Day 32 - Writing

I vowed at the beginning of this trip that I would keep a journal, and a good one. Recently I have been slipping and I’m not very happy with myself. The problem seems to be that each day I come home a little more tired, a little less apt to do anything but sit and just relax. What I should be doing is reading a book, writing in my journal, etc. I’m just going to have to buck up and do it!! It’s already been four days since I’ve written and there have been other times when I didn’t as well. Luckily I have a bunch of writings already, hopefully I will stay on task in the future.

Today has been one crazy day. We began a Simba Stove at the Equator Primary School. Jeanette is the lady we are working with and she is such a doll, she really is just beautiful. Sadly, Jeannette suffers from AIDS and is very skinny at this point in her life. She is still very bright and has a great spirit about her. We are shocked by her ability to continue to serve the kids. She is the cook for all of the kids at the school. While Amber was investigating women’s groups, she came across Equator and NAADS and set up the project. We really kicked butt today on getting started. We got the entire foundation in and we couldn’t be happier, it turned out amazing. Dan, from Canada, is our man on site. He is well trained in construction and does a first class job with everything he does. He designed the foundation well, I couldn’t be happier. We will go back on Thursday to actually mold the stove.

There was a rather unfortunate circumstance today however. After Dan and I had finished with the stove, we were brought a meal by some women at the school. It was matooke covered in a peanut sauce along with some yummy perfectly ripened avocados. I dug in praying the food would be free of food born illness; after all, we don’t REALLY know these people and their cooking habits. The food was good however, and even Dan thought so, until the unthinkable happened. As he was eating his food he realized that there was peanut sauce on the matooke. Dan is severely allergic to peanuts, nuts in general, and legumes. He started to freak out, said some choice words (which I would as well had I known I had just eaten death itself), and then told me that he needed to throw it up and then get on a boda boda immediately to get back home and get his medicine. I panicked, but handled it well. My first thought was, “There aren’t even any boda bodas up in this area, we are going to have to run down the mountain and get one!” As we were sprinting towards the bottom, his through beginning to swell, a boda boda came driving up the path with a passenger. I sort of waved him down, he could see we were panicked and running. He drove past, we kept running. Seconds later I hear yelling behind us. It was the boda boda on it’s way toward us without a passenger, it couldn’t have been any luckier - except that we all know it wasn’t luck. I put Dan on the boda boda and sent him off telling the driver to take him to Nakazadde where the house is. I began sprinting again, but this time I was out of control; I don’t think I’ve ever ran so fast for so long in my entire life. It wasn’t until after 2 minutes of sprinting that I found another boda boda to take me back to the house. When I got there Dan had just pulled up and was in taking some benedryl pills. I asked him when it was time to give him the EpiPen shot, he said not until he said. So, of course, I prepared myself for what thought I might have to do. At first he didn’t feel like he needed to go to the hospital, then all of the sudden he said, “Ok, I need to go.” Jackie, Ashley, Dan and I hopped on the two bodas that were waiting out front and headed to Kawolo as fast as we could. There we went into the injections room where he was given a shot of hydrocortisone. Unfortunately they didn’t have epinephrine available. The nurse prepared the shot and then turned to me and asked if I was giving it, I told her “no”, she then proceeded to give it to him. I couldn’t believe she asked me, it was pretty funny. Maybe she had found out I was a medical assistant, I don’t know. We gave Dan a blessing. Trent anointed, I sealed. It was short, simple, and to the point - it felt good. He said he began to feel a little better or at least that the side effects of the reaction had stopped progressing.

Jackie, Trent, David and I decided to leave, Ashley stayed behind. Jackie and I decided it would be a good idea to go to Jinja and check out the hospital situation for future reference. To our surprise we got a call from Ashley saying they were in a car on their way to Jinja with Dan. His condition had worsened and they eventually gave him the EpiPen. We all met at The Surgery, a branch of the big hospital in Kampala. There was a nice Australian women doctor there, we felt very comfortable with her. She was very helpful and treated Dan accordingly. We left Dan and Trent overnight in Jinja because the doctor said it would be a good idea to have him stay in town.

It was a crazy day, I'm so tired right now and the group wants to watch a movie, I guess I'll watch one. I told the The Forgotten was a good one, it should be good. Until next time.