Home Sweet Home - THANKS FOR ALL THE SUPPORT!

WE MADE IT!!!!!!!!

Our 11 hour flight from Cairo to JFK full of screaming children went very smoothly and it was probably for the best that we did not sleep the entire way!  Once we got to JFK, and made it through customs after 2 hours of waiting - we left Dan with his family and found out that American Airlines did not have us on either of the RDU flights that evening.  After spending a few hours on the phone, again, our parents found out that our seats were never reserved for the flight on the 4th after missing the flight on the 3rd.  Marc and Katie were panicking at the thought of having to stay in a hotel overnight AGAIN...it was looking like we were actually never going to get home. 

Thank goodness for Dan's parents - who picked us up coming out of customs, loaded us into their car, and stuck with us until we figured out that Egypt Air had rerouted us through Delta airlines - so we definitely had no American Airlines seats :).  Once we figured out where we were going....everything went perfectly!  We landed on time in Raliegh, got our bags, ate american food, and went to sleep!

Marc carrying my bag - Uganda style.



ON THE PLANE TO RDU!!!

 We could not be happier with how our trip went.  We learned so much about Uganda, dentistry, people, and life on this trip.  We are happy to hear stories from those that we have helped saying that for the first time in their memory they are out of pain, and that the villagers we helped will always remember us - they truly would NOT have received care/hygeine education had we not made this trip happen.  We can only hope that the trip will grow and expand to fill the needs of as many people as possible, make a big difference in their lives and overall health, and to increase the interactions between UNC and Makerere University to further benefit both sides!

If  you support our cause and would like to help us reach our goals for 2013, please click the links on the right to make a monetary donation or purchase a Uganda T-Shirt!  A HUGE THANK YOU to all of our donors, classmates, Dr. Farmer, family and friends for helping us make The Uganda Project a reality!

When in Cairo.....

Yesterday was a no good, horrible, terrible, bad day - after being awake for more than 24 hours, in an airport with nowhere comfortable to fall asleep, we found out that our Cairo flight was going to be another hour delayed meaning that we would miss our connection to JFK and NEVER GET BACK TO AMERICA!!!! When all of us were at our very crankiest, we boarded the plane at 6AM and all fell asleep before we even took off, ready to get to Cairo and dreaming about other connecting flights that would get us home.

When we landed, the display boards showed our flight still boarding, so we sprinted to the transfer desk only to be told that the board hadn't been updated and our flight was gone.  We didnt believe this and just assumed that everyone is trying to make us stay in Africa - especially after they told us that we would be in Cairo for 24 hours and they would put us in a hotel but we had to leave our passports at the airport - SKETCH.  Naturally, we did it anyway.

After taking a quick nap and eating lunch, we decided we had to make the best of the situation and ignore the warnings of everyone we have ever met and go explore Cairo.  Together with our new friend Dominique, who was also trying to get to JFK, we hired a driver (a very safe, reputable one from our hotel) and headed to the pyramids.  Our driver basically forced us into purchasing a camel ride - which we were all annoyed about at first because we didn't want to spend any money, but after we talked him down to $25 a person we were sold.  It was AMAZING!!!

Katie, Marc, their camels, the pyramid and Adam the guide.

Dan just getting on his camel.

We had all seen camels before but are pretty sure that you never realize how tall you are until you are sitting on one, riding across the desert, in front of the PYRAMIDS.  They are huge!! We got to ride right up to them and climb around and play on the ruins for a little bit before we had to say goodbye to our camels.  Dominique's camel was sassy and spit all over her and made a lot of noise, other than that they were very gentle and we all really enjoyed ourselves....when will we ever be in Egypt again?? (do NOT reply with "next year when your flight gets delayed again")

Katie, Marc, Dan & Dominique hanging out on the base of a pyramid.



The Sphinx!  Dont judge our photography - all photos taken while hanging onto to camel for dear life.



Crazy camel

 Our driver took us for a tour of Old Cairo, New Cairo, the religious area, and downtown - it was all really cool, there is a lot to see in Cairo and much of it is very beautiful.  We stopped to take some pictures by the Nile, and watched everyone preparing to break fast since we are in the middle of Ramadan.  Our driver warned us that it was time to head back at around 5;  he says that a couple hours before time to break fast everyone can get a little crazy and he wanted to make sure we were back before then :)



The Nile in Egypt.

Against our will, we have really enjoyed our time in Cairo.  We landed this morning determined to go back to America or be in a bad mood and ended up having a blast at one of the seven wonders of the world instead! Hopefully our travels tomorrow go off without a hitch and then next time you hear from us it won't be with a surprise stop in another country!

