Week 7

Il pleut des cordes 

The rainy season is here and I am woken at around 3am each morning to thunder storms and get my dresses splashed with orange water from the puddles in the road. There are people out on Mobuto Road in their dozens brushing the water into the gutters lining the sides of the road. A mini albeit powerful orange water fall forms. I take one of Claire's sturdy umbrellas into work then forget it because by mid-morning it's all dried up and it's as if it never happened apart from my dirty dresses and feet. 

It has been a week of parties

Two parties.

The first was a graduation party for Stephan, a close family friend of Dianah. She invited me along when she realised I'd been here all this time without attending a Ugandan party. 

Stephan has just graduated from medical school after facing a lot of challenges and a very long time. Stephan is now in his early thirties and met Dianah and her mum, Rose (the first nurse to work with Dr Anne and help her navigate Ugandan culture) about 20 years ago when he was a teenager looking after his mum who was dying and being cared for by the Palliative Care Association of Uganda (PCAU).  When Stephan's mum died, the Road to Hope Road to hope – Palliative Care Association of Uganda (pcauganda.org) programme put him through school. Usually when a child's parents die, that's it for education as there's no way to fund it. It seems Stephan - along with so many children - was really taken under the wings of PCAU and Tony, another graduate who was there, expressed that they were 'raised by PCAU'.  Hospice Africa has a similar programme, Give a Chance. 

If it was a week of parties, this was a day of speeches. Seven hours of speeches. At a celebration in the UK you might get a best man or father of the bride who stands up for a speech, compares it to a mini skirt or tells you how the stag do so wild that they can't share a single detail. Or finish an anecdote with the question, what was all that about? And it shouldn't last longer than an hour. Depending on how long the bride's father has waited his entire life for this very moment and audience to share his pride about his silent and smiling daughter's GCSE results. 

Niall and I later discuss how bloody good Ugandans are at speaking and how ad libbing a speech appears to come so naturally.

En tout cas, these speeches may have included these elements but they were in Lugandan so I wouldn't have known. Each speaker would dance up to microphone, give their speech and then dance back. There were a few episodes of torrential rain but this didn't stop anything, we just dragged our chairs closer together to ensure better coverage under the marquee. The MC reminded me of Stephen Graham and was a very good dancer. 

The whole village turned up for this party. This is what Dianah told me about on my first week: if you throw a party you'd better cater for everyone who might walk by it or catch wind of it because they will then join. The women looked glorious in their most beautiful dresses, and the men wore baggy suits and looked 1950's/1990's stylish.  

The second party was another Dr Anne special, the same as the one on my very first evening here celebrating the end of year placement of the nurses and clinical officers who'd come from across the continent to study at the institute. Malawi! Eswatini! Tanzania! Kenya! Cameroon! 

I was wearing the same blue dress and the party following the same structure. We ate, Nasur gave a speech, Dr Anne gave a speech, the students gave a speech and then we danced - a song from each country. We lit candles and sang the hospice song and the students vowed to take the philosophy of palliative care to their respective countries. 

And yet.... so much had changed. It seemed poignant that the start and end of my time here should be book ended by the event that represented so completely why I came here in the first place: to meet my nursing sisters from across the world. To see what they are getting up to with palliative care. 

 That first night ended with Mary and me sat on the sofa tentatively getting to know each other while waiting for Siraje to drop me off at home. I've since done that journey a hundred times and it's where I get my best chats in with Uber drivers as I try to better understand Uganda. Mary and I now text each other most days starting with a 'hey Sis' and have danced together, been birthday princesses together and I'm waiting for her to watch Love Actually and Bridget Jones so we can discuss. 

And Dr Anne has become a firm friend. She kind of did the moment we met. Before meeting someone who is so important and celebrated and done huge things for example be nominated for a Nobel Peace prize, introduce palliative care to a continent, you expect them to be maybe a bit aloof or fancy or scary or at the very least to have lost their regional accent. Not Dr Anne. She is down to earth and full of warmth and love and interested in everyone and thing, which on reflection is probably why she is exactly the person who should be nominated for Peace Prizes and introduce palliative care to whole continents because she is moved by love. 

At the first of these parties on the 10th February I recall wanting to capture it all, everything Dr Anne said, every conversation I had with these nurses, every dance, as though it was finite and running out. But this time, I was able to relax knowing that I've had presque two months of these glorious moments and interactions and meeting gorgeous people. Maybe they're not finite. Or maybe the only thing you can do is try and appreciate them as they are happening as nothing is guaranteed or forever. 

Other things I've wanted to but in a box are: 

the cows just walking down the road side. Pete asks who is with them? There must be someone directing them? Apparently nobody but some how it just seems to work. 

How close people are to smiling or laughing all the time.

How far people appear to be from panicking. 

The terracotta view as you swoop down Nsambya road. 

The nursing. I've never seen such beautiful nursing. It is tactile, gentle and present, it often involves bouncing a baby on one hip while undertaking a patient assessment. It sees the nurses right up close to patients, calling them jjaaja (grandma) and not worrying about all their other mounting tasks while only half present in the conversation they are having. When I tell the nurses about the way British is going, about the strikes and the burn out and the 'if it's not documented it's not been done' and the constant threat of coroners court, they are shocked. I'm very lucky to work in St Luke's with a positive nursing culture but this is rare in the UK. And I can't generalise the nursing culture at Hospice Africa to anywhere else in Uganda or Africa, but it does show an alternate world wherein nurses can work without being stressed or scared or paranoid. 

And I'm so pleased I've seen this and along with everything else I've seen at Hospice Africa. A workplace which is not just a model hospice, but a model community and family. The people here just know how to be and exist around each other in a way that is so easy and kind, there's no hierarchy, nobody moans, everybody seems to be connected to be the common goal and they come together each morning and sing and wish eachother the very best for that day. They will come together again around lunch and chat and laugh and debate and not be on their phones.  

I came quite naively to Uganda and Hospice Africa. I thought it was daft at various points me wanting to come out, like a symptom of my never feeling satisfied and I was almost embarrassed: what kind of bizzaro picasso goes on their gap year at 34? But it has probably been the best experience of my life. I've never been so relaxed and happy, I've only cried a couple of time when telling my mum on the phone about some of the patients we've seen. My time here has not ended up being a box that I can tick and then crack on with my life. I think it's just shown me a bigger and more beautiful .... and more generous and loving world. I plan to come back in January to help translate for the Francophone students. And I will spend the rest of my life doing what I can to support the work of Hospice Africa and I can walk happier and brighter knowing that it exists.