A day in my life in Jinja

Breakfast

I realise a few of my posts have been somewhat somber, which might have given a skewed perception of what life is like here.  I thought I should give you a quick synopsis of what I get up to on most days, it does vary a little from time to time but this might give anyone planning a similar trip a rough guide.  My first alarm goes off at 5.45am; it is in fact the much-discussed rooster near my window. I ignore it as I know there will be another warning in an hour. True to form the next alarm rings at 6.45am again it is the rooster so I wait for my set alarm at 7am. I climb out of bed in a daze, change into my exercise clothes and off I go to meet Sarah for 45minutes-1 hour of torture in the name of exercise. Then I spend the next hour or so getting ready for work, with a substantial amount of time spent eating a nice breakfast thanks to Zaina (Sarah’s housekeeper) and thanks guys for the heaps of teabags sent all the way from England.

We slowly saunter to Nalufenya, well grudgingly really, dreading whatever awaits us. The walk is pleasant with lovely green shrubberies; it takes approximately 20 minute but can be a little muddy on rainy days. Ward round starts about 9.15, on Monday, Wed- Thursday we spend the morning in the emergency room alongside a local paediatrician, seeing all the emergencies, new admissions, neonates and the dehydrated patients (D and V patients). On Tuesdays and Friday, I am on the newborn unit on my lonesome.

Entrance to walk on a dry day

  At the paediatric side, we see approximately 30-50 patients on the round, which ends roughly at 2pm if there are no emergencies. We have a lot of students on the ward rounds; the room can be very crowded with up to 4 patients per bed. As usual the heat is relentless so I spend a large amount of the ward round fanning myself and drinking water in an attempt not to faint. The hazard of drinking too much water is that you inevitably need to urinate; unfortunately this is not possible, as we do not have a working toilet for staff at the hospital. So I try and minimize my drinking at work but I am not complaining at least the students are learning on the round! That is sustainability!

After the emergency ward round, we often do another round on the Malnutrition unit which has 10-20 patients but these days some of the other doctors get to it before we do. After lunch our afternoons are spent teaching, or doing community work. We have been involved with a couple of NGOs ran by expats, some of my afternoons are spent helping at some sort of clinic or the other for children from the slum looked after by a charity called 1morechild.  We also spend our afternoon teaching clinical officers a as well as community health workers; this mostly draws to an end by 6pm.

Garden of one of the nice cafes in Jinja

6pm- 8pm varies, it can be spent in nice cafes,  or in the back garden of a few of the expat friends we have made; drinking Earl grey tea and eating scones (absolute luxury!).  I often end up running around the garden with the little clever English kids who are ever so confused about who I am.  They ask such interesting questions for instance ; why my hair is black?, why is Sarah white? Why do you not speak like the Ugandans? Are you Sarah’s sisters? Amusing really! On those days when I do not have such entertaining evenings; we read, prepare teachings session, work or watch back to back episodes of  recent popular TV series. We are watching The Good Wife at the moment, it is very addictive.

Then it is 8pm a.k.a Carbohydrate'o'clock, we have a nice spread of Ugandan food whilst watching 1 of 2 programmes, a Mexican soap or Ugandan soap, both equally infuriating but addictive and often generate a lot of discussion. We sometimes have friends over for dinner or eat out.  My evenings generally end with more reading (fun or work related), teaching preparations, skyping and talking to you lot or more episodes of the good wife! Then I trot off to my house next door,  off to bed and the whole thing starts again tomorrow….