UgandAshis 27 Time flies

UgandAshis 27 Time flies

July 7, 2009

Kampala, Uganda

Wow two weeks and no writing.

Too long

Let us start saying that since about a week a friend, fellow fraternity brother and future surgeon Dr Nard from the Netherlands has joined me. He is in his first year of his specialization in facial surgery and this is his first visit (and time to work) in Africa. Some of the good and bad of Uganda has happened to him over the last few days.

First I would like to congratulate him and his girlfriend for buying a house in Utrecht as per yesterday. Lonneke will come and tour here in about four and a half week. I am looking forward to meet her after 10 years.

As I see Nard immerse in Uganda culture I feel protective, as if you want to give a younger brother the best there is to be seen knowing that not all is beautiful or easy to understand. Besides crossing roads he is doing great. Being of surgical inclination I have nicknamed him Dr Vlimmen (A Dutch cult hero in a novel written about 80 years ago) and we share the same passion for birds. As I write this a hawk is circling around my house. Yellow beaked and looking for a rodent or large rodent I guess. Our favorite bird is the marabou, with its carnavalesque beak on top of a white boa and black feathers.

As Nard is both a dentist as well as a medical doctor in Fort Portal he is working in the dentistry and surgical department s. It is not easy to explain to a patient who has travelled 200 kilometer that the material required to fill his tooth has run out and that he will have to return another day. Yet here we do it and travelling 200 kilometer may take the whole day and several days’ salary.

The first night he was here I took him to 3 of my favorite pubs, clubs and restaurants. An Eritrean restaurant across the street, a huge pool bar (9 tables) annex bar/dancing and the classic of classics; Al’s Bar. In Al’s Bar you can feel time warped as the action starts at 0300 AM earliest and the music seldom goes beyond the end of the seventies. And what a collection of music the owner has. In the restaurant we met Nick one of my dear friends here and several other guys. A straight plunge into a sheesha and discussions of Ugandan culture versus Dutch culture. Nice to hear from the side.

Then almost straight to Fort Portal where we stay at Eveline’s house. As I wrote before she has started a church, a boarding primary school, a health clinic, a maternal health clinic, mobile health clinic and a project for pygmies.

I will ask Nard to write a blog entry for this blog as a guest writer. It is not possible for me to crawl into his shoes all I can see that experiencing the health care system in Uganda and mostly the Ugandans are having a major impact on Nard.
What I will say is that the gift he has taken to our fellow doctors and clinical officer training school, a medical library of about 500 medical textbooks on DVD is the best remedy for a knowledge craving brother and sisterhood of medicine.

Namaskar,

Ashis