Emma in Africa

I love my job! It is in a border town and there is a lot of work to be done, but I am up to the challenge. My co workers are awesome, and the Sister that runs the hospital is so great. I’ll post some pictures some day, I promise.

Hi guys!

I have been trying to long in to log into my blog for about 20 minutes and it just isn’t going to happen, so I am writing an email. Things are not very high tech here, and the internet is all dial up. You know that computer your family got rid of in 1997? I am currently typing on it in 90+ degree heat from Jinja town, right on the Nile river.

We went and saw the source (of the Nile) today, as well as Mabira forest, which is gorgeous. This town is great, there are lots of white and asian people walking down the street and I don’t have hoards of children running after me screaming “muzungu! muzungu!”. I honestly never thought about race the way I do here on a moment to moment basis. It is really bizarre. I am adjusting, and I feel really good about getting out to my site, which I will find out about in about a week.

It will be somewhere in ______ district on the border with _________. We took a language exam (oral) and I felt really good about it. I feel pretty confident about scoring an intermediate low by the time training is over because my Lumasaaba ari bulungi.

Last night I saw a shooting star on my way back from the put latrine and I asked my brother what he called them in Luganda. He said “that which only one person sees”, because it’s so fast that only one person ever notices it, even if two are walking together. The funny thing is that when I mentioned it to another trainee today he said he saw one last night too (maybe the same one?!).

Another cool thing I did this week was go and see a traditional healer. It was the Africa I was waiting to see, not the evangelism I’ve been living with since I arrived. We got to go in his shrine and he had a leopard skin with cowrie shells in it and he said he uses it once the jaja (ancestor spirits) possess him. They tell him what is wrong with the patient, spiritual or physical.

He is also trained to tell the symptoms of Hiv or Tb infections and has referral papers to the nearby hospitals. He’s an important link in the health care system in Uganda, believe it or not. I hope I can work with one in Mbale, his shrine had “PhD research” written all over it! Anyhow, my hour is almost up, and I want to get a cup of coffee before heading back to _______ town, so I will saw adieu.