The Long Road to Kampala

I find it impossible to believe, let alone type, that my time in Gulu is up. Three months absolutely flew.

I made the long arduous journey down to Kampala yesterday, having woken up late with a sore head from the farewell party, and had to sit on the bus for two long hours (waiting for it to fill up) before it departed. As I sat there waiting, I looked out on the street and thought to myself that Gulu is truly the ugliest place I’ve ever seen – potholed and dilapidated, a thick sheet of red dust caking every surface, foot-wide gutters framing the streets traversed with planks of wood and full of plastic bottles and rubbish. There are no sights to see (the only landmark is an iron statue on a roundabout), and the Lonely Planet actually goes so far as to say you should not even bother going there. It is literally the only time I’ve ever seen a travel book advise you to not travel somewhere.

Niamh O’Grady sent me a voice message the first day I arrived and said she couldn’t wait to discuss what an eye-sore the place was. She was absolutely right. But looking out the dirty window of the ancient bus I was sitting on I really felt an overwhelming sadness leaving behind that eye-sore. It really was home for three months. I knew the many cracks in the pavement. I knew the best place to get a Rolex. I knew that you could only buy eggs on Egg Street, behind the bus park (and even then, some days there were no eggs to be found as if the hens all stopped laying at once).

I would like to say there’s some hidden charm to the place but there really isn’t. There is nothing in Gulu that an eager traveller would want to see, to tick off their bucket list or take a selfie with (didn’t stop me though!). Contrary to the Lonely Planet’s advice, coming here was the best decision I ever made. In this ugly duckling of a town I’ve experienced so much more than I could have hoped, I have made lifelong friendships and learned so much about myself and others along the way.

Note from the patient's family (names covered for confidentiality)

My friend Sophie works in Gulu referral hospital and told me about one of her patients. He is 27 years old and is paralysed from the waist down from Pott’s disease (spinal tuberculosis). When his family was released from the internal displacement camp after the civil war in Northern Uganda, they, like the two million other Acholi people had to rebuild their lives from scratch. He and his father decided in his early teens that he would leave school and work, so that the younger two siblings could have a good education and make something of themselves. So he worked. No doubt partially due to his poor and truncated education, he contracted HIV and then TB. The TB paralysed him at 27, while his siblings are both healthy and well, studying law and medicine. And he is not one bit angry or bitter, he doesn’t complain or moan. Sitting immobile in his hospital bed he is genuinely content, accepting and happy for his siblings. His story broke my heart. To me he is the definition of sacrifice and selflessness. He is a hero. But nobody really celebrates him, because here in Uganda the family simply comes first and his story is probably not all that unusual. He needed some money to alter his wheelchair a bit, so I happily and eagerly gave some of the donations from home (the equivalent of €30) and his family sent the loveliest letter of thanks.

Selling chickens through windows!

Ugandan drive-thru

As the bus rattled down the potholed road toward Kampala I looked around and noticed I was the only person wearing earphones. I was the only person with a book. All around me the Ugandans chatted and joked and laughed. This is something I noticed throughout my time here – there is nothing they enjoy more than each other’s company. Perfect strangers will strike up a conversation on the matatu (minibus) into town.  Security guards and shopkeepers will have a five-minute chat with you enquiring after your health and your family if you’d give them the time of day. It’s no wonder things move so slowly when everyone is sitting back smelling the roses! As Mary Ann put it, it is really very difficult to get annoyed with colleagues for being so slow when you see them truly enjoying each other’s company and savoring their friendships. I really loved the days in theatre when it wasn’t too busy, the patients were stable and everyone would kick back and have the craic. One day we spent an hour discussing everyone’s first kiss. Even the patient told his story as the surgeon fixed his hernia under spinal anaesthesia. The nurses in the ICU said they could hear us roaring laughing way down the corridor. I learned during my time here I could smell the roses like the rest of them – definitely something we could all learn from Uganda!

