the island

man crazy couple weeks and oh how time flys!! its not long til ill be back home doing my normal things!! thats crazy! only 3 more nights in Uganda and Africa!! the month has gone soooo fast! ive had an amazing time :) doing touristy things like water water rafting and bungee jumping to roughing it up on an island doing hiv testing. both were amazing! :D white water rafting was great...i love rafting anyway and so doing it down the NILE river with ppl from all over the world was pretty cool :) bungee jumping was possibly the scariest thing ive done but also it was sooo great. oh gosh even thinking about how i felt makes my heart pump :P i still cant believe i jumped and then loved it so much that i had to do it again :P the island was interesting. mary and i went with john, an older ugandan volset worker and edward, our lovely ugandan translator. we caught a matatu from ntenjeru about 1/2 up to Katosi and from there caught a long boat to the island. i cant pronounce or spell the name of the island so ill keep calling it 'the island' :P. we had to wait like 3-4 hours for the boat to be ready (africa time) and then oh so horrifying we had to be CARRIED onto the boat...no jetties lol....but i was like 'ahh nooo i dont mind getting bit wet at all i can walk' but i wasnt allowed so i had to get piggybacked a billion miles from the shore to the boat...gosh i was more scared then i was when i jumped!!! awkard!!! neway after about an hour and a half on lake victoria :) we got to the island. they had a little guesthouse which was nice bcuz we were kinda thinking we might of had to sleep on the floor. however the owners told us a price wayyyy more than what they had previously said so after lots of discussion we finally got a room. bit yukky...sooooo many spiders and we saw a snake and ick. mary and i had to share a single bed which also kinda sucked as its soo hot anyway, and with blaring loud ugandan radio playing until early hours of the morning meant that we really did not sleep. so me being a person who likes my sleep, woke up rather grumpy the next morning :P. mary and i were like 'we wont toooo goo back hoome to the white house'. neway after brekkie and a bit of prayer time we definitley felt more energised and pumped for the day. the day was busy. we did a talk about hiv/aids and stis. mary talked to the women about nutrition while i became friends with all the kids :D. they were super scared of us first of all but with bubbles and stickers they soon warmed up...alot...i got rather mobbed :P 'Nangi, Nangi' (aunty) and 'muzungu' got yelled at me continually!! neway after this we did the testing. we had to fingerprick with blood lances...OWW! poor people they really hurt and then squeeze ALOT of blood out onto the test strips. finally by the end of the day we had the skill downpack but unfortunately we had to retest a couple of people.thankfully we had gloves and metho so it was rather clean. It costs about $1 per test and we tested 83 people. 9 tested positive to HIV. statistics say that 1 in 10 ugandans have HIV so it was pretty much spot on...a little higher tho. after we finished testing edward and john did counselling for all the people..telling them their results etc. because of the language barrier we really couldnt help with that so mary and i went back to the guest house and laid on the lovely grass and talked to some kids and i held this cute baby whose name was asher till he feel asleep....sooooo cute :D its crazy here i think the kids are amazing they are about 6-7 years old and they are responsible for their baby sibling for the whole day, they carry them on their backs all day! they are pretty good kids and really look out for each other which i love! :D Dinner on the island was interesting we had a local ah restuarant, if you can call it that, where we went for every meal. interesting. we had rats run past the top of our table....lurvely :S. as its an island main food is fish....yukkkk!!!! haha so i had plain rice first night and thankfully got chicken and rice the next. not too bad...luckily we didnt have to have poshoe...maize and water :S. Neway after another sleepless night we went back to katosi and ntenjeru (again took ages) and collapsed at home very exhausted...it was soooo nice to see everyone and have a WASH!! i was sooo sick of being dirty!! hmmm im definitley looking forward to going home and having nice clean clothes to put on...*sigh* it would be good :D Neway sooo much else has happened but i will sign off here and will hopefully write another blog a bit later.... Weraba!!! byeeee

