kitchen.  It really hit the spot!  Afterwards we headed back to the pharmacy to work on bagging up more meds. 

bagging up meds well after dark

making labels for medicine dose bags

 After dinner the Here's Life for Africa guys set up the screen and film projector to prepare to show the government issued health film and the Jesus film.

The Here's Life guys getting everything set up for the Jesus film showing

I wonder if these guys have ever even seen a film before.

The crowd was smallish at first but continued to grow to several hundred 

I am sitting here in my tent having had a baby wipe bath and brushed my teeth.  The Jesus film is still going (it's 9:45pm) and it is really loud!  There is a crowd of a few hundred Africans in the school yard watching tonight.  Sleeping might be rather difficult.  We are up to the crucifixion scene and the Roman soldiers are mocking Jesus - so we all know that the worst and the best part of the movie are coming up.  There will be an altar call offered to the villagers.  I really have no idea how long this will last.  I'll let you know tomorrow.  I am not sure I can keep my eyes open much longer.  I figure that I have had about 14 hours of sleep total since Friday night .  I am starting to get a little punchy.  I will be trying to journal each evening though the trip.  Stay tuned!  It's going to a adventure! 

11:45 update:  The villagers have just gone home and the Jesus film guys have packed up.  So tired.  

My Ugandan Adventure Begins!

Well, it is about to anyway.  

I should be in bed asleep by now but I never sleep well the night before a big trip.

Too many thoughts running through my head.  

Did I bring everything I should? 

Did I bring too much?

What have I forgotten to bring that will make my life 

difficult for the next couple of weeks?

Have I left enough instructions for the family for them to get by without 

eating pizza and burgers every night?

The list goes on and on.  

Allison and I had a great time today.  

The hubs and son are out of town on a scout trip so it was just us chicks. 

Allison doodled on my trunk with paint pens. 

We got our toenails polished.

Allison got a haircut.

We went shoe shopping.

Sushi for lunch (yum!)

We came home and watched a movie.  

Well, actually Allison watched the movie. 

 I sort of watched the movie while I sorted and re-sorted the contents of my luggage.  

I am on the cusp of having too much weight in my black trunk.  

Honestly I don't know what I would kick out if the ticket agent tells me 

it is over the weight allowance.

Hopefully I won't have to find out.  

So, this is the end result.  

I am not going to open those trunks again.  

The carry-on bag and my pack are just fine.  

But that #40 trunk is so close to 50 pounds.

So is #39 - and it is full of meds and medical supplies.  

I just have to trust that God has this handled.  

We are in store for a major blessing over the next twelve days.  

I pray that God uses us as his hands and feet and voices.

I pray that we can bring some relief to the Africans that we will serve.

I pray that our group stays healthy and safe 

as we grow closer to God and to each other. 

While I have been typing this post an old hymn that we used to sing in the church 

I grew up in came to my mind. 

"When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,

What a glory He sheds on our way!

While we do His good will, He abides with us still, 

And with all who will trust and obey.  

Trust and obey, for there's no other way 

To be happy in Jesus, 

but to trust and obey.  

I think I will keep this song in my heart for the trip.