The Lane's Log Episode 6 - Hospitals, Football and the Day of The African Child

We are now two weeks into our full programme with River of Life, Masaka. Our programmes consists of a mix of activities between working as a physio and assisting with some of the River of Life ministries. We have now successfully started work at both Masaka General Hospital and Kitovu Hospital and are getting to know the staff and our roles. At Masaka we work with a friendly team of 2-3 Physios based in their own small outpatient department. Here we have already started to treating a wide variety of conditions, with Hannah volunteering to see the paediatrics. Although we are gradually learning a little more Lugandan (How are you?, I am fine, just here sir, thank you, well done) we still require a lot of help from our colleagues to translate!

Kitovu is a little different as they don't currently provide a physiotherapy service. So for the next two months we hope to help out in the best way we can. Kitovu has a large variety of wards including trauma, surgery, paediatrics, general medicine, malnutrition and gynaecology. We have been setting up a referral system to allow us to find those most in need.

Hannah taking on the u-14s

Physiotherapy is also continuing away from the hospitals with increasing involvement with Ball Line Football Acadamy (training and matches) and adhoc physio clinics. We have since both had the chance to train with the boys.  In the mid day heat, no shade, and having not done much exercise for a while Hannah felt ill after the two hour training! (she would also like to highlight that the altitude is also very high!)

Day of the African Child

The rest of our time here is getting to know the white eagle boys and girls. Last week we were a part of the celebration for the African Child day.Despite a few concerns that the focus may have been lost slightly through the adults being entertained and not the children and running 3 hours behind schedule, we had two hours where they put on some African beats and we all got our groove on!
African dancing involves a lot of bottom wiggling!

Dancing at the Day of the African Child

Within our timetable we will also be serving some of the Church ministries. We are leading some of the white eagle evening sessions. Focussing on life skills and fellowship, along with having lots of fun! All of the girls and boys are a delight to be around and we are really enjoying getting to know them and the staff. We also visit Masaka General Hospital as part for the hospital ministry team where we give out food and pray with patients who request it. This week we gave out some of the mango's that are growing within the compound we live in.

Mangoes!

It has been great to get our programme up and running. We have quickly realised that since arriving that although three months felt like a long time whilst we planned, in reality it is going to be no where near long enough!

We are keeping fit by walking to work and this has been going really well, even if Andy does get a little grumpy in the heat! The rest of the time we get 'public', a local taxi (5 seater car) which follows a set route. So far our record is fitting up to 9 fully grown adults in it (two in the passenger's seat, five in the back seat, and two in the drivers seat).

We have struggled to communicate back home in the last two weeks, thanks to ever increasing powercuts. It is now rare that we have electricity for any real length of time. This is apparently reportedly thanks to the government being in huge debt to the electricity companies. As we are living on the top of a hill, this also has had a knock on effect to our water supply, as they don't have enough power to pump it up to us. With our back up supply of rain water very close to empty we are looking forward to trips to the local well with jerry cans and bucket baths for the foreseeable future. There is a general panic for water as all the wells are becoming dry, although this is is nothing like the situations in some of Uganda's neighbouring countries. It also gave us the unpleasant experience of working in the hospitals with no water to wash our hands. Never thought I would say this but prayers for rain would be gratefully received!

Andy was excited to find his first fellow Newcastle fan on Sunday, whilst watching a local football game. And this week, was asked by a physio colleague if he had heard of Alan Shearer. Happy days!
Hannah has been enjoying the garden, regularly picking avacardos and mangos. She is making the most of mango season, making mango juice as well as borrowing a neighbours electric oven to bake a lemon drizzle cake with the some of her birthday presents. Thank you for all the birthday well wishes and thoughts as they really do make a big difference to us!

Elena reading FourFourTwo to Andy

We have also had some excitement within the house. Elena is now walking!! We like to think it's due to our physiotherapy involvement, but really its possible that she has been watching some of the other walking children at the play group which Katherine has recently set up.

We will update you soon on how Joseph is getting on!

Lots of love! Please keep your emails coming! We love hearing from you and power dependent we will reply as soon as possible!

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page