We're leaving together...

This morning, Sarah and I managed to successfully navigate the Ugandan public transit system, and we've now arrived at the airport guest house in Entebbe.

Our last day in Mbale was very touching. We went to one birth (Sarah caught, and did a beautiful job) and we dropped off all of our leftover medical supplies; they were gratefully received. We also went by Family Planning, to say goodbye to our friend Grace. We gave her a head lamp as a gift; midwives here do cervical cancer screening by visual inspection, and her lamp hasn't worked properly for months, so she was very excited to have a new hands-free model!

We had ordered a cake for the Sisters on the ward as a thank-you gift, and prepared special gifts for each of the sisters who had supervised us these last two weeks. Little did we realize that in Uganda, a cake is A Big Deal. The student clinicians had suggested that we write "To love and serve" on the cake -- that seemed nice enough, so we agreed. It turns out these words are the last line of the Ugandan Nurses' anthem, and Sister Rose, the head of the labour suite, sang us the anthem when she saw the cake. We had a lot of fun taking group photos, and at the end of the day we gathered to cut the cake. First there were speeches, thank-yous, and prayers, and four of us held the knife together for the first cut, wedding-style. The sisters all had incredibly kind words for us, and we were both a little sniffly as we stepped out the door for the last time.

Sisters Rose and Rosemary with their cake

Later that evening, Sister Irene, a midwife we've worked with quite a bit this week, dropped by our dorms, with gifts for us and for Angela. Once again, we were incredibly touched, as we know that midwives here are not wealthy. We also had a lovely visit with her, and it was lovely to get to know her a bit better.

Our lovely farewell cake

In the evening, we had planned a farewell gathering with the student clinicians, and yet another cake. This is when we learned the four rules of cake:
1. You don't pray before cake.
2. You don't wash hands before cake.
3. You don't grab, you "pick" (dainty fingers!)
4. You don't "leave the bones" (this seems to mean that you eat everything)

Picking, not grabbing

Before getting into the cake, we all sat at a table together, and every student said a farewell speech, with the two of us speaking last. It was very sweet, and very touching. Both Sarah and I were very happy to have made friends in Mbale, but I don't think we realized how much they enjoyed our excursions, or how much they felt they'd benefitted from our teaching sessions. Once again, the cake-cutting was very elaborate; five of us made the first cut together, and then all of the clinicians took turns posing for the camera while cutting the cake. The group did an excellent job making the giant sheet cake disappear, and we couldn't have imagined a better way to spend our last night in Mbale. Not only that, our noisy dorm-mates had left Mbale earlier that day, so we were treated to silent surroundings when we headed to bed.

The whole group of us

One of the student clinicians, Denis, accompanied us on the bus as far as Kampala, and then took us to his sister's house for lunch. He had assumed we would take a boda-boda from the bus stop; we were both a little relieved when he decided we had too much luggage, and found us a safe taxi instead. His sister's house is beautiful, and lunch was delicious, but the television in the living room seems to be constantly on "E!" network. Sarah and I found that the celebrity gossip and vapid TV shows were a little much after not watching any TV for nearly two months. We were sad to have yet another goodbye today, but we're looking forward to a series of reunions when we get back home!