I got up early and took Fred to the hospital and they said come back at 11 am and he’ll be all fixed up. This sounded a little worrying, but it was good as Pastor Frank had arranged for us to try to visit the LC5 Chairman again today. We arrived at 9:30 am and the Chairman was not too far behind. It was actually quite a good meeting, the Chariman was very happy with what we were doing and wanted to see us go ahead. I think it will be useful having him onside with future red tape and that type of thing, but we hit him up for some help getting some land. He said that we need to aggressively get us some land because our plans were very good, but unfortunately did not offer us any government land, but let us know who might have some land, and then said that if we get stuck that he had some that he could sell us if need be.
All in all it was a good meeting and he has said that he will come and visit next Thursday to visit our current sight, so we offered for him to come for lunch. Hopefully he will be further moved by actually seeing the children. Afer this we picked up old mate Fred from the hospital and to my surprise everything was well, he had his shot and they had stitched him up and he seemed happy enough. We took him home and made him stay in bed all day, and night. In the afternoon Pam rang for me to pick her and Joan up from the hospital. This is another case that has upset me a bit and made me even more sceptical of the hospital services here in Uganda. For weeks now Joan had a cut on her finger that had become infected. It was getting bigger and bigger until one day while in hospital it burst. They sent her home with Pam that same day. The problem is that they should have cleaned it a lot better than they did. This sounds simple, but now one week later Joan has lost her entire finger. Pam and Eddie were saying on Saturday that they were going to see the doctor on Sunday to discuss the finger as it had gotten gang green and needed to be chopped off, probably at the second knuckle. They could have done it then and probably chopped it at the second knuckle but the surgeon did not operate until today, so she lost the whole thing.
Don’t complain to me about the health system back home, this is the service offered to those who actually live near enough to get here. Some that live in relatively nearby villages are not able to even get this as it is too far to walk, especially if you are sick, and most cannot afford transport. So I suppose Joan is actually more fortunate than those in the villages. Sorry about my negative posts this week, hopefully I can write some more positive things soon, maybe after I stop reading the other book I got from Kampala “The Shackled Continent.”
