Disability and Hope in Uganda

It’s been an awesome but extremely tiring last few days!

On Thursday the 6 of us returned to the hospital once again! This time we were a little more accustomed to the procedure and were able to see even more action! While some of the group watched a twin c-section, I was able to watch some throat scopes, biopsies and procedures!

After a quick stop at KFC for lunch we returned back to the hospital. This time I was able to watch a hip replacement surgery. While this was involved a few to many bone saws and hammers for my liking it was still amazing to see this procedure first hand!

Friday we once again went to the hospital, but this time it was not as great of an experience for any of us. The 5:20 a.m. mornings were finally catching up to us and we all felt exhausted! I almost passed out watching surgeries that I would have been fine with the day before, I just didn’t have the mental energy to keep myself together.

Since others were beginning to feel the same way we took the afternoon to enjoy a nice lunch and run some errands before returning to the house to enjoy the sunshine and rest up for the safari!

Saturday was another early morning as we headed out for the safari at 7. We stopped at a nice restaurant for lunch and then continued the long drive to Murchison Falls National park! Once we entered the park we had another couple of hours drive to the falls.

The falls were absolutely spectacular and the spray from the falls was very welcome after a long ride with no air conditioning!

Next we headed the rest of the way to the Nile River, where we took a car ferry across to where all the animals were!

The last 2 hours of the ride to our lodge was also our first game drive. We popped the lids of our vans up so we could see, and were greeted by the sight of wild animals almost immediately!

Our lodge was in the middle of the park, so animals could freely roam between the buildings. When it was dark you had to stay on the lit path to avoid being snatched up by wild animals.

The lodge was also very sustainable as they only used electricity at night and charged with a solar panel all day. This also meant that they only had WiFi in the main lobby, and this as always a very busy place!

That night we went on a sunset safari and saw many more animals including a lion mama and two cubs!

The next day we did a sunrise safari, chilled by the pool, and then headed out on a river cruise of the Nile. We saw crocodiles, tons of hippos, a variety of birds, and beautiful view of the falls from the river!

On the way back from the Nile we did our final game drive looking for lions ! Although we were unsuccessful in finding lions we got some cute pictures and saw some more great animals!

Monday morning we slept in for a while and once again took the long drive back to the house!

On the way back we collected an offering for a small community of farmers living along the side of the highway. These people farm for a rich farmer all year and only collect around $100 for their work. For this reason each team who comes on safari collects money in order to buy bread, sugar, cooking oil and soap. These are luxuries these people can never afford. We were not allowed to take photos, and this is not something Hope Speaks advertises, but we simply walked door to door giving them these things and praying with them.

This was one of the hardest parts of the trip for me. The people flocked out of their houses, and in the end we didn’t have quite enough supplies for all of them. It was an awful feeling not being able to do any more to help.

This was also the first time on this trip that children kneeled while shaking my hand. I know that this is a cultural sign of respect, but it really got to me. I’m still working on processing it, but I felt very uncomfortable with how they perceived the relationship and worthiness between us. The fact that they thought I was worth kneeling in front of meant that these kids have an ingrained idea that I am somehow better than them. I just wanted to sit with these kids and remind them that they are children of God just like me, and that they are just as worthy of love and respect.

God has really laid on my heart that although I may have been blessed with a better childhood, I am no more worthy than these children. This reminds me to be incredibly grateful for everything that I have been blessed with!

I am now sitting at the Amsterdam airport -we have a 7 hour layover- and working on processing what I saw and learned on this trip. The trip was such a whirlwind that it was hard to think through all that I had experienced. For this reason I will most likely post one more time wrapping up my feelings once I have slept and had more time to process. Stay tuned!

If anyone would like to donate to Hope Speaks, any little bit would help -seriously. I will leave the link below to their website, and I encourage you to take part in their mission in any way that you can!

https://joinhopespeaks.org/

Sorry everyone for not updating this blog as regularly as I should! Our days here, while rewarding are hot and tiring so by the time I get back I’m ready to crash!

Monday morning the number of sick people on our trip had risen to three ( don’t worry they are all better now)! While I was not counted in the sick I ended up staying back because I was feeling a little sluggish and under the weather. This was a great opportunity to refresh for the rest of the week and spend some time with the kids at home!

In the afternoon I traveled to the private clinic where I helped work on a first aid handout for Hope Speaks to pass out to parents at the clinic!

Tuesday morning started with some preparation and planning for the next few days in the slums. I worked with Rachel, another Therapeutic Recreation major on a few projects such as mobiles for kids who spend most of their time on their backs!