week 2 continued

back to week 2

Monday:
Bumm bumm dumm dummmmmm!! we went to school! susan took P2, Mary P1 and i took the babies (aged 3-7?). insane day!! the education system here is shocking. it is all wrote learning so you have a bunch of kids who memorise things and write or say what they are told but do not think for themselves!! no critical thinking whatsoever and its affecting this nation! you have a bunch of people (generally) who will do what they are told to do but dont think about things or try and see things differently, how to make things easier and more efficient and effective for themselves. i see it everywhere. Neway ill talk more about that later i think. so teaching was interesting cuz these kids just werent getting it, had no clue!!! eek! there wasnt any discipline or order either. the kids did this really horrible thing that when someone got a question right they would say 'i love you i love you alot' but when they got it wrong they would shake their hands at the kid and say something mean in lugandan! hmm doesnt really encourage kids to participate in class, the kids themselves are lovely and they are very interested in muzungus so i had kids touching me (sometimes awkard), touching my hair, having this huge conversation with me in lugandan while i nodded and had no idea what they were talking about. my kids being little didnt have very much english at all. we taught them hockey pockey, duckduck goose and hand clapping games. was probably the longest 4 hours of my life! hmm not to keen on going back. i mean i love the kids but teaching them is insane. so glad i didnt become a teacher!!!

Tuesday
our first day in the health clinic....yay i finally think that yes i am meant to be a nurse. it was great especially after yesterday!! the morning was immunisation day so all the mums and babies line up and get their details taken and get immunised. i was recording it all in the registra. was fun! and felt like i was doing something useful. then.......we got to see a baby being borned :P!!! was a very fast birth!!! there we were in the backroom. one nurse plus us two muzungus watching and the mother (husbands here arent allowed in). it was a very different environment then what id expect in australia, for one the window was open and the curtains didnt cover the window so a person walking by could see EVERYTHING oh gosh, and the nurse did things a bit differently then we had read and knew! it was great tho! i have seen lots of animal births(farm girl) so i didnt find it gross like mary did but i was suprised at how ah similar the births were....eek probably shouldnt say that!! but it was wonderful being there seeing a new born baby entering the world!! mary held it after and just told him that he was going to grow up big and strong and have an amazing future and i just kept praying for him and his mum. he is youngest of four and the mother said 'no more!' high fertility rate here!!! not uncommon to see 10 kids in a family!! mother was grateful to us, even if we didnt do anything...well i held her hand for a bit. and we took a pic of mum and bub later. unfortunatley the next day we were told baby had to go to hospital as he had an infection so praying his is alright!! :(
the rest of our time there i helped rose(nurse/midwife) with an iv line-again different health standards to us *cringe*

Wednesday
Today we were in the health centre again, and today was antenatal care. so ladies come and get hiv tested and then have their 'appointment' and councelling. things dont run very efficiently here...africa time so most of the ladies were there all day. eek hiv testing was ah interesting. rose RECAPPED a needle filled with infected blood....ooohhh you so dont do that!!! oh my gosh the risk is soooo high! she wasnt even wearing gloves. the whole procedure was really quite unsafe so hopefully will be able to talk to her about that. but we got to assist rose in the appointments with the ladies so now i know how to tell how many weeks a baby is by feeling the mums tummy and also can kinda feel the head :P was very awesome!! time is running out but ill just leave you with some stats. i was looking thru the registar and in the last 3 months 587 ladies came in because they were pregnant 56 tested positive for hiv, 49 found out they had it for the first time!! the youngest recorded was a 14 year old pregnant girl with hiv :( oh man!! :(

Week 2

After last weeks quiet week i was definitely looking forward to this week!! Last week ended by traveling into mukono on friday and meeting up with Susan and Jill at the guesthouse and spent most of friday just chilling out and catching up, I went down to hotel collier and for about sh/8000 (4 bucks) i got a nice swim. was very quiet only 3 other muzungus there and they were just talking and sunbaking. so i had the pool to myself :).

Saturday we (me, mary, susan and jill) got up rather early and headed into Kampala (major city) for a day out. was rather scary catching the matatu into the city because we hadnt been in there yet (ahh tomorrow im hanging out in kampala all on my lonesome!!) but the guy i was sitting next to in the matatu was very chatty and showed us where to get off. Ugandans are such lovely people but you have to be bit careful cuz the guys kinda like chatting muzungu girls up!! Last week there was this 17(!!) year old boy who found it funny that we werent married and werent planning on getting married for many many years! He said 'but you cant be happy if your not married' and 'i think you should get married this year!' AHH nooo! :D haha then had lots of fun conversations with him about no i dont live with my boyfriend in australia, no i dont have one, and lots of 'nakato (my name) sit next to me'. Mary found it oh sooo funny!! haha he was nice enough. if i dont ever get married in australia can always come back here :P A lady at susan's placement found it odd that she had been with her boyfriend for 7years without being married. she's like 'here we get married in one month'!!! :S and was trying to set Susan up! Hehe!

