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Am currently tucking into a yummy fruit salad with papaya, banana, water-melon, pineapple and passion-fruit with the odd piece of chocolate thrown in. I am SO going to miss the fruit here. The pineapple is unbelievable. In fact I might bring one home if I have enough room in the luggage.
Just returned from a nice trip to Molly and Paul’s, a school near the hospital where one of the ladies we met at church works. Hilarious once again. We went into the classrooms and the kids all stood up and said ‘We welcome you to our class our visitors’ and then we stood at the front and they sung for us. One of the classes was singing something about crushing Satan. Everything we said was greeted by rapturous applause – we were asked our names and they were all clapping, although there was a slight delay at the names Kai and Chrissie-Mary due to the confusion that they actually were names. There was a Christine in the class so I was very exciting for them.
Feels so normal being here now, having a nice girly chat over the dishes with the waitresses about their lack of decent boys in Masaka – could have been anywhere! Will miss those girls! Brilliant night last night with yummy curry with everyone who works for Uganda childcare (Danish people charity). We went to the orphanage in the afternoon. Cute kiddies with very biblical names: Jeremiah, Elijah, Gideon, Sarah, Samuel etc. Washing clothes and took balloons. Initial delight which descended into horror and lots of tears as they discovered that balloons pop. Then the prophets realised the elasticated dead balloons made a good weapon. What had we started.

This week I’ve been on general medicine. The doctor is an encyclopaedia. He’d ask us the differentials of someone’s symptom and wouldn’t let it rest until we’d thought of absolutely everything in existence. Then he’d grill us on some disease and 3 patients later is still asking you questions about it- why, what causes it, what’s the pathophysiology, why does that drug work etc. etc. So 4 hours later we were standing collectively brain dead surrounding a man with interesting neurology who smelt gross and everyone’s suggestions for causes became more and more ridiculous as we could only think about the varying possibilities of what was for lunch. Brilliant teaching. Lots of interesting cases on medicine, lots of diabetes which we didn’t expect so much and lots of Kaposi sarcoma (kind of cancer you get with HIV). One guy with horrific Kaposi’s on his foot (easily made it to the top 3 worst smells of being here- number one being the pit latrine outside Lake Mburo National Park and number two being septic products on o&g). There are little isolated concrete hut things with literally just a bed and light bulb in for the ?TB patients and HIV patients. Man its so sad the young people with KS that’s spread everywhere who will almost certainly die of it. And one guy with Stevens-Johnson syndrome (massive immune reaction to drug) where you get ulcers all over your skin and mouth and insides – horrible.

The plot thickens with the nuns in the hospital – apparently they got caught growing marijuana ‘for the pigs’. Apparently it’s not uncommon for nuns to be a bit dodge here. Leaving Kitovu hospital on Thursday morning. Will be sad to leave Maria and Regina (our cooks) they are so sweet. Maria cries every time someone leaves! And we’re leaving the 3 guys on their own after there were 16 medical students at one point. Off to Rock of Joy school, v excited about this having heard so much from Miss Blair!

Lots of love,
Christine