Monday, June 21, 2010

Today we went back to work. Our first stop was at a Teen Health Center called Naguru. There we sat in on a very graphic instructional video for the start and learned things such as how to put on a condom. We were then split into different work groups to help out on jobs disparately needed by the clinic. The other five kids were set up at a medical table sorting the medicines applied at the clinic. However, I was lucky enough to be one of the Doctor's assistants. It was an experience i am not likely to forget anytime soon. I mostly pushed papers for the morning, but i was able to learn so much more. In his office, i was able to see him administer tests for HIV Aids and Malaria. He said he receives about forty Aids patients a day, while he received only ten Malaria patients a day. I was the one to enter in all the data for the information required to receive the examination. But also, this doctor took upon himself to teach me all the things that he was doing. I learned how to figure out what blood type someone was, i learned how to perform both the Malaria and HIV Aids tests, and i even got to look into his microscope to see a persons blood infected with Malaria. When looking in the microscope, everything was a grayish purple (because of the dye he dipped the test slide in) and to distinguish if a person has malaria, you look for tiny red dots that have a hazy grayish/purple smudge next to it. The first case had about five of these markers, normal for an early stage of malaria, unfortunately, a later one had at least twenty of these dots which made the doctor groan a bit because that would require the patient to receive heavy treatment to survive the disease. Although i had lots of fun, i am sure my friends had LOTS more fun sorting our the pills to put in packages for the storage room. (kidding). Anyway, we got to go to a classic Ugandan lunch, Italian food! It was nice to get some nice warm pasta into our system after all the other new flavorful food we had tried so far on this trip. After we had finished, we went to a Museum that housed much of the anthropological and archaeological history of Uganda. We got to see many of the tools and clothing and other items that were used in ancient past. They also had a really neat outdoor exhibit that housed 15 or so huts that mirrored different tribes in Uganda. Many of the guys found it difficult to lay our hands off of the weaponry just waiting for us to play with. After a brief history lesson, we ended our day early to come back to the Kampala Guest house and just get to see Portugal beat North Korea by 6-0.
-Ben