Last Days in Africa!

Our driver had us wake up early for another day of game drives on Wednesday morning.  We drove through the park and it seemed like everything except the antelopes were hiding from us.  We think Moses could tell that we had seen what we wanted to see and were mentally done with the long, bumpy drives in the van!  He planned an AMAZING afternoon for us and surprised us after lunch.  As we had mentioned before, all he told us was that we were going to go to an area without hippos/crocs and we thought he would have us swim.  Instead, he introduced us to a few Pakwatch (the town/village we were in) locals and they took us for an afternoon in the villages.
 

Dan finally fishing!

Fred and Patrick, the locals/our afternoon tour guides, took us down to the "port" where the local fisherman fish from.  Dan got to go out in one of the canoes with Moses and Fred while Marc and Katie took pictures and hung out with some of the kids.  Then we took a walking tour of the village - we got to see where/how they cook, how cassava flour is made, how fish are preserved, and how local crafts are made (which is AMAZING - the hand crafted stuff they can make is wild).  It was a really awesome experience because during most of our outreach work we were focused on treating/teaching as many patients as possible and were in local schools, which are slightly outside the homesteads of the villages.

Marc heating up the fire for the blacksmith. 

Fred and Patrick then took us to there home village to meet their families and neighbors.  We hung out inside one of the grass huts - which is actually really cool (both temperature wise and visually)!  All of the children were either really excited to meet us, or terrified - we made more babies cry that day than any of us ever have before in life.  Fred let them all come in one by one and greet us, followed by their mothers and some of the men in the village.  Katie got adopted by a little girl named Aiyo (which means "to understand") who did not leave her side for the rest of the day.

Katie & her new best friend. 

 We went to the center of the homestead where they held a courtship dance for us.  Fred was telling us that this is the way that most of the villagers meet their husbands/wives.  One of the villages plays loud music and invites neighboring villages to come for the dance, which usually lasts about 5 or 6 hours.  The single males play instruments and sing while the women dance, once they express interest in one another they meet a few more times and then arrange a dowry if the male is acceptable to the woman's family.

Dan getting in on the action.

Marc playing the drums before the ladies pulled him in to dance!

Saying bye to Fred and Patrick. 

We could not have asked for a better last night in Uganda - the villagers invited us back in the coming years and told us we were welcome to stay in the village if we wanted to really experience Ugandan village life.  After saying goodbye to our new friends, we headed back to Fort Murchison where they had moved us inside to the fancy self contained rooms.  We had yet another DELICIOUS dinner and headed to bed early so we could wake up at 5AM to do some chimp tracking the Buganda Rainforest.

DELICIOUS!

Marc thoroughly enjoying dessert!

Chimp tracking was really cool - the guides lead you to where the chimps are by sound.  The chimps make some really interesting noises and are amazing to watch move around the trees.  We were hoping to get really close, but since they are sort of aggressive we were forced to keep our distance.  After about 2 hours, 3 African KILLER bee scares (meaning they were just regular bees flying around us), the biggest ants we have ever seen, and getting all mudded up we decided to call it a day.  Our driver took us to lunch and we headed to the airport - which is where we will be now, for the next....7 hours - hopefully we will check in and get our tickets without any troubles, but judging from the rest of our travels, thats not likely - fingers crossed!! We are very excited to land in RDU/JFK and see all of our friends and family - we will update one more time when we are back

We couldn't find any good chimp pictures, but here's Marc grooming Katie.

SAFARI!!!!

Moses, our driver, picked us up early on Sunday morning to start our safari.  We drove and drove and drove, past where we for our outreach – Kakooge – and kept driving, stopping for some delicious fresh pineapple along the way.  We reached our first destination – Ziwa Rhino Reserve.  We learned that Rhinos became extinct in Uganda in the 1980s and it wasn’t until the late 90s that people invested in the Rhino Fund Uganda to try to bring back the white rhino into the country.  Thanks to donations from Kenya and from the Animal Kingdom in Florida, there are many breeding rhinos in the park again!  The residents named one of the babies – whose mom is an Animal Kingdom rhino from the US and dad is from Kenya – Obama. 

Just posing with some rhinos. 

