Hi Folks!

I am starting this post on Monday morning, when I should be lecturing my group, but let me catch you up first...

**This is gonna be a long one! It turns out that the network where we are staying is very bad and my router does not work well there. I will try to keep adding to this post during lecture breaks, and share it when I can!**

Some of you may know that I have struggled most of my adult life with insomnia, which has only gotten worse with menopause. Well, travel and jet lag make it even worse, so I only managed about 2 hours of sleep a night over the weekend. I had a mini reunion with my ITW buddies, Renny, Allan and Picho, on Friday, and only realized after they left that I did not get a photo of us all. Booo! Another massive rainstorm started up sometime early Saturday morning and didn't clear until around noon. The rain took walking the Botanical Gardens off the docket, as the trails get very muddy, but I decided to walk to my favorite shop and explore some other shops that had been recommended. 

When I stopped by the first shop, there was a beautiful young woman, named Grace, crocheting, so I started chatting with her. It turns out that she is the owner of the shop, and in all the times that I have gone there I just never had the chance to meet her. Grace is educated in Psychology and used to work for a non-profit that worked with at-risk women and girls, helping them get off the streets, teaching them how to do crafts that can potentially make them money and assist them in gaining independence. Unfortunately, during COVID, the organization had to shut down. Grace was unable to get another job in her trained field, and she had to find a way to survive. She opened her own shop, selling all kinds of crafts and clothing, along with beautiful bags and jewelry that she makes herself. I decided to take some photos of her bags, post them on Facebook, and I ended up buying 15 of her bags for my friends! I also bought some earrings that I will sell at the craft fair in November, and I gave her some of the yarn that I brought for the midwives. She was so excited! I am so grateful for all of my friends and family who love to help me support the Ugandan people, and I especially love any opportunity to help a small, woman owned, business. 

One my way to more shops, I met another wonderful entrepreneur, named David. This young man was selling hard boiled eggs to help pay for his education. He showed me the short-cut to more shops and lake side restaurants, as well as a few more incredible artists, selling their work. I happily paid him for being an excellent tour guide, bought him a snack, and wandered back towards my guest house for the evening.

The plan on Sunday was that I would be picked up and driven to Kampala, where the SEED main office was, where I would meet up with Jimmy (the Dr. who also works for SEED and coordinated this training), then we would drive north to Lira. My driver arrived 45 minutes late (on time for Uganda), then when I arrived at the office, no one was there and the woman who opened the gate did not seem to know who I was. I sent a message to Jimmy and was informed that the driver was on his way, then we would go somewhere else to pick up Jimmy. After waiting, I was able to continue on, eventually getting on the road north almost 2 hours later than schedule. As I waited for the driver, I was able to look at the training manuals that were printed by SEED, and I have to say (with one small error), the printing was exceptional! Rachel had told them that the manual needed to be printed in color, something that we can rarely afford to do for our usual trainings, and the images were beautiful. The table of contents page was missing, but other than that, the manuals were ready.

One of the biggest disappointments of this trip is that the logistics have made it impossible to go to the birth center to see everyone. It just doesn't make sense to try to visit before I leave, especially considering how exhausted I am (one night of good sleep, now back to 2 hours 😣). Currently at the birth center, there is a group of Black midwife students, the first official group of the Black Midwifery Fellowship. One of the coordinators of this program is a wonderful midwife, Nikiya, whom I met (when she was a midwife student) last year. We were so excited to see each other when we thought I would be returning to Atiak for training, and we were hoping to discuss adding a few POCUS lectures to their fellowship program. Obviously, none of that worked out and we have messaging each other about how bummed we were to miss each other. She was only here for a few weeks and would be traveling home the same day I was on my way to Lira. Well, on our way north, a 6-hour drive, the universe gave me a wonderful gift! About halfway to Lira, we stopped for gas and a bathroom break, and I hear a guy call my name...it was my friend Frank! He is our usual driver and tour guide for the visiting students. I gave him a big hug, we exchanged pleasantries, and he said " Do you know Nikiya? She is here." WHAT?!? Frank was on his way south, to bring Kiya and her husband to the airport and we happened to stop at the same gas station, at the exact time, before we would split off the mutual highway to drive northeast. So, there I was in the middle of Uganda at a random gas station, hugging my friends. 

