Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in lizzieinuganda's LiveJournal:

Thursday, July 21st, 2005
9:58 am	Mukama asiimwe Well apart from staggerring down here to post an update I didn't manage anything else on Monday! Just stayed in bed all day - a bit of a pity to waste one of my last remaining few days but I was a lot better on Tuesday. I'm finishing up all my work, trying to get it into a form that Charles can use and understand the intricate workings of my mind! He also got me to design an anchor for the pipe yesterday - it turned out to be a huge 7m square block of concrete... I've definitely been learning a lot of stuff here. On Saturday is a big children's mission run by the hospital - they do it every year. Last year it was led by a team of 50 from Winchester but this year they have about 20 altogether, and are expecting at least 3000 children! (Yes that's right I haven't typed too many 00s.) It's a bit of a pity that my flight is on Sunday as it means I can't stay and help which would be amazingly fun. So tomorrow I travel to Kampala - probably on the coach again but maybe in a private hire car which would be luxurious and involve a stop for lunch - bonus. Then I brave the white water of the nile on saturday, and fly back all through sunday. So please pray for safe travel. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 18th, 2005
11:14 am	Holiday! I've just come back from a very relaxing holiday on Bushara Island (which means Paradise) on Lake Bunyoni. 2 days of sun and sailing - no buoyancy aids in sight of course! I brushed up my skills and even managed to teach a couple of the others. Sadly I got a little too much sun - very silly of me - and am a little bit shaky and fragile but up and about. 4 more days here then I start the long journey home. I'll only have 1 afternoon free in Kampala - on Friday - but will probably need to arrange hotels and taxis and stuff , provisionally it would be nice to see round the school but I'm not sure how practical. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 12th, 2005
5:06 pm	Sister Hazel’s tour of the hospital was a bit of an eye-opener – I haven’t of course seen inside that many English hospitals unlike many of you but still even I could see some obvious differences. In the children’s ward the children are 2 to a bed – 1 each end to make room. In the isolation ward where they are all supposed to be separately cubicled the curtains are back and there are 3 extra mattresses on the floor because they’ve run out of space and beds. The families of the patients stay at the hospital all day (and possibly all night) – cooking for them and generally looking after all their non-medical needs. And some of the wards are nice and bright but some of them and the exam rooms are dark and depressing and nearly falling down. Lots of work needed methinks – so nurses, doctors, would-be builders, anyone think about coming out here! Today I took the day off from design work and have been a bit more practical – we went up to Kisiizi Upper where the Pentecostal Church are acquiring a new building. So far it has a pretty good set of walls but not much more. We spent the morning breaking up the piled-up earth inside with picks, shovelling it into wheelbarrows and emptying them outside. The local women were doing all this in bare feet but I didn’t fancy that quite so near to all the sharp metal... now I have aching muscles and blisters... I’ve tasted 2 african drinks – chai and ‘porridge’! Chai is normal tea with sugar and then a mixture called ‘tea masala’ which is ginger, cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, and nutmeg, and you don’t want to put too much in! But it was good. The ‘porridge’ is brewed from sorghum and no msungus that I have yet met can stomach it. Having said this, after all the dire reports I was dreading it but it wasn’t as bad as I was led to believe. But very tangy, you could definitely taste it fermenting… an experience but maybe not one to beg for the recipe. My calculations for the channels have turned into designing a 10m high dam from scratch. Charles thinks that one day they will have to build a reservoir above the waterfall (ideal because there’s a whole empty valley between it and the next waterfall) and has got me working on it. He is perfectly aware that I know nothing about dam design so as long as his expectations aren’t too high I should be fine! Have heard terrifying stories about the white-water rafting and bungee-jumping in Jinja – where I’m going hopefully on my way home. I’m undeterred from the rafting – sounds great fun but I think I might give the bungee-jump a miss… (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 6th, 2005
12:11 pm	Lizzie's encounter on the Psych Ward Sister Hazel is showing me round the hospital. The children’s ward has a hole in the floor so all the children have been moved to the Psych ward. The dangerous psych patients are locked in a room, the more harmless ones wander round at random. Hazel has just introduced me to the sister: Jovia, who is with one of her patients… PATIENT: What is your name? ME: Lizzie P: Lizzie P: Is that your mother? ME: No. My mother is not here P: I think you lie ME: Hazel, he thinks you’re my mother SISTER HAZEL: No I am not her mother. I wish I was P: I will marry... SH: Oh you need two hundred thousand cows to marry this one P: Two thousand? SH: Two hundred thousand JOVIA: She is very expensive P: I have 10 only SH: No you need 200 000 P: And 5 goats I have P: And 5 pigs SH: Pigs! Well if I need pork I will come to you (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 4th, 2005
12:08 pm	Well it's been quite a treat to finally get all your emails - I had a very frustrating week when I couldn't get onto hotmail but I'm now fully updated. Although I don't know anyone else's degree results - did you all get what you hoped for? Thanks you Mummy for doing my post - don't worry about the textbook, I think I'd need to flick through the whole book not just a few pages but I'm doing ok with the web - it's only hotmail that's unbelievably slow. I've had a fun weekend doing not much but I did walk up one of the local 'mountains' (really a glorified hill), being followed by about 15 children yelling "howar yoo" at us all the way! I'm learning a few odd words of Rukiga like hello and thank you and so on, but everyone I works with speaks english. RE: the management of the project. At the moment Charles is 'project manager' and I guess that continues until completion. Then the power company is run by the hospital medical supervisor, another member of staff and the bishop. The profits will go to the hospital. Currently it's written into the constitution or whatever they have that the company must consist of these people - but Charles is looking for a