The Ziwa Park is a really cool place – you get a guide who takes you out to a location that rhinos have been spotted in by another officer.  You can get really close to the rhinos, WAY closer than we expected.  You have to back up when they walk in your direction, or when the baby rhino becomes uncomfortable with your presence/your waving at them and your general excitement.  When we finally made the rhinos uncomfortable enough we trekked back to our van and started the long drive to Murchison Falls National Park.  Moses had set up a tour guide to do an evening game drive with us when he heard from a few friends that there were lions in the park earlier in the evening! 

Bella and Baby Obama - Obama LOVED us. 

 Starting the game drive, we were zooming past baboons, elephants, and giraffe to get to the lions before nightfall.  We were all wondering why we weren’t stopping to take pictures but Moses assured us we would have plenty of time for that (and he was definitely right).  Once we reached the spot where the lions were, we pulled RIGHT up alongside them.  They were literally less than 15 feet from our windows – mating.  It was incredible.  The lions were beautiful and we quickly became obsessed with finding lions on every game drive.

Lions right outside our car! 

After our lion spectacle we headed back to our lodge – which we thought were going to be tents in the middle of a group of elephants but turned out to be a really nice lodge where we ate the most delicious vegetable soup EVER and then called it a night.  We found out that the next night we would be moving to Fort Murchison, which is a little closer to the park – we really liked Global Village and weren’t sure how we felt about that.

Checking out the tent on The Nile.

We are now on our second night at Fort Murchison and can definitely say we have never done anything like this before.  We are literally camping on The Nile!  Each tent has two twin beds with mosquito nets and a small table with a lamp for the times the lights are on (5:30AM-8AM, and 7PM-thirty minutes after the last guests eat dinner).  Katie made Dan sleep in a tent by himself because…c’mon, sleeping in a tent on The Nile alone sounds terrifying.  Katie and Marc woke up in the middle of the night to see the outline of an elephant eating grass about 20 feet from the front door of their tent….which was both amazing and slightly unnerving.  Luckily, there is a night guard to prevent anything from getting too close to the tents.  The food here is delicious – unlike anything we have had anywhere in Uganda and anything we have expected.  Moses calls it “muzung food” (white people food) and definitely wishes he had some local food to eat, but we are thoroughly enjoying our salads (we finally gave up on not eating raw vegetables), t-bone steaks, pan seared tilapia, and roasted potatoes. 

The view from our tent/where elephants hang out at 2 AM.

Inside the tents - they were actually awesome.

The bottom of Murchison Falls from out cruise boat. 

The game drives have been awesome –        we have seen lions all 3 of the days we have gone out!  Today we saw a lioness stalking some antelope looking for dinner, and saw two male Water Backs fighting for dominance.  We have taken tons of pictures of hippos, elephants, giraffes, all the different kinds of antelope in the park, and PUMBA! There are warthogs everywhere.  The only thing we have yet to see is a leopard – but since there are only about 60 in the park, which is huge, that might not happen.  We got to cruise the Nile today to the foot of the falls, but unfortunately it poured for a lot of the time (apparently we are unlucky with most modes of transportation).  We have one more game drive tomorrow morning and then our driver is going to take us to an area that has no hippos/crocodiles where a lot of local fisherman fish….we suspect that Moses may think we are going to go swimming – but we have seen River Monsters a few too many times for that. 

Marc, Dan, & Katie at the top of the falls!

On Thursday morning we will get up REALLLLLLY early and leave our camp for the last time around 6AM to head out for Chimp tracking and then head to the airport where we can hopefully get on a flight home – keep your fingers crossed!  (We should be able to add some pictures soon hopefully!!)


ALSO - dont forget to check out the picture of the resected mandible if you wanted to see it! (Go to "Older Posts" and click the "THE LUGGAGE HAS ARRIVED (and so has Dr. Farmer)" post, its at the very bottom!) 

Friday & Saturday in Kampala

We got back into Kampala and checked into our hotel, Triangle Hotel, on Thursday night.  We had a nice dinner at Piato (Marc finally got his chicken wings) and said goodbye to Dr. Farmer who was heading to Entebbe for a 4:30AM flight.  We were looking forward to a few days of luxury and relaxation in the Kampala city center but are finding ourselves missing The Edge House and the Friary in Kakooge!  Our hotel is safe and nice, but the intertnet connection is SLOW, our bed (yes, one bed) is smaller than we expected, the shower is leaky, and we have a "pool view" room which turned out to be really loud!  The hotel is right in the middle of downtown Kampala, which is a very fast paced and kind of hectic area, we had gotten used to our little corner of Kampala and had a hard time navigating this section at first.  After spending two and a half nights here, we have learned to negotiate taxis really well and have learned to identify things by landmarks...so we are enjoying it much more now!