Ruth taking a casual rest during a prostatectomy

Lacor mural at night

The atmosphere in Lacor hospital is special. It was set up by the Comboni missionaries in 1959, and became home to Canadian surgeon Lucille Teasdale and her Italian husband Piero Corti in 1961. Together they worked tirelessly for the people of Gulu for almost 40 years. Tragically Lucille died of AIDS contracted during surgery in 1996, and Piero died not long afterward from pancreatic cancer. One of the first ever Ugandan interns who trained at Lacor, Dr Matthew Lukwiya, like so many other staff members at Lacor risked his life to treat patients during the Ebola epidemic in 2000 and sadly succumbed to the haemorrhagic fever himself. These three heros all chose to be buried at Lacor and we are reminded of them every time we walk through the front gates, greeted by a large mural of their smiling faces, lit up at night to remind us the door is always open for the sick and needy. During the insurgence, Lacor became home to tens of thousands of night commuters, mainly women and children who wandered into the compound every night for shelter and safety from the Kony’s LRA rebels and government troops. Within Gulu, Lacor hospital is a symbol of goodness, and any adults old enough to remember them speak fervently and reverently about its past heroes, grateful for the sacrifices made for their community. The spirit of goodness and generosity continues today, not only among the Ugandan staff but with new heroes like Ray, who has spent 12 years developing the ICU and department of anaesthesia, saving thousands of lives; Mary Ann who now runs the HIV/AIDS clinic and cancer chemotherapy services; Brother Carlo who has spent 40 years as a radiologist in Uganda, and of course Brother Elio who essentially unofficially runs the place and is rumoured to be the only mere mortal feared by Joseph Kony. The pride in the hospital’s history is palpable and tangible and I am so happy and grateful to have been a part of it.

Baboons!

I saw the usual baboons along the roadside as I crossed the Nile for the last time. Shortly afterward we made another drive-thru pitstop where local villagers sold snacks to us through the windows of the bus. An amazing selection of mangoes, pineapples, meat sticks, samosas, G-nuts and simsim. One guy was even selling live chickens (which a man beside me bought so we had a furry friend for the rest of the journey). We passed by clusters of mudhuts and fields of maize and bananas. The bus driver definitely had a prostate problem as he jumped out for a ‘short-call’ every half hour or so, always pausing to greet the locals en route back to the bus. It was dark when we finally reached Kampala and the traffic was chaotic. It had taken me ten hours to get there, instead of the normal six and I realised surprisingly I wasn’t even annoyed. Like my fellow passengers I knew we’d get there eventually and sure isn’t that the main thing?

Children around Lacor

I really have had the most incredible time here. I met mountain gorillas, I saw baby lions ten metres away, I whitewater rafted down the Nile and stood on the equator. But these are not the memories that will make me smile when I’m back home dreaming of Africa. It’ll be the image of the grown man wearing a Hilary Duff t-shirt. It’ll be knowing there is a doctor here who’s actual name is Dr Happy Betty. It’ll be the nurses taking a nap in theatre. It’ll be me answering to the name Pharrell. The Ugandan woman I saw in town one day wearing a Kerry jersey. The two girls who get up on stage and lip-sync Westlife in Butterflies every Friday night, without fail. The quizmaster in BJz announcing ‘OK you people, question number..next’. The little old Acholi ladies beaming when you greet them in their own language. All things that would never make their way into the Lonely Planet, yet made my time here priceless, unique and unforgettable. And I’m sitting here in Entebbe airport, right back where the adventure started three months ago. As I try to clean off the last of the red road dust from my converse I find I can’t. It’s stuck there - now a constant reminder of the ugly duckling, the eye-sore that welcomed me with open arms and taught me so much. A truly life-changing experience. Thank you for supporting and reading.

Francis and I

Dr Ocen and patient who was bitten by a
black manta snake: 3 days later

St Mary's Hospital Lacor

Few wee quiet tears at Entebbe airport :(

St Jude's: A wee slice of happiness

There's something about St Jude Children's Home that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling as you walk in the gates. It might be the brightly coloured buildings or the murals on the walls or maybe it's the swarm of children that RUN at you the minute you walk in, shouting MONO MONO MONOOOOO!, excitedly waving their hands and weaving themselves under your arms and legs. I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting the place a number of times during my stay in Gulu and every time I went I felt the happy atmosphere was highly infectious and contagious.

St Jude's is home to around a hundred Ugandan children - some of whom have disabilities and some who have been orphaned by war, poverty or disease. The first time I went there, I met with Monica, a lay Comboni missionary who explained the children live in houses, maybe 10-12 in each house, and are looked after principally by a foster mother, usually a local woman who may have a child with a disability herself. This means each child belongs to a family which is consistent and stable. 

When my friends from Sligo who have volunteered in St Jude's described it to me I was so excited to go and see the place. They also said I'd have lots of work to keep me busy in the clinic as there was no nurse there and it wasn't the most organised place on earth. I expected to roll up my sleeves and busily help organise the place, develop protocols with the woman who ran it (not a qualified nurse) and maybe do some training with her to help her with treating minor injuries and identifying the sick children who need to go to hospital. 

Physiotherapy room

Physiotherapy room

I got the most pleasant surprise when I arrived and met the new team of Comboni missionaries who are dedicating one to three years to working at St Jude's. Monica is Polish, qualified as both a physiotherapist and nurse and arrived there seven months before me. To say she has completely transformed the place is a massive understatement. The clinic now has two nurses (Monica and Brenda, a lovely local Ugandan woman), and over the past ten months they have been working extremely hard to improve both the consolation home and the clinic rooms. They have worked so hard there was barely anything for me to do! 

