International Relations

So I am going to attempt to write a post that has as little as possible to do with birth.

I feel Lyanne and I have been very lucky in Mbale, in that we have managed to make some local friends here. Of all the things I was expecting to find in Uganda, a social life was not one of them. However, especially since our return to Mbale, we have spent some part of almost every day with our new friends. Most of these friends are student clinicians, a ‘core’ group consisting of Denis, Paul, Francis, Deogratias, Castro and Kevin, and others who join us more occasionally.

As mentioned by Lyanne in a previous post, Friday night was spent seeing how they prepare a typical dinner. It turns out, dinner is cooked in their bedrooms, on a single burner set on a small wooden frame which gets electricity via two bare wires stuck into the electrical outlet (Kevin was very careful to make sure the outlet was turned off, and to use a pen…yes, a pen… to ground the current as he placed the wires). I later found out that Denis’ mother died when he was younger from electrocuting herself using a similar apparatus.

Lyanne, Francis and Denis

Denis cooking our feast

The final product - delicious!

Friday nights the clinicians always spend out at a club (Friday night is free for students) and so Lyanne and I decided to accompany them. Dancing with Africans is entirely humbling and entirely invigorating all at once – us white folk just do not know how to dance.

Sunday we attended Catholic mass, and later brought a few of the clinicians to the pool we frequent on the weekends. While the pool fee is the equivalent of $2 for the whole day, it is still significantly out of price range for most of our friends, and so we were only too happy to treat them. We had asked them all before they arrived whether they knew how to swim, and they had all assured us that they did – a blatant lie as Lyanne and I soon found out! Thankfully the pool is only shoulder deep, and the two hours spent attempting to teach these five grown men how to do something, anything graceful in the water were entirely hilarious.

Attempting to teach Francis to float

Tonight we had the honour of being invited out to dinner by Dr. Paddy. Although I try not to pick favourites, I find Dr. Paddy’s compassion for labouring women and outright glee at every healthy baby he delivers so refreshing, especially in a country where compassion in a health care provider is not exactly encouraged (Lyanne and I get laughed at for rubbing women’s backs during labour). Dr. Paddy is currently completing his internship year at Mbale Hospital. He took us out to our favourite Indian restaurant, and we got to pick his brain about his experiences over the past year, and also about his upcoming training in neurosurgery in another nearby hospital. We’ve been so grateful for Dr. Paddy’s warm welcome of our presence on the ward. I’m sure the OB/GYN wards will be very sad to see him leave in August, but I know he will do incredible things with his future training.

Dr Paddy

Tomorrow night is our last in Mbale. Thursday we make our way to Entebbe, where we fly out from early Friday morning. Tomorrow is the day we will give what is left of our supplies to the hospital and say our goodbyes to the labour ward staff. In the evening we are having a goodbye celebration with the student clinicians. We have purchased an exorbitantly priced strawberry cake for the occasion, and expect to share it with twenty or so people.

And so our day of departure approaches, and I find myself incredibly sad to be leaving. While the experience has been intense in so many ways, it has also been very affirming for me.  If I can love being a midwife so much in these circumstances, I must really have chosen the right career. Days are long and exhausting, and sometimes devastating, but there has never been a moment when I questioned whether this is what I want to do with my life.

Posted by Sarah

PS Dear Mom, please do not be alarmed that we have no female friends here. This merely reflects the 10:1 ratio of men to women working in the hospital (in our age range anyways).