24. The Journey Home – Our Final Day

Saturday 24th November 2012

 

Kisiizi Hospital Chapel

It’s yet another early start to the day. I am in the shower for 5.45am and it is still pitch black outside. I have two blogs ready to send but despite my best efforts last night I have no luck with attaching the word documents. I look in the ‘mirror’ again on the way out to check it I look as tired as I feel – I can’t believe I am still getting caught out by that after two weeks! I decide to walk to the IT Department after breakfast and although they are not open, I imagine that anywhere just outside the office is likely to offer me the best chance of a decent internet connection.

 

I have a quick breakfast, dry my hair and put the last few things in my case before walking down to the hospital carrying my laptop and am relieved to find I can quite easily connect to the internet and my documents are sent relatively painlessly. It’s back to Rose Cottage and I have a few presents to leave for the staff there from all the team. I am giving my grey hooded sweatshirt to Amozaic, some money for Philip to buy a present for Treasure, his new baby, two T shirts for Doreen (not Goat Project Doreen, but young Doreen who is a student and helps out in the kitchen to earn some money to buy books for her studies), and half a bottle of Body Shop Papaya Shower Gel and almost a full tub of Cocoa Body Butter for Eugulas. I give everything to Philip and ask him to pass the gifts on with our thanks for looking after us all so well. It’s time to get the cases over to Ian and Hannah’s house which is the location we are meeting at. Tom gets bonus point this morning from the girls in the Round Houses for helping to bring their cases. We agree later in the car that Tom has now earned enough points over the fortnight to graduate today as a man and will no longer be referred to as ‘young boy’. I forgot to mention yesterday that he saved Carolyn from falling into ditch in the road by grabbing her as she lost her footing near to Rose Cottage. She’s now got a bruised arm as he grabbed her pretty fiercely, but she agreed that this was preferable to having been run over by a Boda Boda.

 

There are the seven of us travelling plus Angela, who we are giving a lift to Kampala as she is attending a week’s anaesthetic conference and Fiona, Dr Rachel’s Mum, who is also visiting Kampala. Sampson from the Pharmacy Department is expected but he doesn’t show by 8am and there is no answer from his house so we assume he has changed his mind. We have quite a bit less luggage going back as much of the equipment we brought has obviously been left at the hospital, so with two vehicles ordered for the journey home and just nine passengers, two drivers plus luggage we have much more room than we had on the journey here. It is certainly going to be a more comfortable ride back. Ian and Hannah, Moses, David, Dr Josephine and several other members of staff come to wave us off. Some of the cases were loaded into the backs of the vehicles but the majority were covered with tarpaulin and tied on the roof of our vehicle. Our driver is Bosco, who is sporting a Liverpool shirt with his name printed on the back and the other vehicle with Sam, Sarah, Fiona and Angela is being driven by Augustine who has a reputation for being a very fast driver so we expect them to arrive at our destination well ahead of us.

 

We’ve not travelled far down the road when Augustine stops outside Stella’s guest house and Sam pops in to say goodbye. Ten minutes later they catch us up and draw alongside and a black carrier bag is offered to us through the open window. Stella has done us proud! It’s a bag of warm cheese and tomato toasties for the journey and they are delicious. It is interesting experiencing the first two hours of our journey in daylight – it is just as bumpy as it was on the journey here, but somehow more acceptable because we are not completely in the dark. We see two young boys carrying yellow water carriers and Carolyn asks me if I have seen what they use as stoppers. I hadn’t and found it amusing to learn that a banana was the most common ‘stopper’ used by most Ugandans! We see a crested crane (the National bird of Uganda and very beautiful) in a field but were moving too fast for me to get a photo. But at least I had seen one now. It was only about 9am but already the sun was fierce and I could feel the heat on my right arm through the window. Soon after, we pass a convoy of seven Red Cross Land Rover Discoverys on their way to the Congo, followed five minutes later by a UN vehicle. We stop at the Agip Hotel in Mbarara for a toilet break, a coffee would be good but apparently we are pressing on and the next stop is for lunch. We have made good time so far and are hopeful that we might reach The Boma in Entebbe (the guest house we stayed at the first night) in time to have a shower and a meal before heading off to the airport. Not long after coffee break we are pulled over by Traffic police, but they are pretty friendly, unlike those we met on the journey here and after checking Bosco’s licence they wave us on. I suddenly have a bit of a panic as I realise I have no idea where my e-flight ticket is but everybody assures me there is no need to worry as long as I have my passport which thankfully I have in my handbag. (I will be reminding them of that later when we are at the airport). We pass a grasshopper trap – a large light with sheets of aluminium and a drum underneath. This we learn from Bosco is the most effective way to catch grasshoppers. Incidentally last Thursday when I was ill with my bad throat and there was a tray of roasted grasshoppers for dinner that I missed out on, I forgot to mention that they weren’t served for dinner as had been expected. When Philip was asked why not, he explained that they had been cooked to feed to the chickens. Seems pretty strange that you would cook something to feed to a chicken, so not sure what all that was about, anyway, talking about grasshoppers, Bosco tells us they are delicious. You apparently pull off the wings and legs and fry them in some oil. Think I will give them a miss if they are on the lunch menu. About half an hour later the car slows down a bit and Bosco announces we are in the area where we may see zebras. He spots a couple in the distance and with my zoom on the camera I manage to see them too. The other car pulls up behind us and Sarah decides she needs a closer look. She crosses the road, a very busy road, and must have misjudged the speed of an oncoming car as it misses her by a whisker! How ironic would that have been if we’d had to return to Kisiizi with Sarah as a patient! Further on we see a field with dozens of trees full of white flowers, except on closer inspection they are not flowers, they are birds, hundreds of them – a type of crane and because the field is flooded they all perch in the trees to keep their feet dry!