Neway back to Kampala ... our aim for the day was to go to baby watoto. i had instructions on how to get there but they werent great ones! so we were walking for aggggessss and finally asked for directions. was told to go back where we had come and up the hill so after walking around for about an hour...meeting some ah 'interesting' people...we finally arrived at baby watoto only to find we had been heading the right way and was only about 5 mins away from where we had asked directions!! :D ahh well!! so baby watoto is amazing! 81 babies!!! and it is such a nice place. pretty amazing. unfortunatley we arrrived at nap time so we got to hold a couple of babies but the rest we got to watch sleeping so it was still cute :) After leaving we went to garden city(mall type thing) and had a humongous pizza (it fed 6 people) from a place called newyork kitchen...selling american styled food...yumm. after this we went....how embarassing...to the movies!! haha it was lovely...air conditioned, comfy chairs and oh my gosh flushing toliets! woop woop! after some really bad adverts we watched the movie. it was funny at first i just couldnt understand what they were saying cuz they spoke soooo fast. noone speaks fast here (cept maybe me:P) but got used to it. as the movie finished we got back to reality, realising that we were still in uganda!! after icecream and a play on the internet we headed back to the guest house. a lovely western day!! :P

Sunday:
Sunday we went to church!! A full gospel, born agains church! it was great, bit odd but great :D. Maama (african lady we met last week) invited us and she pretty much helped run the show. we got there and she made us sit right at the front!! church started at 945 and finished at 1330. im used to long services but mary and susan thought it was a bit different from their 1.5hour services! so we sang songs, introduced ourselves, had a mini word, had more songs and dancing!! we danced! oh yeah! i knew some songs from last time i was here so i could sing along!! some in english but mostly in lugandan, it was awesome cuz everyone started praying and singing in lugandan but because of my church i found it pretty easy to enter in to Gods presence and just start worshipping in my language, and then everyone started praying in tongues and it was just awesome!!! they are pretty much the same in every language!! :P so we also had testimonies (lugandan) and then they did this thing where ppl could get up and sing their own worship song and people could show there appreciation by giving money! bit odd. but they wanted us to sing, so we sang!! argh! i had to sing into my own microphone in front of stacks of ppl...it was fun!! :P we sang power of your love because it was the only one we all knew. then the pastor preached and they had someone translate for us, but ah as africans get very worked up as the preach :D we really had not much idea what they were talking about!! Very fun tho...going to another church this sunday and looking forward to it!!

whats been happening

Molimotiya Nnyabo and Seyabo!!
(How are you ladies and Gentlemen)

Nze Rebekah Nakato, Mva Tasmania, olina emyaka abiddy!
(I am Rebekah-Nakato--is my uganda name meaning youngest twin, mary is Babirye, I am from tasmania and i am 20 years old!!) haha getting there with the language. we know lots of greetings and some other words. however it is always awkard when we greet someone in lugandan cause then they think we know the language! haha so then they answer us saying words we have not learnt yet and we say ah kali which means ok :D. we laugh. they laugh at us silly muzungus alot!! :)

Festus is the VOLSET coordinator and big boss man, we live with him in Ntenjeru. he is a rockstar and a superstar. he is our jjajja (grandfather). He is 52 years old, short, uganda, and completley awesome. he loovvvesss music and loves to sing and dance. it was he who named as Nakato and Babirye because all muzungus look the same and so we are twins :P.

Lydia is also a rockstar :P she is 26 studying social work but she is on holidays. she looks after and organises Jjajja. She looks like a movie star and has a whoopi goldberg smile...gorgeous :). she is a wonderful cook! we eat lotsss of carbohydrates here :( but it is lovely food. its amazing bcuz they are so simple but very flavoursome...no preservatives yay!! haha we are going to learn how to cook next week hopefully! In Lugandan the word food means carbohydrates, so they have rice, matooke (fried mashed banana), poosho( maize), potatoes and they have soup with it. soup isnt like ours. its more like stew i guess...beans mostly, and pinenut soup is the lushest!! and we sometimes have meat.

