week one in Uganda

I made it to Uganda! The trip was supposed to take 24 hours but actually took 26. What's another couple hours after a whole day spent on a bus though? I didn't see any giraffes, but we did have to slam on our brakes at one point to avoid hitting a herd of zebras. Thanks Kenya. You came through.

Week one finished in Uganda. I only have 6 weeks left of this adventure so I figure I will just send a weekly update out so I can let you know how things are going while I process my week.

Uganda

I’m adjusting well to Uganda. It’s an unbelievably beautiful country. Our accommodation, which happens to be quite unadorned in appearance, sits right on Lake Victoria. It’s a serene view and I am coming to appreciate the slower pace of the “village” lifestyle.  However, being away from the city makes the normal conveniences that Africa has already taken away from us seem to be even further away.  A hot shower is just a good theory and nothing I’ve experienced in months. My toilet, which is shared with 6 other women, is a hole in the ground. So squatting it is and I plan on having strong thighs to show for it. The Internet takes a while to get to it, and once I can get to it I can only pray that it’s actually working. Our food, which consists of rice, beans, and cabbage twice a day is…well…. rice, beans, and cabbage.  Not much to say about that. Every country I have been to I have encountered a different type of creature on a daily basis. In India it was mice and rats. In Tanzania it was geckos and ants and here in Uganda it’s bats. They live in our ceiling and often like to go for a nice evening stroll through our room while we try to sleep. Just waiting any moment now for Count Dracula to wake me up.  All this being said though, I really enjoy being here. It’s simple and a little bit of a slower pace but after 61/2 months of living my life like this, I am okay with taking things slow while I ease my way out.

 

Our team of 21 has split up into 3 teams. One team went to the Buvuma Islands on Lake Victoria and worked at the local clinic doing antenatal care and immunizations. Another team went to a health centre/mini hospital and worked alongside the midwives there. The third team stayed “home” and was involved with doing a lot of health care teaching to different women’s groups and ministries involved with the YWAM base here in Jinja. The teams will be rotating weekly so that everyone gets a chance to work in every area. This week I was on the home team. We started the week off working with a ministry called Women of Hope. This group meets several times a week and focuses on discipling and teaching the women of the local village.

We were able to spend some time with these women, teaching them the importance of taking care of themselves and having well balanced meals and good nutrition amongst a lot of other things. We shared testimonies’ from the hospital and together we encouraged each other in our faith. Many of the women we met with are HIV positive, new believers and alone in their faith. They are mothers and sisters and suffering but finding hope in what they believe in. Their dedication for showing up to this class is refreshing. These ladies were lovely and so much fun to spend time with. We met with them under a tree on a patch of grass. Together we recognized the authority we have as women. We celebrated the fact that we have such a huge role in creating life and continuing humanity. We reflected on the idea that God only took 1 week to create the whole universe but spends 40 weeks creating us! How special we are! There was a lot of “HALLELUJAHs” and “AMENs” going around, and that’s just always fun.

I quickly recognized the importance of sharing simple knowledge with these women. I have found that things that we view as just common knowledge can really be unknown to someone who is uneducated. Sharing information can really change lives. This is empowering the local women, giving them a role and advice and acknowledging that this is God’s heart and His kingdom at work. It’s good to have these types of opportunities.

picking a winner, I suppose.

We did indeed make our way to the hospital at some point in the week, not to work but to pray. We partnered with a new ministry that just began that wants to reach women in the labor ward. The ministry was birthed by a mother who went to a hospital to deliver and felt alone and fearful for her life because of it. She shared with us that for the first time she recognized God as her doctor. She was alone. In a hospital. And her desperation for God to help save the life of her and her baby was real. It was interesting to hear the prospective of an African woman. The government hospitals in these developing nations that I have been working at are not hospitals we are used to in the west. They are overcrowded, unequipped, and understaffed. This creates an environment of uncertainty, doubt, and fear in the women who come to the only place they can go to get healthcare.  Seeing this everyday for months has made me accustomed to this type of environment. I suppose in a way I have grown numb to the idea that it could potentially be an unpleasant place for the laboring mothers. I have made the false assumption that the women are just okay with it. Hearing the birth story of this lady shattered that assumption though. They aren’t okay with it. They just have to do it. They can’t afford the luxury of another choice.  Through all of this God really showed me that I have a heart is to see things changed in the government hospitals. I feel called to be where it’s busy and where there is a huge need.  While God has been revealing this to me over the last few weeks I have contemplated it just being my excitement for delivering babies where its busy. After all, it would be much more fun in theory to deliver babies in a bush by a hut in some small village. That’s what I thought I would want to do.  (don’t get me wrong, still looking forward to that opportunity some day) But I realized this week that I feel called to these government hospitals. The hospitals where yes, 60-90 babies are being birthed a day, but there isn’t enough staff to care for each of them. Where women labor alone and sometime die because of it. Where equipment is lacking and apathy towards any change is thick in the air. If I would have told my past self that I would want to be a missionary in a hospital I can imagine myself scoffing at that idea. It seems easier for people to support and stand besides someone who roughing it in the woods. But here I am. In these cities where hundreds and hundreds of women are seen on a daily basis at a hospital and yet quite possibly feeling more alone and frightened than the woman in her hut with her local birth attendant.  I have come to see that the hospital is my woods, per say and I want to be committed to seeing the circumstances change in these hospitals.

During our trip to the hospital this week I met Betty. Betty was sitting up in her bed recovering from a cesarean section wound.  I approached her bed and asked her how she was doing.

“Not fine,” she responded to me in good English.

“I don’t know if my baby is dead or alive. It was born only 31 weeks and I haven’t seen it. And I’m in pain.”

Betty had an emergency c-section two days earlier due to a premature separation of her placenta.  When she woke up from the anesthesia she only knew that she had delivered her baby and that he wasn’t doing very well, but nothing else was said to her. The staff at this hospital happened to be pleasant and quite capable health care workers, but again when you deal with so many people and you have so many patients and not enough staff -women like Betty get forgotten about. Betty sat alone in her bed without food, water, or understanding of what happened when she birthed a child into the world. Obviously every mother has the right to know the condition of her child.  This is just another example of the injustice these women suffer with on a daily basis.

“I’ll find your baby,” I assured her.

I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. An answer, I guess. The likelihood of her premature baby being alive was slim, and I was aware of that. But I was also aware that she had the right to know if that was the case. After some questioning and searching I made my way into the neonatal ward. And there, tucked snuggly into some blankets and an incubator was Betty’s little boy. Weighing in at 3.3 pounds and definitely looking like an early arrival, Betty’s son was fighting and needed to see his momma.  I had the privilege of letting Betty know the condition of her son and then walking her and her (heavy) sore body over to the neonatal room to hold her son for the first time.

So that's been my week. 

 

Getting to know the women and some of their stories this week has encouraged me as woman and expanded my heart for serving them. Their daily lifestyle is a struggle that I am not sure I would ever be strong enough to handle. But I continue to be amazed at the endurance of these women. I’m taken aback by their gentleness yet ability to fight and to be strong and to raise and provide for a family. Even if they are poor and sick and dying of HIV, they are still living and they know how to be alive.

Looking forward for what’s in store for the next 5 weeks. 

It will be too fast....this is one truth I am already painfully aware of.

By the way- if you hadn’t noticed I had a paypal “donate” button added to the top of my page. That was my subtle way, and this is my not so subtle way of saying… I’ve now made it easier on you to help me. Just a click away. Please do and thank you. thank you. thank you.

drove by Kilimanjaro on our way through Tanzania

cleaning and settling into our new home

Women of Hope group