 

We stop for lunch about 1.30pm at the Highway Motel – the name is a bit deceptive – it’s an outdoor courtyard area with plastic tables and chairs and a few parasols - the same place we stopped at on the way here. Let’s just hope that because we are a little earlier today, they will have more items available on the menu than they had last time. No, it seems not. There is no fish which is what most people fancied, so a couple of people choose chicken and chips the rest decide on omelette and chip, some cheese and some Spanish. Augustine opts for the buffet menu so there are 10 of us ordering off the snack menu. Three meals arrive, followed about 10 minutes later by another three, and 10 minutes later another three and the final omelette arrives about 45 minutes after we ordered. There appears to be no difference between the Spanish and the cheese omelettes. The chicken portion looks like a large wing, very little meat on it so it’s really just deep fried skin and bone. I have ordered a beer after first checking it is cold. Carolyn fancies one too so our waiter brings two bottles but explains there is only one cold one, the other is lukewarm. What sort of restaurant has only one chilled beer available? I tell him we will share the one cold bottle. Just before we are ready to leave a guy comes round the tables selling plastic chickens. They are just plastic junk really and I am about to say no thanks when he pulls a string from the chickens bottom and it runs across the table flapping its wings and ringing a bell. They are quite amusing and very cheap so I buy two as I am sure they will provide some entertainment for Erin and Naomi – my two youngest grandaughters. They certainly give everyone round the table a good laugh!

 

We get back in the vehicles for the remainder of our journey and are soon driving on another very uneven and dusty track, so have to shut the windows for a while, even though it is baking hot. Before too long we are at the Equator again and agree on a 15 minute stop to have a look at some of the shops and for a toilet break. I get drawn in by a few of the traders wanting to show me what they have for sale and lose track of time a bit. I bump into Carolyn and she tells me about another shop she has seen selling soapstone bowls so I have a look, make some purchases and suddenly realise I have been 25 not 15 minutes. I am full of apologies to the rest of the group and we set off again. Ten minutes up the road we hit a major traffic jam. There are serious road works with no traffic light system just a manual and extremely ineffective traffic control system involving a young guy holding red and green flags which he waves in sequence at both queues of traffic, but nobody is taking any notice of him ... it is just like Wacky Races!

 

Tom has bought an elephant at the Equator and it is in the same type of small black plastic bag that Stella gave us the toasties in. Beccy and Haley decided to get rid of the rubbish whilst waiting for me to get back stop, and almost throw his elephant away in error. This gives them an idea. They swop bags and replace his elephant bag with rubbish bag and later when they ask him to show them the elephant, he opens the black bag only to find the few remaining uneaten toasties and other rubbish, but no elephant. He is convinced for about half an hour, until they put him out of his misery, that they have thrown it away. We are almost at Entebbe when we see the most ingenious mode of transport you could ever imagine. A guy on roller skates has grabbed hold of the back of a mini bus taxi and is getting a free ride. Looks pretty scary to me and we follow him for a couple of miles before we turn off so don’t know how he manages to get off when he reaches his destination. Presumably he has to wait until the minibus stops nearest to where he wants to be!