They've turned an old office into a bright and colourful physiotherapy room, where Monica gives proper physiotherapy sessions, vital for the patients with cerebral palsy and other forms of paralysis. They have organised the children's medical notes into neat folders filed under each of the mother's names, documenting their vaccination status and all hospital and clinic visits. They have bought new filing cabinets and shelving for storing the medications, and restocked many of the shelves using some donations I brought over from kind family and friends. They have an emergency shelf with an Ambu-bag and emergency medications.

While I was there last Tuesday, a young girl came in who had fallen the previous day in the yard at the primary school. At the clinic, Monica and Brenda see not only the St Jude's residents but also the children from the village who attend the attached primary school. Monica had advised her the previous day to go to the hospital and get an XRay because the wrist looked broken, but she had not (possibly didn't have the money to pay for it). She was in a lot of pain, so Monica found a splint in a storeroom she had recently organised and we immobilised the wrist, gave her a painkiller and sent her home with a note to say she would have to attend the emergency department. There's a good chance she won't go, but at least splinting the wrist will give her some relief and allow the wrist to heal. The next person to stroll in was Mercy, a young girl with autism who is a complete hypochondriac and loves taking medications so much they sometimes have to give her multivitamins as placebo! She thought her toe was falling off but after some reassurance and a hug from Monica she was smiling again. 

Monica and Mercy

This guy was absolutely devastated when he finished his banana. 

I made the almost fatal mistake of bringing a bag of bananas to the kids last week. The second Auntie Pamela and I opened the bag and started handing them out we were bulldozed by a swarm of children, clamouring on top of each other to get one. There was laughter and tears as many suffered crush injuries (myself included). Both the children and the mothers were delighted because they don't often get a little treat - although it only cost around 30,000 shillings (the equivalent of around €10) for 100 little bananas, that's a relatively large sum in Uganda and they simply cannot afford to buy fruit very often for the children. I was also delighted to be able to give them a large container of G-nut paste (like peanut butter) that a friend had made for me. Anyone who has been to Uganda will confirm that this stuff is the tastiest thing on the planet and is therefore LETHAL to have lying around the apartment. It is so loaded with calories it is used in developing countries to treat malnutrition and starvation. I suffered from neither of these conditions but managed to get through a fair amount of the stuff, I found it was a good cure for my own personal affliction of gluttony.

There is such a happy and positive atmosphere, and most importantly lots of love and laughter, it's not hard to see why it holds such a special place in the hearts of so many people from Sligo!

This guy knew how to put filters on a selfie.

Murchison Falls

Sunrise on The Nile

The Crew: Shout out to Margot Farrell
for the selfie stick

Murchison Falls National Park is incredible. I had the BEST weekend there a few weeks ago. We set off from Lacor at 10AM, and after two hours of 'African back massage' (ie. extremely bumpy roads) we landed at the biggest park in Uganda. I travelled with two Italians (an anaesthetist Laura, and photographer Claudio) and a Dutch girl, Famke, I'd met at BJz trivia night two days before. I half expected to see a WANTED poster of myself at the park entrance after the unfortunate incident with the baboon the last time but luckily my sunglasses and beard were enough of a disguise.

Jackson's Hartebeest and Kobs

As we drove into the park the landscape changed from dusty red to lush green and gold. We had arranged a boat trip down the Nile to Murchison waterfalls at 2PM so we barely paused to admire the giraffes, kobs and warthogs that flanked either side of the roadway. After a hasty lunch we were ushered onto the boat (literally the only time I've felt rushed to do anything in the last three months so it was a shock to the system!). In typical Ugandan unpredictable style, the heavens opened and we were met with an almighty downpour of rain. We may as well have swam down the river. This would have been ill-advised though because not long after setting sail we came across a group of hippos (*fun educational fact: a group of them is called a bloat of hippos.. (Love it) ). Hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa and kill more humans than any other. Apparently when they open their jaws it is a sign of major aggression so we gave them a wide berth when one showed his pearly whites.

Hungry hippo

Shnaky wee GATOR GATOR
(#Nostalgia: Shane O'Brien, Kieran Crowley)

We passed several bloats as we cruised downstream, all just lazing in the water on a rainy afternoon. Along the shore we could see a few Ugandan kobs grazing peacefully. We came across two crocodiles a little further on, who were incredibly well camouflaged against the rocks. Once again I was glad I was not swimming as our guide told us they can swallow children whole without salt. Not entirely sure if he was joking.

