Mount Elgon Hotel Mbale

In the past few months I have finished two internships in both Uganda and Kenya. The first was working with Maji na Ufanisi (Water and Development in Swahili) in Nairobi Slums and the second was working with Women's Microfinance Initiative in a village in Uganda. Both were so great and just so different...in one I was living in downtown Nairobi and the other I was situated in the peaceful foothills of Mt. Elgon. To much to try to sum up here, so instead I will let you check out the photos and ...

Nine of us from Bujagali commissioned a matatu and traveled out to Sipi Falls in the far east of Uganda on Saturday. It's a site in the foothills of Mt. Elgon which was once the highest single mountain in Africa before seismic activity started messing with Kilimanjaro. We stayed at a place called The Crows Nest in Sipi which is perched up on a cliff overlooking the main waterfall.

We went on a ...

Ok, this is really the last entry. I am sitting the lovely Entebbe Airport Guest house, using thier HIGH SPPED internet connection!! Wow! And they had HOT WATER in the shower! The place is just delightful. Holly and I will head for the airport via their shuttle in the am, then to London. We drove to Kampala with Rabbi Gershom and some other Mbale folks today. Have you ever eated fresh roasted sweet bananas hawked ...

Friends - While I am very ready to come home and especially to see my family and friends (you all!) again soon, it is sad to leave Mbale. I have had an unbelievable experience here. Yesterday I did health education with about 40 farmers from the Peace Kawomera coffee cooperative, our wonderful growers of Mirembe Kawomera coffee! They were happy to hear that my family and community loves their coffee. We talked about diabetes ...

Nasenyi HIV screening and medical clinic Sunday 01/11/09 I've already told you some about this, but let me elaborate a bit. Here in this poverty-stricken country, many young people are willing to VOLUNTEER their entire Sunday, from 8am until 5pm, to help with HIV counseling and testing. The community mobilizers and volunteers, all young men and women in their early 20's, have done an excellent job of letting the local people know about HIV testing ...

Let me tell you about Shabbat at Nabugoye (Jewish entry, FYI :-) As the sun is setting on the hill, we gather in the synagogue for the gorgeous harmony of the psalms. We had new laminated sheets with all the words, so I tried to follow along in Lugandan! The melodies are simple and repetitive, but haunting and beautiful. After prayers, we all gathered in the front of Rabbi Gershom and Tzipporah's house under a large tree ...

Hi - Just a short blurb, will post some photos later. Yesterday I think I saw about 50 patients in 6 hours of medical clinic outreach. Whew. One child, about a year old, was having frequent intermittent seizures in his mom's lap. Malaria. All we could do was give oral quinine and acetaminophen and refer them in for IV quinine and diazepam. A woman in her late 60's registered ...

Monday Jan 12 - Wow, so much to catch up on. First I want to describe a few elements of day-to-day life here a little. It helps understand why so many folks have chronic musculoskeletal, chest and abdominal pain, ulcers, and so on. Daylight comes around 6am. The attendant at the guest house, Mama Rachel, is a good example. She is here by 6am, fetches some water, soaks some rags, and mops the floor - using her body rather than a mop handle. She bends at the ...

Abayudaya Youth Conference On Wed 1/07 the Jewish youth from the five villages met here at Nabugoye to plan activities, share information and elect a new slate of officers. They met in the beautiful Bet Midrash, the large airy library and study room which will be Rabbi Gershom's yeshiva headquarters. In addition to speeches by Rabbi Gershom and two other community leaders (Rabbi Aaron Kintu Moses, founder and headmaster of Hadassah primary school) and Seth ...

Ohmigosh where to begin! This is for the medical people, mainly. Ok, last Thursday, we went to visit a friend's father who was in the "hospital" after having collapsed suddenly the previous day in the marketplace. At age 53, he was not responding to empiric treatment for severe malaria and aspiration pneumonia - by that I mean that while lying in an extremely dirty tiny room shared by an ill woman, on a torn mattress with no sheets, no oxygen, no suction, no monitors, he was ...