Crazy Kids And Other Adventures

The longer I’m here, the more a part of this place I feel. This is my home, these are my kids…Ekisa is my life. The longer I’ve been here, the more responsibility I’ve been given as well…and gladly received; I’m currently taking care of much of the accounting/administration parts of the operation and I’ve been involved in more and more of the medical stuff that goes on. Especially right now as Emily W is in America until mid-March, it’s been very evident how much trust they have in me; to the point that when Emily H is out of the house (especially when she was in the hospital in Kampala with Zuena), I am left responsible for anything that comes up. Generally, this is fairly easy with little to no trouble (a mama wanting a small advance, someone at the gate, etc…), but there have recently been some rather stressful situations.

Zak has been having seizures on a more regular basis, we think due to the fact that his dosage needs to be increased and compounded by how bloody hot it’s been these last few weeks. Usually, we’ll wait until he has a few relatively close together and then give him a Diazepam suppository. But if it gets really bad (one seizure right after the other), the plan of action is an IV drip of a really strong anti-seizure drug called Phenobarbital. Luckily, he’s been ok, but when Emily was in Kampala this would have been my responsibility. I have 3 successful IV’s under my belt plus a blood test done on one of the volunteers so I could bring it to the lab for a malaria test (and there are people I could have called if I was unable to get it), but I would have had to put in an IV and administer the drug myself.

The other standout situation was when Nam came knocking on the volunteer room door and led me out to the boy’s quarters. I knew something was wrong right away but I got really scared when she stopped outside of mama Seera’s door (she has since moved out, but she had been living there with her 3 kids). I entered the room to find Seera, two other mama’s and her 15 year old daughter, Zelika, writhing on her bed and breathing with really short laboured breaths. I’m programed to always test for malaria first (a quick pin prick on the finger, then placing the blood in a little hole in a plastic strip with the reactive agent) and given the fact that Aaron had the car, there wasn’t much else I could do so I ran inside and grabbed the supplies. I gave the test and as I was waiting for the results (with turned out negative), I started calling Aaron’s phone over and over as he wasn’t answering. During the 3^rd or 4^th attempt, I heard the gate open, ran out and said hardly more than “Aaron, key…now!” before grabbing George and loading Seera and Zelika into the car and proceeded to drive like a mad person to Al-Shafa hospital in town. Within minutes of our arrival, they gave her a shot of painkiller and she soon settled. She tested positive for typhoid but we have no trust in their testing equipment because it’s not the first time we’ve received a false positive and after calling Emily and explaining what happened, she informed me this has happened before and that the theory is that she gets really bad migraines. After hanging up with Emily, I asked Seera some more specific questions and found out that she’d had a headache earlier in the day and had been experiences spots…key signs of a migraine. She ended up staying the night and was treated for typhoid anyways. The first time this happened, the Emily’s reacted the same way I did. She stayed overnight then as well and was treated for malaria even though the test came back negative; a common occurrence here: Don’t know what’s wrong? Treat for malaria. Thankfully everything turned out fine and I learned that I can handle high-stress situations here with relative calm and a clear head, but it was still scary.   

We got a new child a couple weeks ago: Isaac. He was referred to us by another orphanage that wasn’t really suitable for him. The lady who runs that orphanage had been to his village many times and they had been hiding him from her. I’m not sure how it all went down, but she discovered him and it was very clear that he had been suffering some pretty significant abuse so he was taken from the home. He was a heart-breaking sight the day he came to us: clearly traumatized, disoriented, malnourished, had a badly broken arm that we now know had been broken for at least a couple weeks and had multiple sores and lacerations on his body. Those first few days, it was hard to keep him still; he was constantly trying to walk around in this very sad, trying to get out of his skin kind of a way but he was too weak to walk on his own for more than a few steps. The incredible thing about Isaac is his resilience and it will never cease to amaze me how quickly we see transformation from these kids once they’re in a loving, safe environment. Hardly more than a week after he arrived, a bunch of us were in the living room when one of the mamas rushed in to tell us that Isaac was dancing. We ran outside and found him smiling, shaking his little kabina to the song that the mamas were singing. It was enough to bring a tear to most everyone’s eyes. He has only continued to improve and it is not uncommon now to see him talking and laughing.      

Final notables: Annelise, a new volunteer, arrived recently. She’s from Vancouver and she’s kind of the reason I’m here in a really roundabout way (mutual friends, shared info and such). We got together once before I left to come here, so I’m super psyched that she’s here now. And to top it off, in less than two weeks, Cheryl (one of my best friends and a mutual friend of Annelise’s) will be arriving and staying with us for a week.

So maybe it was Kelsey’s (a volunteer) birthday and maybe she wanted a night with the girls eating naan bread and drinking a glass or two of wine…and maybe Emily, Annelise (a nurse) and I thought it was a good idea to practice IV’s during a power outage. The result? I have a huge bruise on the inside of my arm due to a blown vein; just a normal Saturday night in Jinja.

Aaron has come across a couple black mambos in the compound in the last few weeks. These are not the sort of snakes you want to come across as a bite can poison you in 10 minutes; not to be confused with the green mambo that will kill you in 5. Fortunately, they come out at night (that’s when Aaron found them), unfortunately…not exactly comforting.

Emily and I had to take Zuena to our friend Renee’s a few times while she was sick to take advantage of her mad IV skills. The first time happened without incident, but the second and third, not so much. This was the week of elections and it everyone in a bit of a stir. Groups of people were gathering, all wearing the color of their preferred candidate and it had the police on high alert as things can get pretty crazy when groups like that converge; an increase in police presence always makes us nervous as things escalate quickly here and tear gas is used frequently. So, the second time we went, there was a march going on down the already rough road that leads to Renee’s so we attempted to take a different route. This ended with me out of the car (Zuena reclined in the passenger seat), helping Emily navigate a 4 point turn in the midst of some major ruts and gutters as the road became impassible. Fortunately we worked it out and made our way up the usual road as the crowd had by that time cleared out. The third time was at night. I don’t know if it was to do with elections or just the fact that people in Masese like to party. Once we got to the main road, we had to drive through a huge crowd of rowdy people; all dancing and yelling and cheering, hitting the car, jumping on the back…it was intense. Once that started clearing, things got pretty creepy as the crowds opened up to reveal hundreds of kids just running down the road, chanting some song. It was really dusty and the way the headlights lit up the particles of dust, creating a glowing haze around them and accentuating the beams of light was really unnerving. The whole thing had a kind of Children of the Corn thing going on (despite the fact that I haven’t seen it) and we were extremely glad once we got through them all and were finally facing open road.    

Also to do with elections, last Sunday we heard two tear gas canisters get shot off during church. Usually we go into town for lunch but we had a bunch of kids with us so we went home first. Bridget then told us that she had been trying to call/text us because Aaron had called her to say that we should under no circumstances go into town. Riots: good times.

I had the most amazing experience a couple days ago…

Just a little painting activity gone bad...Me and my boy, Jojo

Mama Maggie...love her!

Josh (aged 1) & Jojo (aged 5)...can't get enough of these two...

Kelsey and I being generally juvenile at Ling Ling (the local Chinese restaurant)