Greetings, avid fans and loyal bloggees!
Anne Marie is feeling ill today (the real today, Wed 7/6) so here I sit at the internet cafe all on my lonesome, with only some very slow internet to keep me occupied. As such, dear readers, I might get bored and not type in quite as much detail as I've done in the past. I know that you all normally cherish my long-windedness, so I apologize in advance if I'm more succinct. Indeed, I'll begin by compressing last Wednesday through Friday all into one concise and easy-to-read bundle.
After such an exciting day in maternity on Tuesday, we decided to spend our time the rest of the week exploring what else the hospital had to offer. We saw many more circumcisions in the minor operating theater, spent lots of time in the major operating theater watching C-sections and a few other surgeries, spent a bit more time in maternity and mapped out a plan for what we were going to do with our time at the hospital, specifically, for the remainder of our time here. Unfortunately, there isn't much to say about these days. Ugandans didn't seem to be very sick for most of them, and mom's weren't pushing out babies as we've been used to seeing. It was really nice getting some more time to get to know the folks at the hospital though, so we were very happy overall!
On the getting-to-know-Ugandans-better note: Ugandan men are super funny. It's a culture in which homosexuality is, as I've mentioned, so illegal as to have just avoided being punishable by an automatic death penalty. It's a culture where I just saw a Ugandan paper in which the president supports his policy of throwing the gays in jail because God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Adam. Uganda is even a place where PDA between men and women is considered very inappropriate, including holding hands. But men here hold hands all the time (which takes a bit of getting used to), but more importantly the relatively small number of Ugandans working at the hospital to whom I've given our cell phone number are CONSTANTLY calling and texting me. Now I'm certainly not saying they're all secretly gay for me (flattering as it would be) but from my cultural perspective, it is pretty funny watching all of these men calling me all the time, texting me in the middle of the night, and trying to hold my hand. If Ugandans weren't outrageously homophobic, I'd think they were pretty flamboyant!
I'm finding that I really like a lot about Uganda, actually. As alluded to, the people are extremely friendly. The cell phone service is great - it's cheap (international calls are well under a dime per minute), and offers cool services like money transfer between phones (for cash withdrawal, even) and texts when the number you've tried calling that was busy becomes available. The weather is a bit hot during the day, but is lovely at night. It's super easy to get around, and the transportation is really cheap (if also terrifying and uncomfortable). I'm increasingly thinking I'd like to come back here, for at least a little while, once I'm actually a doctor and could actually help people.
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