Testing, testing, test of…. faith?

Sunday, July 27 2008

So lets talk about Thursday. I woke up early to go to town to photocopy all of the documents for the school visit that was planned for 2PM. I arrived in Wandegeya at 9am, sat down with the printer and began printing the documents from my USB drive. We sent the first two documents to get copied. An hour and a half later, we finally finished printing out 10 documents. That is about 9 minutes/document…?! And we checked on the progress of copying the documents, only 20 packets of 9 pages were complete…in an hour and a half. TIA (that is Africa). You see, I had asked them to print on both sides of the page so as to save paper and to make the documents lighter for me to carry… little did I know that they were feeding the papers printed on one side BY HAND to print them on the other side. I had a small turret’s attack (I’m sorry if that is insulting to anyone).

I explained to the woman that we have to move faster because I had to leave Wandegeya by 11AM and told them to print one sided pages, sorry earth. I also recruited 2 more machines from a neighboring store. I got out by 11:30. Now because I had to be at St. Stephen’s Hospital at noon, and matatus take about an hour to get there, I got a bodaboda for the 12km journey. That in itself was an adventure.

12:03, arrived at St. Stephen’s. 3000USh spent ($1.80). Nice to know that even with such a weak dollar I still feel like I’m not spending NYC prices.

We got to the school on time and were greeted by at least 100 children all smiling and eager to see a mzungu go into their school. We waited for the headmistress to come, it was a standoff of cultures…we tried crossing the line by saying what little Luganda we knew, all we got were big toothy smiles, it was totally worth it.

We set everything up for blood testing and interviews on a shady stage in the middle of the playground. 25 kids, 3 parents. Unfortunately, one of the parents died and was being buried that afternoon so all of the other parents went to the funeral. The headmistress was embarrassed, we really tried to explain that it’s ok and that we’ll do what we can. We told her that though parents gave her permission, we need the parents to be around for the interview. All of a sudden the 3 parents who were there had 8 children aged 6-7 each. Hmmm. Possible, but not at all probable. So, one woman actually did have 4 because she ran the school orphanage. It seems that it’s quite normal for each school to have it’s own orphanage.

After a long introduction, consenting process, and blood tests, we got the kids’ results. I was really holding my breath as each result came with a high-pitched beep from the machine. NO CHILDREN WITH HIGH LEAD!!! We did, however, find 3 children (out of the 8 we tested) who were borderline anemic, and they will be getting free follow-up at St. Stephen’s. The day was a success.

We tried to get home early to prepare for the next day.

Friday: Mpererwe Church of Uganda Primary School.

This was our school. Right near the house, we went to their church and explained everything, we did the focus group in their auditorium. Only 1 parent showed up on time. We stayed from 8am to 1:30PM and waited for children who were sent home to go fetch their parents to return. All in all, 11 completed the study. A little disappointing, but still a good learning experience.

Talking about learning experience... As we were waiting for some of the parents to arrive, I was deciding with Lauren not to go to Mblae for Shabbat. So someone asked about why I can't just leave later and we had the "I'm Jewish" discussion. This one did not go as well as the others. For about 20 minutes, I was being told how many lies I believe in and how I'm going to go to hell for believing them. Ouch.

Truth is, I have no problem having these discussions with people as long as we don't accuse or denounce the other. I prefer more of a religious exchange than an outright disputation. She had never met a Jew before and thought I was SDA (short for seventh day adventist). She then told me how next time we meet she is going to bring her bible to prove me wrong. It's funny. I didn't know how to respond. I was thinking that maybe I should have a better look at the end of the the Old Testament so that I have a lot more to say. We never stressed all that in school. Something to think about.

Back to the school: Here we found 4 children with elevated lead levels, but nothing dramatic. Interestingly, 2 of them were twins exposed to the same environment. I am beginning to think that those children with high lead levels only have them because of their specific environments, not necessarily the dump. Lauren and I talked about it, either way we have done our job, we have a good study, and we got a $10,000 machine donated for 18 months. I truly hope that we get to report that all the children have low lead levels. After the session, I went home and made some cheddar mac and cheese for me and Lauren. Great comfort food after a long day.

Shabbat was nice and relaxing even though someone took the tape off of the refrigerator light button. Basically, I waited for the sound of the fridge opening and pounced on the opportunity. Always exciting here.

Really, there is nothing much to report for now. I’m relaxing today and making sure that we are prepared for tomorrow when we go to Grace Primary School. I have some pictures and hope they show up.

Consenting the parents at Kiteezi Learning Center

Getting Assent from the children, the candy helped a lot

Not a single kid cried when getting their blood drawn, notice all the kids looking on in the background.

Morning assembly at Mpererwe Church of Uganda Primary School, we addressed the whole school. When you ask these kids how they are doing, they respond in unison "we are eager, disciplined, and very smart." Or something like that.

Teacher Alice keeping the kids busy while we take some of their blood.

Our phlebotomist (sp?) and MD turned lab tech.

Getting the notes down in Mpererwe CU. Today we did the letter A.