Saturday morning, October 11, 2024

Good morning!

(Brenda, Monika, Beatrice, Me, Coletta)

What a first week it's been! I'll start from Tuesday, the first official day of class. My trainees arrived early, unusual, but welcome. We started class in the typical Ugandan fashion, without power for the first 3 hours. 😁This made the overhead projector obsolete and made for a challenging morning, reading through the lectures and looking at photos on my computer. The first day of class is when I teach Ultrasound Physics and the principles and concepts of ultrasound. It's a brain buster, especially for anyone who has never had a physics class, so I try to balance the day with some hands-on practice with the machine. Along with a curriculum of 19 lectures, I have also created a user manual for the Ultrasound machines that were donated. Edan machines are very common here, mostly due to their affordability and durability, and my manual is complete with photos to make it clear for anyone who may have trouble reading English. 

Hands-on training

This week was a short week for class, due to my delayed arrival from the detour and Wednesday being a National holiday (Happy Independence Day, Uganda!), so I gave the students the option of very long lecture days during the week or having lectures on Saturday. Everyone chose longer days during the week, giving some of them the chance to go home on the weekends to see their family. Basically, that means a lot more little breaks throughout the day, and I stop when I see their eyes glaze over. 

Although Wednesday was a holiday, most of the businesses where open, so Christine and I left for Gulu at 7:30am, hoping to get the printed sorted and pick up supplies for the classroom, as well as getting Christine's laptop fixed. The trip to Gulu usually takes about an hour in daylight hours, much longer in the evening due to the road conditions, no lights, people and animals walking by the side of the road, and large trucks barreling down the road to and from Sudan, often at breakneck speed. When we arrived at the print shop, we spent about 30 minutes explaining the errors and giving instructions on how to fix it, being told the job would be completed by "midday". While Christine took her laptop to the repair shop, I walked over to the Gulu market, wandering through the vendor stalls, looking for my favorite shop in this huge, multilevel building. Christine sent the driver when she was almost finished at the computer shop, asking me to go by the printer to check on our job.

Much to no ones surprise, the printers were only 1/4 of the way finished. I had instructed them to start with the first notebook (the lectures were divided into 2 notebooks), so I could start the lectures the following day and they could send the rest. I was told to come back at 5pm. UGH. We had lunch at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant and continued our errands, most of which were not completed with any efficiency. Upon returning to the printer at 5:30, barely half of the job was finished, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you that every single notebook (10 copies) had a significant error, some chapters were bound upside down, some chapters missing all together, with the missing chapters in a stack on a chair. 😕It took another 30 minutes or so to go through every single page and chapter, as they fixed each one. In the meantime, the sun was setting and we still had not finished our errands. We took the finished notebooks, Christine decided to stay in Gulu (she has a home there with her husband), and Thomas (the driver) and I managed to get on the road just as the sun was dipping below the horizon. We arrived back at the birth center at 8:30pm.

Thursday I was up and working by 6:30am. I have decided to make a Power Point Review and Quiz for many of the lectures, so each morning we can review the main topics from the day before, so I completed one for Tuesday's lectures by the time the Midwives arrived. Class began a bit late, because two of the ladies had gone home for the holiday and returned by bus that morning. We had a 10-hour day of lectures and hands-on practice, stopping for 2 one-hour breaks, and I continued working on reviews until around 9pm. 

Christine was supposed to arrive with the rest of the printing on Thursday, but because of the long day, I could not track her down until yesterday, where I was met with bad news. When she returned to the print shop, the manager attempted to extort a ridiculous payment from her, claiming we were responsible for the error, and expecting a payment 3 times more than the agreed-on price. For perspective, the amount of printing and the agreed upon original price was approximately a months' worth of income for this shop. Christine left angry and empty handed, and we called the shop during my lunch break yesterday. I can best describe the phone call as a text-book example of corruption and toxic masculinity, as well as a feeble attempt for me to tamper down my Irish temper and feminist rage. 😂 The manager would throw out statements like "Can I talk?! I do not need a woman not letting me talk!", "Be honest, you were not clear in your instructions!" and the like. When we asked, "If the instructions were not clear, why was half of the job correct?" then he would change his accusation to something else. When we attempted to explain why we were not responsible, he would yell over us. We pointed out to him that we would not be paying the asked amount, and he will be left without the remaining balance and a stack of useless notes, not to mention losing our business, he again thought that yelling at us would somehow change our minds. Finally, while he was ranting away, Chistine said to me "He thinks he can charge more because you are Mazunga (white person). I am ending this call." and she hung up. He attempted to call back and we did not answer, instead making a plan for me to return to Gulu this weekend and go to a different printer to get the rest of the notes printed and bound. I returned to class, scanning a late 3rd TM pregnant woman for a demonstration, giving the ladies an hour to practice scanning on each other, then catching up on the lectures by 5pm. I continued working on reviews until 6:30pm and shortly after 7pm I received a message from Christine that the printer guy called, apologized for being out of line, told her he was sending the order and we could confirm the order was correct before sending the agreed upon balance, saving us the return trip to Gulu. Raging feminism for the WIN! 😂 Through adversity often comes invention, so we have already figured out a plan for avoiding this problem in the future. It may seem like the obvious solution is to just print everything in the USA and bring it along, but that's a lot of extra weight and space, and I am usually in support of giving work and income to the local economy. In the future, I will make a master copy at home and try to simplify the process as much as possible. The printing was supposed to have been delivered last night, but I am waiting to hear from Christine for confirmation. She was one of the midwives on call last night and her hut is still closed up, so I can only assume that she is sleeping in. 

So here we are, Saturday morning in Atiak, a light fog and cloud cover starting to slowly lift. I did not sleep particularly well last night, it was a still night, filled with mosquitos, finally cooling down in the early morning. Not to mention that there is a cricket the size of a small dog in my hut, that has avoided capture and loves to sing about it for most of the night! 🦗 A half dozen roosters made sure I did not oversleep, along with one of the workers cutting the grass near my hut with a machete. 

If all is well with the printing, I will spend the day working on review lectures, making any necessary modifications to the written and hands-on exams, and knitting a few more baby hats for a break. When I was here in the spring, I brought along materials to knit dishcloths and gave them away when I was finished. Auntie KK, one of the women who clean and help the kitchen staff, was fascinated by the knitting and asked if I could teach her, so this time I brought extra materials to teach her and spend some time today, teaching her to knit dishcloths. As usual, on the weekends I am available to the midwife trainees for any questions or clarifications and may be called on to scan patients for the birth center. One week down already and I am trying to fight off the underlying panic that I have so much to teach them in such a short amount of time. 

As I mentioned earlier, thanks to my knitting pals and long flights, I have been able to give almost 50 hats to the birth center for newborns, so far. A few of the hats were a little large for the babies, so I am handing them out to the children who live here with their mothers. They are a huge hit, as you can see by these beautiful smiling faces! 😍

Back to work for me! Wishing you all a lovely weekend and thanks for joining me on this adventure.

Much love, Jo/MB