We also got the chance to observe a support/treatment group for adults with strokes! This was super interesting to me as I will be interning in Nuero rehab this summer! After introductions were made we played the game blink as a group to target specific goals in the patient. I loved this because although the goals were very speech related, it felt like a Recreational therapy group with the introduction of a game as a modality for rehabilitation!

After a fun trip to the grocery and craft stores we headed to Katanga slum for the afternoon. Here we observed speech therapy, ran hearing screenings, and prayed with the moms about what they needed that week. It worked really well to have these different stations set up!

Wednesday (today) is when the trip got super interesting to me! I decided that instead of heading back to the clinics the last few days I would take the opportunity to shadow in a local catholic hospital for the rest of the week!

This morning we left early and arrived at St. Francis Nsambya Hospital. This turned out to be an incredible experience but gave me some extreme culture shock.

Unlike the hospitals back home which require a background check and pages of paperwork, we were able to shadow anywhere in the hospital just because Ben knew one of the doctors. We simply wrote a letter explaining why we wanted to shadow and the director of the hospital quick signed it for us so we could get right into it!

We didn’t wait for Dr. Francis to be available between patients but rather he ushered us right into the room. First we had to take of our street shoes and replace them with either crocs or slides they had provided. We walked in and were greeted by the sight of a lady receiving a colonoscopy. The doctor showed us what he was looking for and where the problem areas were for her. We then watched a scope of a mans throat which was really cool!

After these two procedure we were split into groups and given fresh sterile scrubs. These were “one size fits all” also known as a men’s 3x. My neon yellow socks I had unfortunately worn and my yellow slides, face mask and hair net really completed the look!

As soon as we were changed we were ushered into operating room 3 where a patient was being prepped for surgery. I washed my hands and arms as I was walking in but they assured us that wasn’t even really necessary.

The patient was having a laparatomy which is an exploratory surgery of the abdomen looking for intestinal obstruction. They ended up removing a section of the small intestine, removing a hernia, and giving her a stoma and colostomy bag!

This surgery was amazing to watch because they let me up close by the patient so I could see everything they were doing. They also asked me to grab iodine and pour it in a surgical bowl for them (so I can say I assisted)😂. This operating room seemed very different from what I would imagine it would look like in the US. Everyone was wearing slides, crocs, or rain boots with their scrubs. Although the actual surgeons were fully “scrubbed in” it amazed me the amount of people in the room with no gloves or anything on. It also seemed to be a very focused yet relaxed environment in a variety of ways which was interesting to me.

After the surgery we were met by a relief nurse who traded in our slides for rain boots and disposed of our used face and hair coverings. She then handed us each a bar of soap and two short lengths of gauze and told us to go shower. She also brought us two sand buckets of hot water to compliment the cold shower. Although it was not very clear what we should wash or how, we made do with what we had !

We then met up with the other groups and shared stories. One group had witnessed a c-section and another had watched a biopsy. All of us were equally amazed and shocked by what we had witnessed.

Although surgery will never be my future profession, it was amazing to see first hand the procedures and complexity of the human body. I can’t pass up these experiences that I would never be granted in more regulated and controlled US hospital environments. We are very excited to head back tomorrow and observe more!

Thank you everyone for reading this and supporting us with your prayers! Please pray for continued safety and for God to continue to work in and through us!

Also enjoy some other random pictures and any thought I have on them….

The last few days have been a whirlwind of new experiences!

On Friday morning our team visited the GEM foundation. This is a local children’s home that takes in children with disabilities that have been abandoned. There are about 45 children in the home and most have severe disabilities. This means that a majority are non verbal and non vocal.

Our group split up and began to help in a variety of ways. Some helped with speech and feeding re-assessments, others ran hearing screenings, and others played with children who normally don’t receive enough individual attention.

In the afternoon we visited a craft market. This market had craft and souvenir you could think of, and everything was dirt cheap! They told us to barter, but when you can get a pair of cute earrings or a bracelet for 30cents or a hand carved giraffe for $2 you almost felt bad paying any less.

While we were at the market we ate friend grasshoppers which was a new experience for most of us! The general consensus was that they tasted fine but we couldn’t stand that they still had eyes!

Later that afternoon we visited the other outreach clinic in the slum of Katanga. This location was even smaller, with just one room, so they had tents set up outside as well! We once again helped with therapy and played with the local kids until it started to pour and we headed out!

That night we headed to our entertainment for the night – a cultural dance! This was a performance meant for mostly tourist and included dances from the different regions of Uganda! While the dances were extremely impressive, the humor was a different story. The host of the show would drag on jokes forever, and his topics often just weren’t what an American audience is used to. It was very interesting, however, that the Africans in the audience were roaring with laughter.