The kids who live at the dorm near our house are rebecca, teddy, rose, and joyce. they are great girls but i am running out of time so ill talk more about them later.

So this week Festus and Zack (Awesome american peace corps dude who has been living in ntenjeru for a year) organised a training week, training community members to become vhts (village health team). Its amazing. its free training, teaching them about health care, malaria, tb, family planning, adolscent health, breastfeeding, education,health promotion, nutrition etc. a lot of information! they are very smart people and asked good questions. mary and i taught on hiv/aids and stis which was very fun and a bit nerve racking. we had a translator which was fun. this week tho as been quiet for as as most of the teaching was in lugandan meaning we couldnt understand so we didnt do much. lots of sitting outside singing songs...haha it was sad we were in a african village singing highschool musical, hilary duff and abba!! :D we also got some jobs like rice sorting which was kinda fun!!

ok times going to go in a min so best go :)

day two

Hey Guys.
So i'm in Uganda!! I got here round ten am yesterday morning. i was picked up by leslie the real uganda coordinator and driven from entebbe to mukono which took probably about 1.5 hours. it was lovely seeing things that i remembered. It is soooo greeen and lush here. i mean tassie is pretty green but uganda is really different and so much greener i think :). i am the first tassie that anyone else is the program has met...they are mostly from us and uk and so they keep asking me questions. one didnt think that ppl lived on tassie that it was just like a little nature strip:P oh and the only thing they do know is the tasmania devil cartoon from warner brothers :P i laugh. neway so i got to the guest house at mukono and met Lee my volset coordinator and some of the other volunteers. Lee and i then went for a walk around mukono...one street but very busy and she told me lots of things about uganda and my stay etc. about 3pm i was dead from jetlag so went to bed and pretty much slept thru to 6am this morning. Nobody around so i walked down to the internet lab and here i am. suprisingly good internet connection. its just as fast as home. awesome! :) so its 10.40 am here and i think 6.40pm at home :).

This time is alot different from last time i was here. last time was VERY western and touristy!! this time not so much. so its a shock but means i get to experience real uganda i guess :). So squat pit toliet and no running water is just a start but also probably the worst things. hopefully when i go to my village on sunday we might have a toliet :). oh well u get used to it. The guest house is on the main highway so very noisy but again you get used to it. its very hot well compared to tassie lately but am also hoping to get used to it:) something that will horrify my mum :P is that i am going to be riding the taxis alot. taxis are known as coffins on wheels :D. ahhh well. :) anyway time about to run out so bye bye y'all :)

2 sleeps!

2 sleeps!!! woohoo!! :)

Tomorrow i finish packing my bags, getting last minute things, do my photocopies and hopefully have a good night sleep before getting up very early wednesday morning to leave at like 630am to go to airport!! :D :D

:) Beck

Death Stalks A Continent

Please read this article about AIDS...pretty full on!
This is just the first page so click on the link to read on

Death Stalks A Continent
By Johanna McGeary Monday, Feb. 12, 2001

Imagine your life this way.

You get up in the morning and breakfast with your three kids. One is already doomed to die in infancy. Your husband works 200 miles away, comes home twice a year and sleeps around in between. You risk your life in every act of sexual intercourse. You go to work past a house where a teenager lives alone tending young siblings without any source of income.

At another house, the wife was branded a whore when she asked her husband to use a condom, beaten silly and thrown into the streets. Over there lies a man desperately sick without access to a doctor or clinic or medicine or food or blankets or even a kind word.

At work you eat with colleagues, and every third one is already fatally ill. You whisper about a friend who admitted she had the plague and whose neighbors stoned her to death. Your leisure is occupied by the funerals you attend every Saturday. You go to bed fearing adults your age will not live into their 40s. You and your neighbors and your political and popular leaders act as if nothing is happening.

Across the southern quadrant of Africa, this nightmare is real. The word not spoken is AIDS, and here at ground zero of humanity's deadliest cataclysm, the ultimate tragedy is that so many people don't know--or don't want to know--what is happening.