On Friday morning we went to the US Embassy to meet some of the staff and discuss US-Ugandan relations and meet with USAIDS staff to talk about Ugandan healthcare and the programs the US is active in.  We found out that the United States gives about $700,000,000 to Ugandan programs each year and that most of this is delegated for health needs and/or education initiatives - both of which we saw a great need for and are happy that the US is providing aid where it is needed.  Unfortunately we could not take any pictures inside the embassy, but it was gorgeous! 

Making baskets at the market!

Afterwards we met with Fred, a friend of our classmate Zach's close friend Erin.  Fred works for a charity organization that Erin is organizing that works to empower Ugandan women through buying and selling their handcrafted (BEAUTIFUL) baskets.  We saw a man wearing a UNC shirt and started to yell to/harass him and found out that it was Fred! He took us to the craft market, helped us negotiate for some amazing souveneirs, and filled up two of our suitcases with baskets to bring back to the US for Erin.  He was an awesome tour guide and we really enjoyed spending some time with him!  He even finally got us to ride a "matatu" which is a local taxi that is a van FULL of people, and showed us where to get on and off.

Katie & Marc's first matatu ride!

Dan & Fred in the matatu after the craft market

We then went back to "our side of town" to drop off some supplies to the dental school and return the sterilization equipment we had borrowed.  We met with Dr. Kutesa and the dental school's dean to discuss how we could change the project and grow to better suit our needs and the needs of the university.  Dr. Kutesa was eager to hear about our findings as the area we provided service in is not one that had previous outreaches set up;  the university is glad to be aware of the great need in that region and we look forward to working together to implement a positive change.  After leaving Makerere we headed to Fang Fang, a chinese restaurant for a delicious dinner and came home early to hang out before the opening ceremony for the olympic games! 

Dr. Farmer texted us to let us know he got home safe and to check on our flights home to make sure they hadn't been cancelled as his was. Sure enough, American Airlines & Egypt Air had somehow cancelled our flights home!  We ran out of international phone minutes trying to fix the problem and then had to pawn it off onto our amazing parents to fix it.  Luckily,  after about 20 hours on the phone, they have handled it and we atleast have an itinerary saying that we are heading home on August 3rd as planned!

We werent the only ones watching the games!

Today we ventured out into a new neighborhood, Kabalagala, and got some ice cream and groceries and stopped at a bar with a nice patio to have a Nile special and watch some Olympic swimming!  Since we finally figured out where Mediterraneo was - our favorite restaurant from the first night in Uganda - we decided to head back there for an early long last dinner!

Dan, Marc, Katie & a lot of gnocchi.

We lucked out and arranged to head out for our safari one day early - we will be heading out tomorrow morning at 7AM hopefully to see some awesome sights and really cool wildlife!  As promised - we finally posted the picture of the mandible....it is at the bottom of the blog about our luggage arriving if you dare to take a look :)

Day 4: Circles, Circles!

Today we spent the morning packing up our supplies to leave at the friary for next year’s trip and then ventured out to the orphanage’s school to teach some oral hygiene and give out the rest of the toothbrushes we had left.  We gave instructions to about 500 kids in groups of about 150 – leaving Kakooge today we can say that we are a relatively sure that we taught half of the children in Uganda how to brush their teeth, and also how to say “circles…circles” and “up and down, up and down” with our hygiene talk. The kids loved it – and so did we.  We are hoping to be more active in the school next year, treating even more of the children who need help and making sure that all 931 of the students have toothbrushes and toothpaste, and know how to use it.  The goal would be to teach the staff at the school to give hygeine instructions and possibly simple procedures like cleanings and sealants and to replenish their toothpaste and toothbrushes as needed!

Dr. Farmer teaching some of the children at the school.

Marc teaching the kids our version of their "bonga" - HIGH FIVES!

Dan doing some hygeine instruction with the nursery class.

Katie teaching the kids to brush their front teeth in CIRCLES, CIRCLES, CIRCLES!

After the school, we toured the local hospital – which is really far from the villages that we travelled to, but close to the town.  The hospital is a Franciscan Hospital built by the friars and staffed by nuns and it is a really nice hospital compared to what we have seen in Kampala.  It is also much less crowded due to location and the fact that services are not free.  We visited the dental unit and met the dentist who pleaded with us to find her an amalgamator – she actually has a really nice set up in the clinic!  After the tour we headed home to provide some dental care to the people who helped us so much this week. 

