Shadowing and Ndere Cultural Center (6/14/2013)

This morning we woke up and I showered off before a delicious breakfast of eggs and toast with homemade roasted peanut butter. It was easily the best peanut butter I have ever eaten. It's a lot like the natural peanut butter but no stirring necessary , so it's much easier to spread. I put it on my toast with some banana and it was wonderful. After breakfast we headed back to Mulago hospital to do some shadowing.

We were in the PICU and the pediatric acute care unit this morning, but I don't think the doctors we were following really understood what we where there for since they really don't do shadowing here. We saw kids there with malaria, bacterial meningitis, sepsis, sickle cell, thrombocytopenia, and possible malignancy. When you enter the PICU, you have to take your shoes off and put on these slippers or just go barefoot to try to keep the bugs out. That was really interesting I thought. It is also a sealed room with air conditioning, which is very rare in the hospital. It was so different than a PICU would ever be at home. There was even an aspirate bag with bloody fluid hanging in the ground. It was organized though and the children were getting care, so that is what was most important. The resuscitation room is basically the non surgical pediatric ER. There are very few beds, and children must share. One of the small beds had three kids on it, each with their mother or father next to them. I

We couldn't see much in there because it was so crowded, but it was very interesting.

After shadowing we went to get some more money at the ATM and then went to a crash course in Luganda, the most common non English language here. It is pretty difficult, especially telling time where they totally mix up even the hours of the day (for our 7am they say 1am). It was fun and interesting. After class we went to dinner at a place called Faze 2 and then we went to the cultural center.

The Ndere Cultural Center was really cool. The show was all traditional dances from all over Uganda and a few from Rwanda and Burundi as well. They were incredible hip shakers! It was quite entertaining and we all had a great time there! After the show we came straight home and got ready for bed because we are getting up early to go see the chimps tomorrow morning!