As the HIV virus sweeps mercilessly through these lands--the fiercest trial Africa has yet endured--a few try to address the terrible depredation. The rest of society looks away. Flesh and muscle melt from the bones of the sick in packed hospital wards and lonely bush kraals. Corpses stack up in morgues until those on top crush the identity from the faces underneath. Raw earth mounds scar the landscape, grave after grave without name or number. Bereft children grieve for parents lost in their prime, for siblings scattered to the winds.

The victims don't cry out. Doctors and obituaries do not give the killer its name. Families recoil in shame. Leaders shirk responsibility. The stubborn silence heralds victory for the disease: denial cannot keep the virus at bay.

The developed world is largely silent too. AIDS in Africa has never commanded the full-bore response the West has brought to other, sometimes lesser, travails. We pay sporadic attention, turning on the spotlight when an international conference occurs, then turning it off. Good-hearted donors donate; governments acknowledge that more needs to be done. But think how different the effort would be if what is happening here were happening in the West.

By now you've seen pictures of the sick, the dead, the orphans. You've heard appalling numbers: the number of new infections, the number of the dead, the number who are sick without care, the number walking around already fated to die.
....
Death Stalks A Continent

you can also look at this site http://www.time.com/time/2001/aidsinafrica/ for some heart-wrenching photographs!

Please take the time to read, its so important that people become aware of this horrible illness

Ugandan News

http://www.newvision.co.ug/

Check out this website for current Ugandan News :)

Itinerary

Heya Guys

• October 11th or 12th: Leaving the lovely Launceston to go to Hobart to spend a couple of days with my family and last minute preparations

• October 13th: Super scary/excited and sleepless night before :P

• October 14th: Fly to Melbourne at 0845 on jetstar and spend couple of hours (~7) at melbourne airport until 1705 when i fly to Bangkok. I arrive in Bangkok the same day at 2235 but im sure the flight takes 9-10 hours! (ooo time differences :P)

• October 15th: Leave Bangkok at 0035 (so two hours in Bangkok airport) and arrive in Kenya at 0600, again spend 2 hours in the Nairobi airport and then fly to Entebbe Uganda arriving at 0945! Be met by someone who has my name on a placecard...woop woop...like the movies ;) oh yeah! :P. Then sometime during this day ill meet up with Mary Thomas (my lovely friend and fellow nursing student) and her sister Susan and we will be taken to Mukono Town which is east of Kampala.

We will be staying in Mukono town for a couple of days (get over jetlag :P) before heading out to Ntenjeru where Mez and I will be spending the majority of our time :)

Hopefully as we have weekends off, I will be able to spend sometime in kampala at the watoto villages...suubi especially as thats where i helped build a classroom last time. I would also love to go back to Kampala Pentecostal Church, Sanyu Babies Home and visit the new watoto babies home :D

So month in Uganda then...

• November 15th: Leave Uganda :( :( :( at 1955 and arrive in Kenya at 2105. Leave Kenya at 2240 and arriving in Bangkok 1220 on the 16th of November

• November 16th: Arrive in Bangkok. Fly to Krabi at 1700.

Spend 6 days lying on the beach and snorkeling :D

• November 21st: Fly from Krabi to Bangkok at 1300. Spend rest of the day in Bangkok.

• November 22nd: Fly out of Bangkok at 0015 and arrive in Melbourne at 1325pm. Fly to Hobart at 1600 arriving home at 1715! Spend a couple of days in Hobart sleeping and Talking!!

• November 25thish: Back to Launceston and back at work :P

Welcome :)

Hello or Ki Kati

As you are probably aware my name is Rebekah and I'm a nursing student from Tassie about to head off on a huge adventure :D!! During my time away I'll try to keep this blog updated so that I can let you know what Im doing, share some stories and show some pictures!!

In 2 and a half weeks, 19 days to be exact i leave Hobart and make my away to Uganda via Melbourne, Bangkok, and Kenya!

I will be out of Australia for 5 weeks, returning on the 22nd of November.

Soo during the next 2 weeks i'll write on here letting you know what exactly im doing in Africa for a month and about my preparation etc.

Thanks for stopping by!!

:D