Apologies for the delayed blog post, we didn’t have wifi last night (or for most of the day). As Amber pointed out, it seems to be a 50/50 shot of if we have wifi at any given moment-Schrödinger’s wifi!

Our chill morning with a meeting time of 8:30 am was interrupted by a message at 8:20 from one of the TOTs telling us to meet at 8 am … as in 20 minutes after the message was sent. We ended up departing in the van by 9 am, which was pretty impressive. On the way; Amber introduced our colleagues to never have I ever (the pg version), where we learned some of the TOTs had never been to Jinja or been on a boat before (both things we were planning to do today!)

On the way, we had to administer PETCAT in another city to act as a control location. PETCAT is our prehospital emergency trauma care assessment tool, which asks questions about how often hospitals and clinics receive patients with certain treatments applied. See our day 2 blog for more info and our experience administering the survey in Mukono. In order to control for secular trends (any changes that happen over time and not from our training program), we went to Lugazi, a town in the Buikwe district, which is about half an hour from Mukono. We went to four different clinics and the main hospital in Lugazi, which is where Hannington did his equivalent of residency! We saw a couple patients while there, one of whom had a femur fracture. They had fashioned a hare traction splint (the standard prehospital care treatment to hold the broken bones in place) using a box, milk jug and a metal frame! We also talked to one of the nurses working, who told us she had malaria but was still working. We’ve actually met a couple people with malaria here in the past few days - making Haleigh and Amber even more insistent on Kyrillos wearing bug spray.

Amber was thrilled to discover that the main hospital in Lugazi was big on family planning and contraception. She talked a little with one of the practitioners there to get a better idea of resources they had and the services they offered. We were are pleasantly surprised to find out they have IUDs, an arm implant, and the pill available. They even had a wheel from the World Health Organization comparing birth control methods and their contraindications! We also noticed that our colleagues like asking Amber how to say words in Spanish, although they seemed a little disappointed that “hospital” sounded similar in both languages.

On the drive to Jinja, we decided to stop at a rainforest, where it was in fact raining (lightly). We learned that they have both brown and white monkeys here, the latter of which are called “Mzungu monkeys.” Unfortunately, we didn’t spot any :(. However, we did learn how to say “pearl of Africa” in Luganda- Uganda zzabu!

For lunch, we stopped at a place called “The Hangout.” We found a wide variety of food there, including Tex-Mex, Chinese, and Barbecue! There was even a jackfruit tree near where we were eating, but we sadly lacked the tree climbing abilities to add it to our meal :(

We then headed to the Nile for a boat tour! We negotiated the price from $80 to $40 and then set off to see the source of the Nile, where Lake Victoria (the largest lake in Africa) meets the Nile. It was a relaxing ride, with a stop at a gift shop and for a photo op. We all put our hands in the Nile which was very cool. Amber and Kyrillos wanted to jump in…. Maybe next time. See some fun videos of our trip here, here and here.

Afterwards, we went to a vibey river-side restaurant for some drinks, where Kyrillos danced with all the guys (video here). Someone even came up to him and asked if he was a tiktok influencer! Haleigh also bought a giraffe statue (she has a giraffe collection from all the places she’s visited) and Amber bought a vibrant dress.

We took a quick trip through Jinja and went to a restaurant for chicken pilou, which was really just chicken biryani, and then packed into the van for a hour and a half ride home (which is less time than Kampala, despite Mukono being closer to Kampala).

We ended the night with some good conversation about what we hope to accomplish in our last week here. Stay tuned to hear about our adventures…

We may have squeezed two more people into this van than there are supposed to be…

Shortly after this, Haleigh and Amber yelled at Kyrillos for not having bug spray on while we trekked in the woods

Hannington gave us a Ugandan flag today!

Did you know that some of Gandhi’s ashes were scattered at the source of Nile?

These life vests were way too big for us, but to quote Amber, “Do we care about them being blue or do we care about safety?” (the proper sized life vests were orange) (most the zippers on the orange ones were broken anyway).