Saturday was a more relaxed day! We left at about 11 and headed south to the equator. It was about a 2&1/2 hour ride each way and as soon as we got there we had to take lots of photos with the signs. We then watched the coolest demonstration of how water swirls on each side of the equator. It was amazing how it swirled counter clockwise on one side and then you could walk 10 feet and it swirled opposite. In the middle it just went straight down without swirling at all! We also ate some delicious food and did some more shopping while we were there!

At night we watched the Disney movie Queen of Katwe. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it! It was filmed in Kampala, where I am, and is very accurate to what I have been seeing each day.

Today, Sunday, we left at 8:30 for a church that starts at 8:30. Those of you who know me well know that I hate being late for things like this, especially church, so it stressed me out. I soon realized forever that although church officially starts at 8:30 most people don’t show up until around 9:30.

The church service was much louder and involved lots more crowd participation than I had expected, but I think it’s always good to see God worshipped in different ways by far there around the world!

This afternoon we had a long lunch at Cafe Java and have also been hanging out and taking walks around the neighborhood. We are trying to rest up for a long week of working in the clinics and schools!

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and for following our journey! Please pray for our classmate Jenna as she is flying in to join us over the next few days!

Also look at these giant snail!!!!

Hello again everyone! As I’m writing this we just completed our second full day here in Uganda.

Yesterday, after not much sleep, we began our morning with a delicious breakfast and a devotion time with a local pastor, Philip. He will be leading us in devotions each morning before we head out!

We then had a cultural orientation with Ben and Kari, and learned more about what to expect. Then after another delicious lunch we headed to visit the first therapy center!

This center is in a nicer part of town and is private pay. It has the offices, 4 therapy rooms, a great yard, and will soon be adding a therapy gym! Here we had an orientation about what we would be doing at the clinics and how they do their documentation .

On the way back from the clinic the staff offered to negotiate us short rides on the “boda bodas” which are essentially motorcycles that serve as public transportation for many in the city. You simply negotiate a price and the driver will take you wherever you’d like to go. Although riding on these sounded extremely stressful and scary it ended up being an incredible taste of what it is like to live as a local, even if we only went on the non-congested neighborhood roads!

After dinner that night we took a hike up to the top of the hill in the neighborhood we are staying. From this vantage point we could see the a lot of the city as the sun was setting!

This morning we had an early wake up call with breakfast at 6. It was another great meal, but we were all intrigued when popcorn was included 😂.

After another devotional time with Pastor Phillip in which we talked about the hopelessness experienced by those bound by poverty we headed to our clinic for the day!

Unlike the therapy center we toured yesterday, this clinic is in one of the poorest slums in town, Kasokoso. Since this is an area of extreme poverty, the proceeds from the private pay center are utilized to make the clinic free!

The clinic is a small rented space with twin rooms approximately 10×10. One room has a large open garage door and is used as a waiting area for families. There are mats to sit on on the floor and a small desk at which staff check in patients. It is on a first come, first serve basis and moms can come whenever is convenient for them!

The second room is used for therapy, and although it is a tiny space it has four mats in the ground which serve as stations to treat patients. They have a small selection of toys and activities and use them in amazing ways to make progress.

My main role for today was to observe sessions and help out however I could. This took the form of playing catch with a large foam dice and a large group of curious neighborhood children for a few hours in the morning. In the afternoon I was also able to help one of the professors with hearing screenings in the waiting room.

The coolest experience for me was working with my professors to treat a little girl with severe hearing impairment. She was only about 2 and was attending a school for the deaf. With my profs assistance I worked with her on some simple sign language. We passed a toy car across the floor and I would sign the words “want”, “please”, and “thank you”. Although she was not yet able to independently produce these signs she responded to and copied them! I also got to fill out “SOAP” notes for the therapists on how we worked towards her goals!

On the way home from Kasokoso we stopped at Cafe Java for smoothies, milkshakes, and drinks before heading to the guest house for an amazing dinner and debriefing time!

Things I’ve learned and observed these past couple days:

In no particular order because I’m tired!

-Kids are kids anywhere, they love to laugh and play!

-It’s okay to not know what you’re doing God will work through you in amazing ways to impact lives

-Ugandan street food is amazing

– I know I’ve said this a million times before but the traffic is literally insane… the only rule seems to be that you drive in the left, but even that seems negotiable!

-the sheer amount of people and shops you see lining each street is overwhelming and seems to be the most organized chaos you can imagine!

-my team is amazing!

– uganda is extremely community centered and everyone takes care of and looks out for everyone’s kids! This was evidenced by the mother who left her 3 year old son to play with us and walked away fully trusting he would be fine. It is also evidenced by the line of kids waiting to receive a single slice of bread for lunch from the clinic. Wherever there is food they all flock, and their eagerness for whatever food they could have broke my heart.