We finally arrived at the hospital in Lira at the exact same time as Rachel and Harriet, who were driving from the birth center. When Rachel was negotiating this contract, she told them it would be best if I could arrive before the training started, check out the set-up, test all of the equipment, etc... Jimmy told her that arriving on Sunday would work fine, there was no need to arrive any sooner than that. Yeah, so that went as well as we expected. The room was locked, they had to go find someone with a key, the room was fine for lectures, but would be a nightmare for the hands-on scanning, there was no projector in place and no one to get the projector (they also asked if I had an HDMI cable), there were no beds or ultrasound machines in place, and on and on and on. Every time Rachel asked about any of these things, Jimmy would awkwardly smile and deflect, Rachel would remind him that all of these details were discussed (and even referenced the emails), and there we all sat in an empty board room on Sunday evening. The "solution" was that if we all arrived very early Monday morning, we could get it all sorted before the students arrived. (Narrator: Everything was in fact NOT sorted in the morning.) The driver then took us to student housing, where Harriet had organized for us. 

Monday morning, our team arrived early, there was no power in our section of the hospital (the rest of the hospital was fine), breakfast was supposed to be ready at 7am and students were supposed to arrive at 8am. Nope. We were informed that 2 different admin groups would be dropping by to greet us and give welcoming speeches. Also, Jimmy decided to let various random people know that were welcome to come in and "audit' the class, so some randos showed up, packed the room, and took off with some of the training manuals (including mine and one of the registered students). Oh, and neither breakfast nor lunch was ready at the scheduled time. And they dragged the machines into the room while I was in the middle of lectures. And two of the machines were missing transducers and their power plugs. No one had tested the handheld machines ahead of time, so 2 of the 3 weren't charged up and we realized the third one did not work with the tablet. Rachel and Harriet took off in the late afternoon, back to Atiak, and at the end of the day, we realized Jimmy had no intention of covering our meals in the evening (which had also been discussed), and managed to slip away, telling the driver to take us to a restaurant where I picked up dinner. Day One complete. Hurray! 😂😭

It's Tuesday night now, day 2 complete and it went as expected. I will say that after clarifying with the students about the schedule, 13 of the 15 students were ready and waiting at 8am this morning, and breakfast and lunch were ready at the scheduled time. Lectures in the morning, hands-on after lunch. Honestly, I'm too tired to talk about the chaos that occurred today. I really want to have a shower, dope myself silly, and hope to get more than 2 hours of sleep. I will say I am really enjoying the "students" in this course. They are intelligent, welcoming, engaged, and have adapted quickly to my style of teaching. A reminder of why I truly love doing this work. It really makes me even more frustrated and annoyed that this training is so half-assed. They deserve better. They (SEED and the Lira Hospital people) are all talking about more training in the future. Insert big, dramatic sigh. I don't want to be the angel of doom, I am truly enjoying my time with Max and Sister Georgina, and the class participants are a pleasure to teach. I can't help but think how well they would do in our usual training. There is also an overall feeling of happiness whenever I am back in Uganda, although I could never live here full time, there is a feeling of returning home. Tomorrow, on the lunch break, one of the students will take Sister and I into town, to her favorite fabric shop. 😍

Okay, the Wi-Fi here is super spotty, but I will try my best to get this out to you all! I probably won't be able to send anything else while I am here, but the plan is that Rachel comes here on Friday (another day of politics, when some big wigs come to the training to give more speeches), and we head south Saturday morning. I will have a little time in Entebbe, where I will try to check in again, then take off for home a little after midnight on Monday/Tuesday. 

It's now Wednesday morning, I will try again to get network connection and get this out to you all. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Much love, Jo/MB