First days in Uganda

Wednesday 21.12.2016 at Villa Maria Hospital
Through this blog I will try took keep you all posted on my internship and travels in Uganda.
For my studies I am following a course called Public Health Promotion and for this course you can go abroad for an internship. Together with to of my fellow midwifery students, Eline and Lisanne, we found a place for an internship at Villa Maria Hospital in Uganda. After months of waiting yesterday, December 19th, it was finally time to leave for Uganda. Some hugs, happy tears and laughs we said goodbye to boyfriends, family and friends. After 2 flights we arrived at Entebbe airport at December 20th at 3.30am, then the waiting party started. The driver from the hospital picked us up at 8.30am. When we walked outside the sun was shining bright and it was around 25-28 degrees Celsius. Driving from the airport we saw Lake Victoria, which is very big. The country looks beautiful. There were a lot of impressions: the heat, the people, the sounds, the smells and the landscape. The memories from my travels to Ghana (already 5.5 years ago) came back, but it felt so much better this time. During the drive we passed the Equator, stopped there and ofcourse took some pictures. We stopped in Masaka to do some groceries and then we were off to the final destination: Villa Maria Hospital.
We arrived around 1pm and there was a really warm welcome. Caroline (the principal) and some nursing and midwifery students were waiting for us. They were welcoming us with singing and ‘you’re most welcome’ (a lot of people tell us that). We went to the principals office, she explained some and we had to sign the guestbook. She was very nice and strongly suggested to us to get some rest. After she brought us to our sleeping area, which is our own house (the guesthouse), at the Nursing & Midwifery Training School Campus. There is a living room, dining area, kitchen, toilet, shower and 2 bedrooms. It is bigger than my house in Amsterdam ;). I had just 1 hour of sleep on the plane and 1.5 hours of sleep in the car, so I was exhausted. I unpacked my bag, took a shower (cold, but really nice) and then went to bed for 2 hours of sleep. After we made dinner and walked around on the campus. At 8.45pm we went back to bed, because we had to be up early, we had a great night of sleep.
This morning (Wednesday) miss Fosca (she takes care of us if we have any questions) took us to the Villa Maria Hospital for a tour. The hospital is across the road of our house, it was way bigger than I expected. We walked around for a bit and she showed us all the wards, we met the head doctor Moses. At the Maternity ward we already met some midwives. For the rest of the day we were off. Around 3pm we arranged two boda-boda drivers. They brought us to Nyendo, so we could go to a market. The drive amazing, the view was great. A lot of people were looking at us, calling us Mzungu. At the market the drivers went with us to get groceries. We bought patotoes, onions, pineapple, watermelon, 3 mango’s, 10 green banana’s (which you have to cook and it tastes like patotoes). Together it was 7500 Uganda Shillings, that is around 1,80 in Euros. The drivers were very nice, on the way back we stopped at one of their houses and he got us 4 bell peppers fresh from the land.
Tomorrow we have to be at the Maternity Ward at 8am for the reports and then we will start working. I am really curious about the way they work and what I can learn from them. For school we will do research on the antenatal care. A lot of the women come to the hospital when they have to give birth and most of them have no or a few antenatal checkups. Where in the Netherlands the women will have around 15 checkups during pregnancy. We will do interviews with the women and midwives to find out reasons that are of influence in the attendence of antenatal care.
After the internship, which is until the 13th of January, we will be doing some travelling. First we will be going to a bed&breakfast in Masaka owned by a Dutch woman. Then we are going on a 4 day Safari to Queen Elizabeth Park. I am really excited for this trip. January 20th is the end of this journey and we will be flying back to Amsterdam. But that is a month away from now and First I am going to have a great experience here and will come back with a lot of memories.
I will try to keep you updated, but there is limited access to internet.
For now: lots of love and kisses from Uganda.