way to make sure that this carries on, and the profits can't be diverted away from the hospital, as I suppose the board could alter the constitution... Most of the people I work with or spend my time with are other english people - which is not what I expected after being thrown in at the deep end in Peru. It's kind of a pity but it's also good to be so included in the tearfund group and also to be able to encourage the others who are here on their own. This week I start basic designs for a dam, as Charles has grander ideas for the project than the scope of the current plan... to include flooding of the valley upstream of the waterfall so that even in the dry season there'll be enough electricity for everyone. Fortunately there are no villages in that area to be made homeless - the main things to drown would be eucalyptus trees and killer bees! I'm enjoying being here very much - apart from the poor communications links. I still have my own house which others have started visiting finally, so it's being useful not big and empty. I'm very glad I have such a defined role, others are here trying desperately to be useful - particylarly in the hospital - but it's hard for them to learn the system and be helpful without first getting in the way. The nurses particularly are severely understaffed because several have left for new jobs and the students don't qualify until November. I'm definitely feeling positive about the engineering thing - looking forward to getting back into it after Harrow. Sorry this has been such a looong message - I'm taking full advantage of the fact that it's working. Hopefully I'll manage to post it before the next power cut Love to all (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 30th, 2005
3:18 pm	Flora and Fauna Well hello again. I'm spending a rather large amount of time on the web looking for formulas and so on realising that I really should have brought my textbook! So prime opportunity for checking up on news - on those days when the web works in between the power cuts and the ultra-ultra slow connection. Yesterday I was scrambling around at the top of the waterfall trying not to fall in the channel or down the falls! And did a nice spot of crawling through the undergrowth to measure a particularly obscure spot - Charles didn't tell me til today that the reason people don't go there is because of the cobras... I've become quite adept at squashing flies and mosquitos with anything handy - but I don't think I've got as many as have got me! No actually the wildlife isn't too bad, I'm tending to keep the spiders and gekkos alive as they eat everything else... If I have the time and money I might take a trip a little further afield to see something more exciting like rhinos or orangutangs. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
3:08 pm	Results Well you all probably know already as I have only just found out, but woohoo! - I got a first. If you want to write a letter, (it'll probably take about 2 weeks to arrive so don't send anything after 10th July) the address is: Lizzie White C.O.U. Kisiizi Hospital P.O. Box 109 KABALE Uganda (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 27th, 2005
12:40 pm	Agandi Kisiizi coach was far better than I'd been led to believe! like actually a proper coach similar to one you might get in england although the wiring for the lights was somewhat more dodgy. They stops every couple of hours in a village for people to thrust food on long sticks through the windows trying to sell such things as kebabs, or fried locusts for the more adventurous. And Kisiizi itself is great. I have my own house for a week until there's room in the guest house, but of course with the elctricity I have lights and a hot shower and a kettle... all anyone could want. I am just so impressed by how good everything is - all very anglicised which could be either a good or bad thing. The waterfal is just as impressive as the pictures - and I've spent this morning scrambling round the open channels at the top exploring the waterworks system that was put in to run a flax mill about 60 years ago - with most of it still intact! Any of the engineers fancy running a HECRAS model on it for me??!! Hm possibly more along the lines of digging in the saand on the beach - and I've been brought in because I'm supposed to b the expert! (Charles isn't actually an engineer officially so I'm the one that will have to sign things and take the blame when it all goes wrong) But the good news is it really looks like there's going to be lots for me to do. There's a couple of gap year students here getting some experience at the hospital before they go to medical school, and there's a tearfund team who are here for 4 months helping in the hospital but also teaching in the local schools. also a swedish carpenter! who came on the same bus as me but doesn't appear to have such a clearly defined role. So, things to pray for: I want to get to know the africans as well as all the msunga (white people) in Kisiizi Elias - the carpenter - who doesn't really have much to do at the moment and I know what that's like! The project - they still don't have enough money to actually start That I will do good work and make the right decisions and remember all the hydraulics I learned last year And also - next year I have a job at a church in London - I have just had an email from Krish, the pastor, who will be leaving in September - so I won't actually be working with him - I need to figure out what this will mean, and if my role will change, and basically whether it will still happen... Thanks for all your interest and support and prayers so far. Oh and if you've sent textx I haven't got them - signal even on a Ugandan ntwork is very poor here - should get better when I spend more time at the top of the hill by the weir and so on. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 24th, 2005
3:40 pm	Arrival Well I made it safe to Uganda at least although the 7 hour non-stop bus journey to Kisiizi is yet to come (But I'm told they've got a new, improved, more comfortable bus which presumably means slightly padded seats and no holes in the floor?). I've been racing round Kampala on the back of a motor-bike, I think they have similar rules to crazy taxi where you have to give as exciting a ride as possible without actually hitting anything... And I did manage to get through customs without serious incident despite constant suspicion of what was in my large black case (my laptop) and having my passport confiscated while I went through immigration until I got some money to pay for my visa. But those who know the Peru story will be glad to know that yes, Charles was there to meet me! And I get a nice relaxing afternoon in the capital before venturing to more remote areas. (7 Comments |Comment on this)