Day 7

Our 6:30 am wakeup time this morning was a bit rough, and neither of us were in our breakfast eras. We arrived at the HEI office right before 7 at the same time as our partner Mary, who let us into the building and called an Uber to the island, where our training today is. We are partnered with Afrinvest, an investment bank, to train their staff. We arrived at their office around 7:50 to find it locked, but lucky someone let us in a few minutes later. However, the head staff did not arrive until 9:30, which, while annoying to have woken up so early, did give Haleigh time to write yesterday’s blog (oops), and also both of us time to sleep some more, even if in a chair. 

We started to set up once they arrived, with our video training group upstairs in a conference room and the in-person group downstairs in the lobby. Without AC in our rooms, we appreciated the excessive cold air in the room for a second, but then it became quite cold with our t-shirts. We thought there would be wifi today, and the office had wifi, but nobody had the password for it. We also needed to download the rest of the videos for training on one of the employee’s laptops to connect to the A/V system. Their computer had wifi, but for Haleigh to login to her gmail, she needed two-factor authentication and her phone didn’t have wifi or service (@gmail please have another solution to the “don’t have access to my phone” button than to go get your phone). 

We eventually got the wifi password and were able to connect, download, and get started. Aayush worked with the in-person trainees today while Haleigh focused on the online program. Our local trainers led the majority of the classes, and we’ve been very insistent on having HEI run the trainings, to the best of our ability.

We had a few of the same issues with scanning on everyone’s device and some people not having smartphones, but it was easier to manage on the second day and split into two smaller groups. Our trainees were very engaged during our break-out sessions, even in the online training where we didn’t provide any feedback or assistance, which was great to see. We had planned on conducting the practical assessments during the break out groups, but the trainees were doing well so we decided to perform them at the end after the post-test. In the simulation assessment, participants were very good at fracture splinting and bandaging skills, which impressed us. The scene safety, response and airway topics usually take a while to get the hang of but most people did pretty well!

We interviewed one of our trainers for his thoughts on the training, how to improve the number of incident report forms get turned in, and any other feedback on the curriculum to help us improve. We then took the obligatory 85 photos, during which everyone loves having Haleigh come into the center while Aayush sneakily hides in the background. 

Around 4, having not eaten since 9 am trail mix for Haleigh and a bar for Aayush, we had a lovely dinner of jollof rice, plantains, chicken, and moi moi, which is a bean cake with an egg in the middle. We had a fun conversation with Chika and Mary about how Aayush needs to do better. He admitted he would be dead by now without Haleigh (mainly because she had to remind him to take his malaria pill at 5 pm). Chika said Aayush should be the more responsible one and it’s a shame that Aayush doesn’t pay for Haleigh’s meals (she’s the breadwinner with the LFR credit card, not that we’ve actually been paying for our meals so far). Aayush argued he livens up her day and that should be worth more than anything but Chika was not having it and wants him to prove he “knows how to treat a lady” (him having a girlfriend wasn’t good enough for Chika). So Haleigh is going to sabotage this plan for him (she admits he does open doors for her and carries every heavy thing already). 

While that plan ensues, we have challenged each other to an official New York Times crossword competition. Haleigh had an embarrassing 2:59 to Aayush’s 1:17 today. We are officially 2-2 and whoever loses has to buy the other a pastry on our layover home in London. 

We had hoped to sleep in tomorrow but agreed go to church at 9 am. Luckily Haleigh can wear pants and doesn’t have to go buy an… interesting looking dress #ugandathrowback (if you want a picture day 42 of the uganda blog). And Aayush has a grand plan to go clubbing one Saturday night and be ready by 8:30 for church the next morning, although he found it slightly egregious he had to pay an offering just to wake up early. Also, Haleigh realized her AC wasn’t working because a switch across the room wasn’t turned on but we good now. I’ll leave us with those tidbits. 

Aayush did not appreciate this picture when Haleigh showed it to him 8 hours after it was taken but she thinks he just didn’t take advantage of the time he was awake while she was asleep to get a photo

A peek at our fantastic online training videos!

Break out sessions practicing airway management

Participants excited to be the patient for fracture splinting!

Practicing fracture splinting, some participants even went and got ties from their offices to tie the splint like we show in the videos. We love seeing people use whatever resources they have available!

Haleigh loves being the center of attention

“Your problem is meat” - Chika to Aayush

Photographic evidence that Aayush is now obsessed with NYT connections and has still yet to apologize for admonishing its existence two days ago