The team in full swing

On Sunday we enjoyed doing church African style and re established friendships

 

We went to visit Lois Ford at Tender Trust , spending time with her and the 100 children she provides care for in her home. We were abloe to deliver some spare wheels for the wheelchair used by Ben, who is a paraplegic as a result of a terrorist bomb blast in Kampala 3 years ago. He is an important part of the community within Lois Ford's project and often reads to the children.

Today, Tuesday, Our two nurses, Lynette and Hannah have just returned from St Joseph Hospital after working in the matenrity ward and delivery suite, seeing an African baby born.
Three of us visited the New Life Clinic here in Kitgum where there is a focus on diagnosing and caring for HIV AIDs patients, and preventing maternal to child transmission of this disease. The clinic receives funding from Blood Water mission in the USA as well as Food for the Hungry.
It was exciting to see Robina, a laboratory technician , working in this clinic. She was partly sponsored by Yotkom about 5 years ago to do her studies and is now working back in her community as an important part of this health team
Andrew spent some time in Bregma Clinic with Dr Vincent and our clinical officers, Peter and Richard  and then visited a dental clinic in the town to get more information on dental services as there may be some interest in a dental team coming from Australia in the future. There is no Dentist in Kitgum, the nearest one being 100km away in Gulu. There is one private dental assistant in the town and she is able to do dental extractions and fillings. There is also a dental clinical officer at the local Government hospital
Shirley has been working  all day on getting our financial statements up to date in the Drug Shop and within the Yotkom office.She took a  packed lunch with her today.
Yesterday we had lunch with the IGF/Childcare leadership team and talked about the plans for health outreach at their facilities.

Tomorrow Doc Laurel is delivering a teaching session to the medical team at St Josephs Hospital and also to the Bregma Clinic team and some other primary health workers in the community. The topic will be on Palliative Care and Pain Management. She has been able to encourage the hospital to build up a good supply of oral morphine for the patients.

Here in our house we have had some challenges. We have to be cocooned in mosquito nets every night and its quite an undertaking to extricateyourself  in the night.

Andrew trapped in mosquito netting, wearing his favourite Kitgum boxers

This morning I had quite a sore back after lifting jerry cans of water yesterday. The water taps have run dry and so washing and cleaning is a bit of a challenge-- makes us appreciate the burden the women and children have here in carrying water long distances.  We are veryt thankful for food cooked for us by Joyce. She is a lovely lady and the fresh paw paw and mango and pineapple is particularly appealing.

Doc LAurel cooked scrambled eggs on Sunday

There are some beautiful things here too!