We went to Entebbe airport today to pick up Nicholyn Chang, who will be doing her summer internship at the Bishop Asili Health Clinic. Nicholyn is from Malaysia and is working towards her masters degree at the Graduate School of International Relations from University of California, San Diego. She will spend this time in Uganda putting the skills she has learned so far into practice. Her aim is to guide Bishop Asili towards an affective surveying approach so that the activities necessary to meet the communities needs are clear and monitoring and evaluation of those activities will allow for gathering and analysis of robust data. She will use the Just Like My Child mosquito net distribution as an example activity to teach the Bishop Asili Outreach Team about the importance and process of conducting a proper needs assessment survey along with monitoring and evaluation techniques. The Bishop Asili Outreach Team will then be able to apply this methodology to identifying and implementing all major community projects they are involved in. Nicholyn will also work towards finding maps and local statistics that will be an invaluable resource to Just Like My Child. I'm really looking forward to getting to know Nicholyn and learning from her as well.
(Nicholyn Chang, Bujagali Falls, Jinja)
Dr. Jude is spending his summer at Bishop Asili Health Clinic practicing medicine while waiting to start his residency in Gulu, which is in the northern part of the country. Sister Ernestine found a program that would pay some of his university fees in return for a promise from Jude that he will return to Bishop Asili when his residency is over to work for a minimum of three years. She is a very smart woman. I'm certain that Jude's enthusiasm and eagerness to learn will lead him towards being a great investment. He has been a great house mate! I taught him how to make grilled cheese and he even humored me by eating it for dinner. By Ugandan standards a grilled cheese sandwich is hardly considered food. You could have a full plate, but if matooke (steamed, unripened bananas) and meat is not found on that plate then you aren't really eating any food. Jude had heard of The Beatles, but had never actually listened to one of their songs. The expression on his face at hearing the song "Hey Jude" for the first time via my ipod is a memory I won't soon forget. He listened to it four times in a row before I changed the song. I mean hey....there are a lot of really good Beatles songs. If time allows in the evening we watch an episode of Dr. House on the laptop. A luxury made possible by electricity that is not commonplace in Uganda and certainly one that I'm not used to affording myself in this context. It must be so strange for Jude to see how a hospital in America operates, even if it is via a medical mystery television show. We crack up at Dr. Houses snide comments and eagerly wait for the inevitable moment when the patient will go into convulsions and Dr. House's diagnostic team solves the case. An episode of escape from the reality on this African ground.
Dr. Jude (Bishop Asili Health Clinic)
http://www.justlikemychild.com/
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