Day 4

Today has been a very profitable and fascinating day. We started off this morning watching the chicken coop in the school just down the road catch fire!! I can hear you all saying - "Roast Chicken for dinner then"? But no - sadly there was nothing left.
Health and safety in Uganda simply doesn't exist as it does in the UK. The school children were all let out into the play area to watch the fire trucks arrive. It wasn't too long before everyone was enveloped in huge clouds of black smoke - but still everyone stayed were they were -not wanting to miss anything.

So, after that excitement we went of to visit two Palliative Care organisations that are based here in Kampala. The purpose of our visit to them was to introduce ourselves as the African Prisons Project Palliative Care Advisors and to discuss whether they could support the project when we are back in the UK.
Firstly we went to the Palliative Care Association of Uganda. They primarily monitor and supervise care workers who are practicing care of the dying either in the community or at Mulago Hospital They provide a basic training and help them to develop and set up district palliative care branches throughout Uganda.
Then we went on to visit the African Palliative Care Association, who monitor the provision of all palliative care services across the whole Africa. We were introduced to a lovely lady called Fatiya who took us through into her office. There on her desk, right before my very own eyes was a copy of the article recently published by Help the Hospices all about our work and our last trip!!! Somebody please tell Hannah Taylor just how far reaching we have become!!! She was amazed to find out that we were the very people in the article that she had only read this very morning. Fortunately she thought it was very accurate and informative and she was please that people in the UK were interested.
We came away with a pile of books to read all about pain and symptom management in sub-saharan africa plus (and this is sooo exciting) a whole new set of quality standards for me to play with - yipeee. Obviously nothing changes the whole world over.
Morphine has been in very short supply here and we discovered some horrendous practice that had been going on to try and eek out supplies. Patients have been told that they have to rinse out their morphine bottles with water in order try and get the dregs at the bottom, they have been told to only take their morphine at night and bear their pain during the day and some of them have just had their morphine stopped altogether, with no substitute! Supplies are on their way but will take another 6 weeks by sea. I am so glad that we don't have this problem in the UK.

Christopher is doing an amazing job. He has just been awarded the African Prisons Project / Fair Havens  certificate in basic care provision and will be part of the training that we are providing. He and Daphne have worked out some role plays to demonstrate what I will be teaching.
He has also been doing some public speaking to the organisations we have visited to introduce the project.
He's not sleeping too much in the day now - bless!

For those of you who have been attempting to follow our itinerary, its all changed now. Our permission letters have still not arrived so we having to be a bit flexible and do the things planned for later that don't depend on the letters being available. I imagine that the latter part of our trip is going to be madly busy. Anyway, we are certainly making use of the time. Tomorrow we will be visiting another prison, that don't ask for permission letters, to introduce our palliative care training to them and to discuss their needs for future support by the African Prisons Project.

Todays new friend (these are as prolific here as pigeons are in Southend- just 10 times the size!)

Take care everyone.

Catherine and Christopher xx