The skies cleared as we neared the falls, and we soon heard the low rumble of falling water. We started to see white foam on the river when we were still a few miles away - the foam created by the pressure of the falls crashing on the river below. The closer we got the denser the foam became and the louder the sound of millions of gallons gushing, as the great river Nile narrowed to a gap of only nine metres. Kingfishers dipped in and out of the water. Bloats of hippos farted. Tourists ooohed and aaaahed as we turned a corner and saw the waterfall in the distance. We hopped off the boat at an optional hiking point and started to make our way upward closer toward the waterfall. There were breathtaking views of the falls and of the Nile as we climbed (*admittedly some of us spluttering) toward the top. We followed the well trodden path to 'Devils Cauldron', but instead of heat we were met with a refreshing cool fine mist. A Falls fog if you will. It is so loud up there you almost have to shout to hear yourself or others. We got to the crest of the waterfall and the force of all that moving water is one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. It blows you away and draws you closer at the same time. There is no railing or barrier to stop you pottering over to the edge and slipping in (#Africa) but there is a helpful polite sign to let you know it is sort of dangerous. 

Peter our driver said the hike would have to be his exercise quota for 2015

After the Murchison Falls hike we headed to our hotel for the night. As we did in Kidepo National Park we stayed in bandas, which are like the local mud-huts, home to many families in Northern Uganda. They are circular, made of mud and bricks and are surprisingly efficiently cool in the daytime sunshine, yet comfortably insulating at night. (I know what you're thinking.... I should go into real-estate). They are prone to creepy crawlies so we doused ourselves with industrial quantities of bug repellant and retired after a tasty supper of local cuisine. We all had a fretful fitful sleep after we were told lions and hyenas sometimes prowl around the compound at night, so every rustle in the bushes seemed like we might be seconds away from certain death.

We survived the night. We rose at dawn when the skies were pitch black and crickets were singing, and quickly made our way to meet our guide for a game drive. Once again, we were absolutely determined to find lions. We were not disappointed. Within about an hour we came across a lioness with a lion cub in the bushes, completely unperturbed by our presence. We turned around and found another lioness with two cubs only a few hundred metres away and thought it was Christmas come early. We watched them for some time playing together, sticking very close to their mother and left them to sunbathe as we continued our drive through the park. Unfortunately there was a male lion nearby but he was spooked by other enthusiastic game drivers so we didn't get to see him!

Momma and Baby

Wee Simba Himself

Jackson's Hartebeest

I don't know what it is about safari drivers but they absolutely love the power ballads. On this trip, we went through Westlife's greatest hits twice. (Sidenote: Westlife are absolutely HUGE here - particularly Queen of my Heart and Flying Without Wings. I have thoroughly impressed a few friends by knowing all the lyrics to both). Anyway we drove along Swearing it All Over Again (and again... and again) we were not disappointed by the wildlife. We saw thousands of impala, kobs and buffalo. Some buffalo have permanent resident lodgers in the form of weaver birds. These birds sit on the buffalos back and feed off the insects and parasites there, a truly natural symbiotic relationship. We saw the most unusual looking animals called Jackson hartebeests that are only found in Uganda, and of course the Ugandan Kob, which features on the Ugandan national coat of arms.

Giraffes!

Buffalo and Friends <3

Hyenas!

We were really lucky to spot a few hyena later on in the morning, as these are hard to find. They really are such evil looking creatures. The pregnant female was persistently rejecting the male's attempts to have a special kind of hug, as described by our guide. It was our driver, Peter's, highlight of the trip! We saw loads of giraffes and a few elephants (including a wee small one <3) grazing by the roadside. We had to keep a safe distance - elephants are notorious for spontaneously charging at vehicles and they can move surprisingly fast for such huge animals.

As we were finishing up our morning driving we came across vultures, an eagle, and lots of monkeys which was such an added bonus. If pictures speak a thousand words I have several theses on this trip alone - it's hard to capture the moments properly on a camera, and safari is something you can only experience in person. It is so incredible to be SO close to some of the most majestic and dangerous animals in the world. It is particularly nice in Uganda as it is not as commonly travelled as other parts of Africa so there are not quite as many safari trucks or tours at every park. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience (and I've reeeeeally spoiled myself by doing it twice but you've got to carpe diem when you're this side of the planet!)

Weightlifting African shtyle

Musical interlude while boarding the Nile Cruise

Very unfortunate kob...

Bambi-eyed

YOU WANT TO HOLD MY AK47??

Elephant family

Eagle vs Vultures... It was quite a long standoff...

Family of baboons

Pumba

Cheeeeeeky monkey

Monkeys scratching each others backs...

Famke and I with Sam - buzzing around our heads are not birds but these awful flying ants... They are in-season at the moment so they are EVERYWHERE. They are gross. They bite their own wings off and then crawl along the ground as ants. Children catch them and eat them, and sometimes they're cooked and served as a delicacy (known as white ants).

Laura, Claudio, Peter and I at the top of Murchison Falls