-it’s hot here- like 85 and humid- and we have to wear pants… but I guess as long as I’m not in snowy Michigan I can’t complain!

There is so much more that I have learned and experienced, and it is honestly hard to process it all, let alone put it in writing. But I hope this post helped shine some light on the needs in the community and the ways we are partnering with hope speaks to be blessed and be a blessing!

Please pray for continued health and strength- both mental and physical as we continue our journey! Thank you everyone for following along and please feel free to comment any questions may have and I’ll do my best to answer!

P.s. here are some bonus pictures because I personally love photos!

Good morning everyone, we made it to Uganda! Although the journey was long, we are grateful for safety and the comfortable beds we arrived to!

When we arrived airport last night we were greeted by Ben from Hope Speaks along with some of his staff, and they drove us in vans to the guest house.

The drive was very different than what I was used to. Since Uganda was a British Colony the cars have steering wheels on the right and they drive on the left, this is very disconcerting at first as it feels like cars are coming head on on “our” side of the road.

As we road with the windows open we took the opportunity to see the new sights and smell the new smells. It was interesting to me that although it was around midnight the roadside stands were bustling with activity. People were gathering to buy roast chicken, a drink, or just spend time with neighbors!

The first part of the drive from the airport in Entebbe to our destination of Kampala took us past the State house where the president is heavily guarded. We continued on paved roads to the highway, which honestly had nicer pavement then most roads in Michigan. This didn’t last long, however as soon the roads turned to dirt and became narrower as we reached our destination. The final roads we took were rutted beyond what I had ever seen. Riding on these bumpy roads is what they call the “African massage”.

We finally made it to the house around 2 a.m. and after a few housekeeping things headed right off to bed!

As I’m writing this it’s 8:45 in the morning. When I woke up this morning I was startled by the sunlight flowing through the window, thinking someone in my room had rudely turned on the lights (the things Michigan winters do to you😬).

The guest house where we are staying is on a beautiful plot of land and as I sit here I just feel grateful. Grateful that we finally made it safely, grateful for this opportunity, and grateful for the sunshine!

Hi everyone! Today marks the start of an incredible learning and serving experience. I, along with 15 classmates and 3 professors are on our way to Kampala, Uganda!

While in Uganda we will have the awesome opportunity to work with a non-profit organization called Hope Speaks. This organization was started by Calvin graduates, and strives to bring much needed therapy to underserved populations in Uganda. They provide speech therapy, community education, and advocacy for those with disabilities. Soon they will be expanding to offer physical and occupational therapy services as well!

These services are very valuable to this country where 1 in 7 children live with a disability. Often these children are seen as a shame to the family and are hidden away in the house so the community won’t know about them. Many times the fathers will blame the mother for the child’s disability and leave the family.

Those children with disabilities who do make it to school are often separated into a “dumb” class, and not given the attention that they need. Schools are often ashamed of these children and send them far away when the mandatory standardized testing is administered . Often children with disabilities end up dropping out of school at a very young age.

There is also a strong social stigma surrounding those with disabilities. Ben (the founder of Hope Speaks) told us that people will often cross the street or exit public transportation to avoid “catching” what the disabled person has. Taxis and other forms of private transportation will often charge a ridiculous amount to those with disabilities.

For these reasons Hope Speaks has a strong focus on community education, and on teaching parents that their children are not shameful, but rather children of God. They strive to make even a small dent into societies understanding of disabilities.

We do not know exactly how we will be helping day to day, but we do know that the extra boots on the ground will help Hope Speaks provide extra services in both their main therapy center and their community clinics! I will be updating as often as possible on the work we are doing there!

As a Recreational Therapy major I am especially excited to interact with those with disabilities, learn how recreation fits into a third world lifestyle, and help in any way I can. Although I do not know much about Speech Therapy, there are many similar concepts that I can draw off of, and learn from as I go!

On a personal note I am very excited to see what God has in store for me over these next couple weeks! Although we are not there long enough to bring about any major changes, I know that God works in the small things as well. My hope is that he works through me to care for and show compassion to each and every person I come in contact with. My goal is to be a mirror of God’s love onto each person I meet!

Please pray for me and my classmates as we make this long journey overseas. We left this morning (Monday) at 8:45 am from Calvin, and hope to be in Kampala by 11:30pm (3:30 pm Michigan time) tomorrow (Tuesday)That’s over 31 hours of travel! Please also pray that we can make even a small impact in the people and places that we serve!

Thank you for reading, and I will do my best to update as much as possible!

~Erica