Monkey Brain Musings

 Wednesday 3/12/2024   8:30am Good morning! 😎 We are set to get on the road in about an hour and a half, the car is 90% loaded, and the chaos and loooooong day yesterday has seemed to have paid off!  Okay, now it's 9am. The gang arrived and I stopped to work on a few projects, but I'm back. Now that the supplies are loaded for Atiak, the guys are going over details for an upcoming visit from two board members while I'm gone. Yesterday was a scramble to get educational materials printed, collect necessary supplies, and complete as many side projects as possible.  I will be bringing 4 solar lamps to the clinic. I had laminated ID badges made for the team, for the meeting with the board members. We bring extra notepads for the students, branded  with our new logo stickers. Bound copies of the lecture notes for the students.  The organization we will be working with is Mother Health International:   Mother Health International I am really lookin...

 Tuesday 3/11/2024   5am  Good morning, friends! Well, I have been awake since 3 am, due to heat and the monkey brain, finally giving up at 4:30am. I feel like so much has happened in a mere 2 days, I don't know where to start! Sunday was filled with administrative projects on my own. The ITWA Team has a weekly phone meeting with Kristen in the late afternoon. I am not invited to these meetings, but a few hours later I was invited to a follow up meeting. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say it was very insightful, if not a bit frustrating. Monday, the team and I had a meeting, after some follow up phone calls were made regarding Gulu. The short version is that there were quite a few breeches of contract, so the trip was cancelled, regardless of the MOU status. In the meantime, the Atiak trip was accelerated and now I have 24 hours to pack up my personal things, collect all of my training materials, and prepare to drive north tomorrow morning. PIVOT!...

 Saturday 3/8/2024 Good morning, friends! Do we all remember the song "What a difference a day makes"? Well, that pretty much sums up what's happening here in Kampala.  What I SHOULD have been doing today is packing for the Gulu trip, double checking purchased supplies, collecting my training materials, etc... Instead, I awoke to a barrage of emails and messages, to find out that KKD wants a new MOU and the trip is on hold. All of this coming to a head 24 hours before I am supposed to leave for Gulu. 😣 At this point my frustration is palpable. There is so much discrepancy between the Kampala team and the US team and I am stuck in the middle. This is another case of me trying to decide how much to steer the ship or remain a passenger. GRRRRR. (Those of you who know me well can insert the appropriate and expected swear word.) So, this is how my day actually went and what my morning routine looks like here. Due to the heat and the neighbor's rooster, my wake-up time var...

 Hi Friends,  It's a beautiful day here, thanks to quite a bit of rain throughout the night. My belly is on the mend, enough so that I bought lunch for the team at my favorite restaurant. I stuck with rice and beans, just to play it safe. After paying the bill, I thought to myself "I wonder how many people who made donations are wondering where their money is going?" so here we are, with a new blog subject. But first, some photos of Picho and I, picking up lunch... 😁 The big expenses are obvious, such as my flight, which varies a bit from year to year. This year, my flight was $1300.00 USD with an additional $650 towards extra luggage to bring supplies. I pay for all extra costs of staying anywhere on my way to or back from Uganda. $1000 of donations (Thank you LeeAnn and Jason!) went to buying 30 solar lamps, $555.14 went towards other supplies that I have mentioned previously (pens, mini wireless printers, extra printer paper, thumb drives, rain ponchos). Supplies that...

 Tuesday 3/5/2024 It's late afternoon here and I have actually been fairly productive today but let me back up a bit. Unfortunately, I woke up very early on Monday with a belly ache, which I believe is the fault of the popcorn. I eat popcorn almost daily back home, but I use an air popper, no oil. I am not used to cooking with a lot of oil, and I definitely had a reaction to the excessive use of oil when I was in Kenya, so by process of elimination I can only blame the popcorn (and possibly my lack of control when eating popcorn), probably compounded by the almost completely fried menu of the hotel food last week. Who knew I was such a delicate flower?? 😁 Monday morning, I dragged myself out of bed to join a meeting with the ITW Team, Dr. Alphonse, Allan, Renny, and Picho. You can read their bios here... ITW Team Allan and I shared our experiences from the Surgical Camp last week and then I seized the chance to discuss what I might be able to do to help increase the visibility of ...