Nyabyeya and school library

Here are a few photos of my first trip to the library:


The library is the room in the centre with the new shutters and roof, next to the condemned classroom which is still in use.


My first meeting with Ritah.


During our meeting some boys came in and made themselves at home! Also in the picture is Cathy.



The 'Interesting Corner' which at the moment mainly focuses on football!

About 30k outside Masindi, on the outskirts of Budongo Forest, is a small village called Nyabyeya. Most of the inhabitants are subsistence farmers, though there is also a small gravel pit where women with babies on their backs work all day digging and grading the gravel. In the village there are a few small shops selling the bare necessities such as kerosene, oil, soap, home-made rope, etc. and a few roadside stalls selling fruit and vegetables. It’s a typical village with groups of men sitting around enjoying the local brew and playing cards.
The journey from Masindi to Nyabyeya is along a marram road which, when dry, makes driving difficult with the clouds of dust but, when wet, is probably worse as the surface becomes like a skating rink. I’m always amazed at how many people walk this road, day and night, often with young children and babies. Some are carrying jerry cans of water, firewood or baskets of produce from the land balanced on their heads. On a good day the journey is quite pleasurable and if you’re lucky you can see colobus and vervet monkeys, baboons and the occasional chimpanzee.
Just outside the village is the Nyabyeya Forestry College and in Budongo Forest itself is an important Field Station carrying out work on chimpanzees.
Nyabyeya also has its own primary school. It is here that the Budongo Forest Conservation Trust have opened a small library to try and raise the academic and language skills of the children. It will also be an important meeting place for the children where they can be taught extra-curricular topics such as conservation and skills which will help them become useful citizens to the Budongo community. The library is funded by the Trust which has paid for the renovation of one of the condemned school buildings and also pays for a full-time librarian called Ritah. So far all the books have come from donors in the UK. The library has a long way to go. It needs many more books, particularly text books, and resources such as charts, posters and other teaching aids.
It is through a friend of ours, one the chimp researchers from the UK who lives at Nyabyeya, that I have been asked to help for one day a week. Cathy and her mother have been involved in raising the money and setting up the library. I have never thought of myself as a librarian but have decided to give it a go! My new jobs begins next week with the start of the new term.
Here are some photos of the library. As you can see, it looks quite sparse at the moment and we only have mats to sit on, but a lot of work has been done to create a safe environment. The roof has been replaced and there are new shutters and doors. The adjoining school rooms remain condemned, with roofs that leak, no windows or doors, but they still have to be used as there is no alternative. The school has a few newer rooms but they are not enough for the number of pupils.
Maggie

A better week

Uganda does have a lot of compensations. Two week ends ago we went to Lake Albert to stay in a safari lodge overlooking the lake. The lodge is on a cliff and you can look down on the Lake and see the mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the other side. The setting is superb and the sun setting over the lake was a wonderful sight. There were lots of new birds for Maggie to tick off on her list as well as some beautiful butterflies.






This last week end we stayed at home and entertained friends. Maggie produced wonderful meals including ice cream. She managed to make it out of tinned cream and dried coconut milk. The time it took in preparation was more than it would have taken to drive to Kampala and back but it was really good and every one thought it was worth her effort. On the Sunday morning we had brunch complete with kedgeree. Smoked tilapia off the market made a good substitute for haddock.
After all Maggie’s hard work I had to wash up but its not a bad job here when you can watch Paradise and African blue fly catchers outside your kitchen window. The bird life in our garden has increased with the rains, they are all displaying and building nests. It is easy to spend an hour just sitting and watching. The monkeys have not been around for several weeks. I hope the building work has not frightened them off. Hopefully the mangoes that are just ripening will attract them back.
We are due the first of our visitors from England this week. We should have a string of people coming until September. It is good to have them as they make you look again at Uganda and is an excuse to visit more places.
At work we are celebrating because we finally have a supply of TB drugs. Unfortunately it looks like we may run out of ARVs for HIV next week. Nationally Uganda appears to have no ARVs in the national stores. By using the muzungos network and making lots of phone calls and e mails we have a promise that drugs will be supplied next week. I hope that happens as the consequences of stopping drugs can be serious.

Not a good week

Unfortunately last weeks smiles were a bit premature. On Tuesday morning I received a phone call from Chris the clinical officer saying that he had been asked to see Slyvia the little girl with diabetes who had been readmitted. She was dead. The story was that she had been admitted through a private clinic in coma. They had given her a shot of insulin and sent her to the hospital. The doctor on call saw her later and ordered a blood test for later in the morning. She did not survive the wait. She had obviously been given too much insulin and should have been treated urgently with dextrose. A simple injection would have saved her but no one thought of the right diagnosis. It is such a pity as she was doing well when I saw her in the clinic last week. Diabetes is not well understood here. It is only just being recognised as a problem in Uganda. Most of the emphasis has always been on infectious diseases which still represents the major risk here. There needs to be a big education programme and I am scheduled to start it next week. You realise how basic the training has to be when you realise some of the nurses do not know how to read urine dip stix.
If I can teach people that unconscious diabetics should be given dextrose then may be Slyvia will not have died in vain.
Th other big problem this week is lack of drugs. I have become used to shortages of antibiotics and anti malarials but we are about to run out of ARVs the essential drugs for treating HIV. These drugs have revolutionised the management of HIV and allowed people with HIV to return to normal life. The drugs need to be taken every day without missing any doses. Even missing a single dose allows the virus to mutate and can produce resistance. Now it looks like patients will be forced to have breaks in treatment and the consequences will be extreme for some.
Lets hope next week is a better one.
May be I should have gone to church!