About 20 of our volunteers left last week. I am going to miss them all but am excited to keep in touch in the future to see what they all do with their lives. We have some great people that have come through the program this summer.
To add to the eternal list of sicknesses, I guess that most people who went home got sick upon arrival and eating American food again. One of our volunteers who, lets be honest, is cursed to have everything go wrong when it comes to health emailed and said that she may have malaria, she is getting de-wormed, has a respiratory infection, and is being tested for giardia.

The day the last group of volunteers left, wendy seth and jeff came in town. They slept at our house wed night and then we spent half day on Thursday and Friday back at sipi falls. It’s so beautiful there and it’s been fun to have them here. The plan was to raft on Saturday but, surprise surprise, wendy got sick and didn’t feel up to going. So I stayed and hung out with her. She, seth and jeff slept at some friends place in kampala Sunday night and last night and should be sleeping here again tonight and tomorrow before they leave to the airport Wednesday.
I want to give another project update. So, we finished the eye camp with 1700 people screened and 102 surgeries. There was a man who was blind for ten years due to a bilateral cataract who was so enthusiastic about being able to see that he yelled to the crowds and pointed to say “I can see that you are a boy, and you are a girl!” On my mission in Taiwan, I tried to do that a few times and failed calling girls boys and vice versa, but this man was good and from what I heard, didn’t offend anyone.

Another big project we are doing is starting a social business of soap making with the persons with disabilities. That is our biggest project to pursue in this last week and we are probably going to need some business advice. The two leaders now have the training and we are going to work out an initial business model today and see how it goes. So if anyone wants a copy to look over, let me know. We are trying to work it out with the hospital that the persons with disabilities will be their soap provider. If that works out, then it would really be great and a constant buyer for them.

Our mushroom farms are something that we are trying to finish and make sure are sustainable. I’m workingout a contract with one of our partners to pay him in chickens to make sure that this is structured and he gives us updates on the farm etc. we have another one with the HIV group and need to finish that. The HIV positive group is more straight forward because the proceeds go to their transportation to come to meetings and medications for those who can’t afford them.
We are building two pit latrines, one for a school and one for a fishing village who uses lake Victoria for all their water needs, washing, drinking, and latrines included.

We finished a lot of different teacher trainings and business trainings. We also have given multiple womens groups mini cabbage farms. We have done outreaches with disabled persons and with the public health nurse, some other vulnerable groups that can’t afford to come to the hospital.

We also designed a peer teaching structure for a sex-ed curriculum to be implemented beginning in three schools and will hopefully expand. About ¼ of pregnant women that come into the health centers in our areas are under aged women. They then must have c-sections and drop out of school etc when they have children so young. The initiatives have really pushed abstinence but haven’t addressed the people who are still going to have sex.

We have two chicken coops, both for underfunded schools, one is for a school that is mostly orphaned children.

We have built a lot of stoves, probably around 50 of them, which help with respiratory disease and fuel costs (cuts it by about ½). We are working on some stoves at the hospital this week.

We are also doing a family planning public health group who is using fertility beads and charging the women after training to pay 5 cents for these beads. When used correctly, the beads are a really effective method of birth control.

We had the aids extravaganza, where over 100 people were given free hiv testing, including one 15 year old girl fatuma. It turns out that she is positive and doesn’t know. So, we are befriending her (the public health nurse wants us to and for some reason it wouldn’t be suspicious in her mind) but she is a sweet 3rd generation ugandan born Indian. I really like her and am not sure how this relationship is going to go considering she said to her grandma she would kill herself if she was positive.

On a lighter note, I am also trying to branch out the products in Lugazi, we are helping the youth outreach mission (a group of about 30 college students who want to give back to the community) start a snack shop. They are selling the exact same product as everyone else. So Melissa and I recreated some of our favorite chapatti (they are a little thicker than Mexican tortillas) including honey butter and powdered sugar, cinnamon and sugar, pb and j, jelly, etc…so that maybe they would spice things up a little bit. I’m not sure if they will.

Wednesday I’m also teaching a local bakery how to make cookies to sell. They said that the ones I made last time were “too soft.” So this is going to be a struggle, but I’m determined.

We are also starting some savings and loans groups which are really exciting. It’s what has been keeping me up late and waking me up early the past few days. I’m really excited about it. It’s microcredit with savings in womens groups that don’t need an institution. That being said, it’s fairly complicated and takes training.

anyway, life is good. I'm really happy here.