Where do you hurt?

swollen tummy

We woke up early Saturday morning and drove  the 2 hours from Apac  back to Gulu and checked back into the Acholi Inn. We made the executive decision to head back to Bul Kur (Galileo School) to spend some more time with the villagers.  After lunch we headed off to the Galileo school. We set up a simple medical clinic for the villagers of Bul Kur in the new school building. Katie worked her magic on wounds and malaria and I worked the front, assesment desk. Nick was in charge of the make shift pharmacy.  I met people who had cirrhosis of the liver, sickle cell anemia, typhoid, HIV,  and everyone had digestive problems from drinking bad water.  Unfortunately, when you live in a village with one under performing water pump, getting access to clean water 100% of the time is not an option.  I found myself repeating the same instructions to people throughout the day. "Make sure to only drink, cook and wash with clean, boiled water." However, every time I repeated these words, I knew it wasn't that simple. Their reality is to live with these parasites and diseases  hoping they don't get too ill. And when it's really bad, they hope they have enough money to get transportation to Gulu town and pay to see a doctor.

The most jarring thing I saw was a two week old baby. The 19 year old mother explained that the baby cried all the time and wouldn’t eat.  The school nurse instructed me to feel the baby’s stomach to see if it was hard or soft.  The mother unwrapped the sheet from the baby so I could check the baby’s stomach.  I leaned in to examine the baby and wowowowow. I immediately noticed blisters all over her little, naked body. She had blisters starting on her neck and into her armpits and all down her torso to her knees.  The blisters were so bad on her hips that she had yellow discharge oozing from that location. When I felt her little tummy it was rock hard.  After I finished examining the child, my translator rushed away from the desk to go wash his hands. He said we had to clean our hands immediately.  After returning to the desk and translating some more, we discovered that the young mother had not gone out to purchase anything for the baby because she had no money. She had used the only soap she had, caustic laundry soap, to wash the child, which resulted in the severe skin rash.  Also, the umbilical cord wasn’t properly cared for and the child got an infection in her little tummy.

Katie and the school nurse instructed the mother to take the child into town to visit the doctor so the baby could get the proper antibiotics and skin cream right away. 

 
It was a long and productive day and we were all happily exhausted by the end of it.  We weren't able to cure everyone, but hopefully our time there was of some small help.