Additions to the Engeye Family

The “New” Volunteer Hagar!

About a month ago a new “muzungu” or white person entered our lives. Her name is Hagar!. Hagar! is originally from Israel, but immigrated to the United States when she was seven. Her immediate family now lives in northern California. She has a BA in Public Health and International Relations from Boston University. The kids and locals don’t believe us, but like Steve and I she is a twin and is 22 years old. Soon all the kids are going to think that all Americans are twins and are 22 years old. She is working for an organization called The Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) based out of San Francisco, California. They have put her in touch with Engeye and she spends the majority of her time helping out at the clinic. She does two things. She helps us with the children in the morning, having her around drastically increased our effectiveness. Having 9 students per teacher instead of 15 makes a huge difference.

In addition to helping us with the morning program, Hagar! is taking a Health Needs Survey of Ddegeya. This is really great for several reasons. First, the clinic can now use the information she collects to help them write grants. Second, the clinic and Hagar! can use the information to great health classes geared toward addressing the particular problems in the community. For example, one really great thing she found out was that most people actually do boil their water, so there really isn’t a need to have a class or information session on why boiling water is important.

Hagar! plans to specialize in women’s health needs. I think this is awesome and really needed. In my first month here someone told me that women were born to work hard. Many of the women here work much harder than the men, they carry forty-five pounds of water on their heads while carrying a baby on their back, they dig for hours in their gardens, they are continually pregnant, they cook all of the meals for their families, they clean their houses, they clean all their families’ clothes, care for their loved ones when they get sick, pretty much the women here are expected to do and therefore are not appreciated for how much they do. Women here need as many advocates as possible especially in rural areas where traditional values keep women in their hardworking underappreciated roles.

Two New Members of the Engeye Family

We have two other new additions to the Engeye family, Joseph and Sophia. Joseph is the new Nurse. Unfortunately Lawrence had to leave, Joseph is his replacement. He is awesome. Patients love him. The kids love him. We all love him. He is intergrating into the Engeye community and Ddegeya community wonderfully. He plays football with a bunch of locals every night. The kids love to play with him before the morning program starts and during his lunch break. And the adults respect him. I often see people come by with gifts for him. The number of patients has increased as well. Where we used to see about 8 patients trickle in each day, there is now always a line in the clinic.

John has just hired a nurse’s aid who is originally from Ddegeya. Sophia actually went to the nursing school in Kyetume where Steve and I taught and had us as teachers. This seems totally insane to me because she is a way more competent health care provider than I am. All I can do is put a colorful bandage on a kid to make him or her stop cry while she knows how to do things like inject quinine. It is really great that John hired Sophia for two reasons. First many of the local women are scared to come to the clinic because there is a male nurse. Having a female member of the community present helps alleviate women’s fears. In addition Sophia was a great person to hire. She is very motivated to not only do her job (handing out medicine and interacting with female patients), but go above and beyond and start other programs. For example she wants to start holding nutrition classes for local women. She also wants to start women’s groups where women can come and discus different personal problems. I am so excited about this. She said I could help out which really excites me b/c I have wanted to hold things like these for a while. Sophia like Joseph has integrated into the Engeye community beautifully. She is always playing Ludo (a Ugandan board game similar to Sorry) with John, Richard, and Joseph. She has even gotten me to play with her and invited me to her house for supper.

I love having these new faces around. In addition, it is really nice to have some more female companionship. When I agreed to come to Uganda I was aware that the lack of female friends was going to be hard. I currently live with four boys. I have never been one to be friends with lots of boys and while I really enjoy hanging out with Susan while she cooks it is hard to create a friendship when she doesn’t speak very much English and I don’t speak much Luganda. However, Sophia speaks English really well and it’s so nice to talk to her. The other day she sat and kept me company while I did my laundry. I enjoyed it so much. Hagar! also provides a lot of female companionship which is really nice.