Medical Clinic

As promised, here is the first of a few blogs posts about my time in Uganda! There were so many things that I wanted to post about and pictures that I wanted to share, but often, getting to a computer that had decent internet access was a challenge! There was an internet cafe in Mpigi town (the town closest to the village where I was living) so I attempted to get access once or twice a week. But often, after walking 15 minutes, hiring a boda boda to take me in to town (about a 10 minute ride), and waiting to get on a computer, I would open my first web page to find out that the internet had gone down, or that the power had gone out, or that the internet was so slow that it was going to take me an hour to load one picture on my blog!! But at the same time, it was nice to not feel so attached to computers and the internet...I learned that it is actually possible to go more than a day without checking my email!

The primary reason for my trip to Uganda was to do some work with the medical clinic that is offered through Peace Portal Community Church. Using funds from Peace Portal Alliance in Canada, the church in Uganda offers a one day per month medical clinic as a community outreach. The goal of this clinic is to demonstrate the love of Christ in a very practical way to the surrounding community. As the clinic is only offered once a month, it is designed to treat non-emergency conditions...the kind of things you would go to your family doctor or a walk-in clinic about. In Uganda, people tend not to go to the doctor for minor conditions, especially since they usually have to pay for the drugs that they might need. The Peace Portal Clinic offers the drugs free of charge, so it is very well received by the community and it helps to prevent minor health problems from becoming larger problems!

I spent some time with the pastor that oversees the clinic as well as the doctor to find out how the clinic has been going over the last year, and to begin working on some plans for how the clinic can be changed and improved. Overall, I was really happy with how things are going, and it was encouraging to see how much can be done for so many people with a relatively small amount of money!

Here are some pictures of the medical clinic...

The pharmacy area...

The nurse giving medications to some of the patients...and
Patrick (the one with headphones in) helping out!

The waiting room!

Goodbye Uganda!

Hello from Swaziland! I’m here for a week visiting my cousin and her family (husband and their four boys) who are serving here for the next two years. I figured that since I was already on the continent, it only made sense to stop in here for a bit before heading home!

So my time in Uganda has come to an end, unfortunately…I would have loved to stay longer, but at the same time I am also looking forward to coming home. When I came I wasn’t sure if I would come home in August, and was prepared to consider staying here longer, but I definitely am feeling that Canada is where I am supposed to be for the next little bit! So while I will be sad to leave Africa (I love it here), I know that Canada is where I am supposed to be this fall and I am looking forward to discovering what the next few months will have in store for me!

But there are definitely more stories still to come from Uganda…lots happened during my time there that I haven’t yet had a chance to blog about! So to save you having to read one really loooong blog post, I will be attempting to update my blog over the next few weeks with shorter posts about different things that I had a chance to do…the medical clinic, going on safari, more stories from the 10 acres, and some reflections on my time in Uganda! And I’ll also be putting my pictures up on Facebook once I am on a computer with a decent internet connection!

This trip has definitely been a great experience for me, and I am now starting to process how I can and should live when I return home to Canada. As this is my fourth trip to Africa, I know that I could very easily just fall back into “normal” life in Canada and it could be just like it was before I left…but that is what I really don’t want to do! I still haven’t quite landed on how this is going to look…so it will be an interesting journey for sure. Thank you also to those of you who have been praying for me while I was in Uganda…I really appreciate it, and God has definitely answered your prayers on my behalf! So thank you again!

So, more to come in the next few weeks…and I will see you soon! I arrive in Vancouver on August 14th at about three in the afternoon, so feel free to give me a call anytime after that! Take care!