life in the land of milk and honey

so it has been awhile... things have been pretty crazy busy. First off, I met my counterpart that was supposed to be a woman... it turns out there was a mistake, HE is definitely a man. But he's really really nice so it all worked out just fine.... funny story though, there was kind of another miscommunication between us and so when we first met I thought that he was actually my supervisor so the entire day I was calling him by the supervisors name, introducing him as such, and I even put his phone number in my phone wrong... throughout all this he never corrected me and, in my defense, he was even wearing the wrong name tag... the whole thing was kind of funny... something about how he was there representing the supervisor and so that is why he wore the name tag... I'm not really sure but it all worked out okay and now he and I are great friends.

Right now I am actually in mbarara town after a 3 day visit with the organization. It was so so neat! I am working for a small catholic health center and so will be living on the church compound. On the compound there is a church, quarters for the 2 priests, 2 primary schools (1 for girls, one for boys) , a secondary school, and a technical school, housing for the nuns that run the school, the health center, housing for its 5 employees and their families ( I will be living in that courtyard), as well as a banana plantation, vegetable garden, and a bunch of milk cows. The head priest is huge on natural food--which is really funny because basically everything here is natural anyways-- but none the less it makes me happy. Plus, he is a vegetarian! The first \Ugandan veg I have met. Almost all the food they eat on the compound is produced in their gardens and he told me that anything I harvest I am welcome to eat... he was all "yes Sarah, if you would like bananas or papaya, just take this machete and you can go and get them.." as if I have even the slightest clue how to machete a banana tree... I'm very excited about all the things I will be learning though.. he also told me that he will teach me how to milk a cow:)

while I was there we held an immunization outreach as well as a mental health outreach... an interesting thing about mental health programs in this country is that the main illness they treat for is epilepsy... for some reason seizures are considered a mental health problem and not a medical issue. I had a great time talking with the Dr. and he also had 2 medical students from Sweden who were doing research with him for a month. Both girls were really nice and so it was neat to get to talk to them about medicine in both Uganda and in Sweden.

The immunization outreach was also a huge success. over 100 babies were immunized. The whole process was so crazy though because the health center is understaffed so things were just all over the place. As you can imagine though, I was loving every second of it and am so so excited for things to really take off.

I just realized that I never explained the "milk and honey" thing... it's just what they call the southwest because basically it's amazing here! -the real reason it's so amazing is that it's the region that the pres comes from and he has definitely made sure his home turf has been well taken care of :) the difference between the roads here and elsewhere is like night and day.

well, that's all for now! all my love and best!