 

We are at the Boma and it is almost 7pm so the journey back has taken 11 hours as opposed to 12 hours on the day there – a bit of an improvement but definitely a better journey as we have had so much more space inside the car. We say goodbye to Bosco and Augustine before sitting down to order a meal – most of us choosing salad. We are just getting to the end of the meal when somebody spots three geckos on the roof above the table. Just as Sarah gets out her camera to take a photo, one hops on top of the other and starts thrusting. This has to be a first ... there can’t be many people who have seen two geckos mating? It’s all over fairly quickly and we have a good laugh at what will probably remain one of our final memories of this Ugandan trip.

 

We set off for the airport in two taxis provided by The Boma. As we are nearing the airport, there is a (fairly large) Go Slow sign in the middle of the road and our driver is heading straight for it at speed. He has clearly not seen it and swerves at the very last minute narrowly missing knocking it over. A few minutes later we are pulled over by a Security Guard who tells us he is looking for terrorists and asks us if we are carrying any guns or other weapons. If we had been, were we likely to admit it? It was a very strange security check.

 

We get to check in and the first thing I am asked for is my e-ticket which as you know, I don’t have. There are a few raised eyebrows by the airport staff but I am eventually waved through. At this point Sarah suddenly realises she is one case missing – it has been left behind at the security scanner – not sure how long it would have been before it was taken away and destroyed as those security announcement you regularly hear at airports are always threatening.

 

The flight from Entebbe to Amsterdam is fairly straight forward although I can’t get comfortable and only get about one and a half hours sleep. We arrive at Schiphol airport at about 6am EU time. Our flight departs at 8.20am so after checking out the location of the departure gate, we separate to look around the shops and arrange to meet up at 7.30pm. I get a couple of items from duty free then go in search of somewhere I can plug my computer in as I have very little battery power left. I purchase an EU adaptor and head up to the Business Centre where I get about 50 minutes to write a bit more of my blog. Haley has a mild panic at the final security gate before we board as she has four loose paracetamol and ibuprofen tablets in her money belt. How suspicious is that going to look – a Pharmacist carrying drugs for personal use. But there is no problem and we all board the plane. We will be back in Manchester in just over an hour ... in total we will have spent 28.5 hours travelling since leaving Kisiizi Hospital yesterday. As I contemplate all the entries I have made over the past two weeks and before I finish this final blog, there are several people I want to express my appreciation to. Firstly for Sarah for giving me the opportunity to join the group and have what has been most amazing and incredible experience for me. Also to the others - Haley, Beccy, Sam, Tom and Carolyn for making me feel welcome, and including me as part of the team. I send a ‘Big Hug’ to Peter for encouraging me to make the trip. Even though we have already been away twice this year (we’ve had a family holiday in Spain and an Anniversary trip to New York), so the cost of a trip to Africa had certainly not been budgeted for, but he never complained about the extra expense. I also want to say a big Thank You to Andy, one of our longstanding Countess volunteers who set up this blog for me. Despite uploading my first messages at Schiphol on our outward journey, once I got to Kisiizi, I was unable to upload any further messages – something to do with the slow internet speed I think. So I have written all the messages and sent them as word documents to Andy with my photos and he has spent time designing the layout and style of the blog and has uploaded everything for me. I was only able to connect to the blog page last Wednesday for the first time to see what a great job he has made of it – much appreciated Andy.

 

And finally to you, thanks for making the time to read about my ‘African Adventure’. I hope I have provided you with some insight into Kisiizi Hospital and the achievements that have been made by working in partnership with the hospital. I hope that you have enjoyed the snapshot of Ugandan life and the amazing people who live here that I have tried to provide. As I have said before, I did not really know what to expect but I suppose at the back of my mind I had images of a dusty, barren region and not the beautiful rolling hills, the expanse of green fields with lush vegetation and the fantastic range of exotic plants and flowers that are so typical of this area. The only other images I had in my mind of Uganda were of the TV footage I saw in my late teens and early twenties of the brutal killings under the regime of Dictator Idi Amin, and then more recently when I watched the film ‘The Last King of Scotland’. This is not the Uganda of today. It is extremely unlikely I will visit Kisiizi again, but I know that this experience will stay with me forever. Kisiizi Hospital and all the people I have met here will always have a special place in my heart.

If you want to know anything else about Kisiizi Hospital you can email me at: janet.ratcliffe1@nhs.net

If you want to view the photographs I have taken over the trip you can see them on a Flickr Slideshow