Escape...

This vehicle fell off a bridge over the river just below the hospital area but thankfully ended up the right way up and nobody was seriously injured.  It reminded us of an incident 20 or so years ago when we first lived in Kisiizi and a lorry fell off the same bridge at night.  Sadly on that occasion there were people sitting on top of sacks in the back of the lorry and they fell into the river followed by the heavy sacks.  We went into the river in the dark and pulled some people out but one lady was drowned.



We too need to escape sometimes - life in Kisiizi is very full as we live, work, worship and play with the same group of people.  Living on-site means we are available, which is good but can be demanding  and there is a lot of on-call and work committment.  Hanna has spent many hours on labour-ward, sometimes going back to check up on patients as some of the other staff are very junior and inexperienced.  Overall Ian is on-call 1 in 2 nights which usually involves a night ward round at about 9.30-10pm and then it depends on how the patients progress.  In the past 2 months we have had a run of very sick babies and children.  Sometimes it is heartbreaking when patients come too late for us to help, maybe due to financial pressures or the inability to get transport to come.
For example a mother was referred late by a health centre and died shortly after arrival here as she had lost so much blood.  This morning on the ward round I saw a 2 year old child who had been in the national referral hospital in Kampala for weeks and has now come to us with what is probably a liver tumour....


So we are grateful for a garden to enjoy with a view to the waterfall and for the opportunity to escape sometimes to some of the beautiful places in this region.

Volcanoes at Lake Mutanda

Pied kingfisher on mirror-surface lake

In the past months we have managed a few short breaks and appreciated the beauty of rural south-west Uganda...