FortPortal medical camp

Hey all
Well its been a while since I last updated this and a lot has been happening.
I went away to Fort Portal on the 2nd October to work in a medical camp there with hema cement.
We set off at lunch time on Tuesday and got down there at about 4pm. It was a nice journey and got to see a lot. I was staying in a lovely house all to my self with a beautiful view of the mountains and rainforest. We traveled to the hima cement clinic where we unloaded a large amount of drug supplies and loaded some screens onto the landrover roof for the medical camp. I filmed some of the Doctors and nurses talking about what they do, how many people attend and what they treat at the Hima Clinic. We then headed off for the medical camp which was in the middle of nowhere. It took us about one and a half hours to get to the camp through rainforest and dirt road the whole way. We got to see a lot of baboons though so it was worth it. We arrived at the camp which was just a small school with about four classrooms and a few out houses with no windows. We realised it wasn’t going to be much fun with 15 long drop toilets and a predicted 1500 people coming for treatment. After we sorted out where the different treatment rooms would be places and where ques would be formed we headed back to FortPortal for dinner and some well needed rest as we were to be up at 5:30 the next morning to be at the camp for 7. An early awakening and it was freezing! The region of Fortportal is the coldest in Uganda and I understand why! We head off and on our way we see more babboons lots of familys scampering away into the dense forest. We arrive at the camp and there seems to be endless numbers of people. The hima cement people are trying to organise everybody into ques around the football pitch. We get to work straight away and start unloading the drugs into the pharmacy, we also start to set up the screens in the various rooms. I did a lot of fliming this first day of all the people and also of the rooms and people being treated, when I get home I shall show everyone the video but at the moment it is slightly hard to upload large files onto internet. Well I helped out as much as I could between filming and taking photos. I worked in the first medical room where people had their general medical details taken, I took over from lindsay for a while and I weighed people, I honed in on my sign lanuguage skills and managed to get people to understand the basics of standing on scales as I recorded their weight. It was actually a lot of fun and I got to look after a lot of babies while I weighed their mothers. A few babys were cute a few were very scared as I shall explain why later in kisiizi bit. We worked very hard and at the end of the day over 4000 people had been there to get treatment. It then began to rain at about 5 and because all Ugandans are afraid of the rain they all ran inside so we had to end the day there and come back tomorrow. We headed home after working for 12hours straight and it felt strangely rewarding and I was really excited about the next day. We headed back to FortPortal and then over to the mountains of the moon hotel, this is the very fancy and exspensive hotel which the Hima cement people were staying in, they invited us up for dinner on them of course so lindsay agreed willingly. We arrived and the place was designed like some sort of Austrian lodge, a lot of wood and large open fires. The hotel is an old colonial place which has been updated and is actually very tastyfully done if on the wrong continent. The influx of europeans into Fort Portal has had a big affect on the arcitecture of the hotels but the actual city still is african.
We arrived the next day and realised that not only had most of the people slept in the school that night but even more people turned up. The pharmacy the day before had been struggling to keep up with the demand so me and lindsay headed over to the pharmacy and started to make up small packs of different arrays of drugs that the different sections (windows) needed. I spent a lot of time doing this which seems boring but was actually quite enjoyable, I also spent a lot of time filming again. This day there was about 2000. Over the two days we also had VCT which stands for Voluntary Care and Treatment, it is to test for aids and we tested about 700 people for this which was really great as a lot of people are still ashamed to get tested due to the fear of stigma regarding the disease.
The journey home was not much fun as I felt quite sick the whole time but I managed to go to sleep and so stayed vomit free since goodness knows when.
I am very sorry about how late this blog is but also about a severe lack of information, I do realise that I have written twice asmuch for one day at didi’s world as I have for a week in FortPortal but I have become rather busy recently and so you may lose some stories and a few weeks here and there but that leaves me a lot more to tell you all when I get home.
Hope the wonderful Fermanagh is as wet as ever and for you who have gone further a field I hope all is well at your various Uni’s or polytecs for you extra special friends :D
Love to all
Guy