We gave cleanings to Robert, Ronald, Marian (all three friars), and Sandy (the driver) and then with Dr. Farmer, performed fillings or extractions and made sure that everyone in the house had toothbrushes.  We really could not have done the work we did this week without them.  Overall, we are incredibly satisfied with how our first outreach trip went!  Not only did we gather really helpful information to be able to tweak our program and get Ugandan’s the maximum benefit from it, but we were able to provide treatment to over 300 patients, education to countless more and really learn some valuable skills.  Now we are headed back to Kampala to rest for a few days and head out on a safari on Sunday!

A last picture of the team before heading back to Kampala!

Day 3: Mitanzi (Wednesday)

We started off our last day of village outreach by stopping at a church that served as the village school and being greeted by about 40 kids clapping and singing.  We decided to stop for a little bit and give them all hygiene kits and instructions after Ronald (one of the friars) showed us the sticks that they are using to brush.  The kids LOVED it.  This was the first time most of them had seen a toothbrush/toothpaste and the coloring books that were in the hygiene kits and they really appreciated our silly performances. We looked at the children’s mouths and picked the kids with the 10-15 most severe conditions to take with us to the school to set up our “clinic” and helped some kids wiggle out loose primary teeth that were bothering them.  We headed about 15 minutes deeper into the bush to set up for the day.

Everybody brushing!!!

This location was by far the furthest out into the bush, or deep into the woods.  It felt like it took forever to get there on the bumpy unpaved road.  Once we arrived, we quickly set up shop and got started with the kids and registering the next patients.  We were joined for several hours by 4 dentists from the Uganda Dental Association which was really helpful in seeing as many patients as possible since this was also the location that the most people showed up for.  We were told later by the friars that the villagers thanked them profusely and told them that they often feel forgotten and hopeless because it is so far for them to travel for health care and they live in extreme poverty.

Our Team - UNC + Uganda Dental Teams, we cant wait to collaborate more next year!

Katie, Marc, Dr. Wandera (the president of the UDA), Dan and Dr. Farmer - Thanks to Dr. Wandera and all the dentists we worked with and look forward to working with again in the future!

We had to arrange our room a little differently in this village’s school since there was an abundance of bats!  Because of the large crowds and the fact that we wanted to just continue working, we decided not to allow them to prepare lunch for us on this day.  We did get slowed down temporarily by a huge thunderstorm which made us lose all of our light except our head lamps – the bats decided to come out and play during this little period of darkness and one even landed on Marc’s back and hung out for a while before anyone noticed. 

We treated and/or provided medicine, toothbrushes, and oral hygiene instructions to over 150 people in Mitanzi.  We all had our own personal struggles - Katie with a really young sad/uncooperative child, Dan and Marc with a patient who had not spoken in 2 months due to the pain she was feeling in her mouth.  Dr. Farmer was an amazing instructor, was able to work fast, and really helped us keep it together and learn to keep our confidence going.  Overall, we left Mitanzi exhausted but very happy to have at least given everyone we saw a toothbrush and help them learn to make strides to prevent the situations we saw from occurring again. 

Sayng goodbye to Mitanzi with a few favorites  before giving them a ride back the long distance that they walked in the morning to reach the clinic!

Day 2: Batuusa (Tuesday)

We were definitely successful in our goal of tightening the process and getting more patients in.  We all became much faster and more confident in our work.  We treated over 80 patients today and were able to provide almost 30 more with medication/pain medicine.  Of course, everyone also got oral hygiene instructions – which were necessary since we found out that most of the patients we were seeing were previously brushing their teeth with a stick!



Dr. Farmer, Dan, Katie & Marc in our "clinic" for the day.



Dan working with a helping hand from Sandy.



All of our backs may be broken.



Even though we expected a huge turnout and some bad conditions, we were shocked at the amount of people who showed up with severe infections, and in debilitating amounts of pain.  We were moreso shocked at the appreciation of the people for our work – even some of the kids who had a really hard time with some painful extractions would say thank you afterwards.  One woman told us to thank our parents for raising us and getting us to be the kind of people who would use our money to come and help people who were in great need – so shoutout to our parents!!! 

Marc doing some night dentistry.



It was a hard day full of abcesses and tears (mostly from children and not us) but we wanted to make sure that we saw as many patients as possible so we ended up staying until about 730PM.  We had to do dentistry in the dark for our last few patients…which was an interesting twist.  We did get to take a nice lunch break with a local meal cooked by the village for us.  We could not believe that they were using what little food they have available to cook us a huge meal of chicken, matoke, potatoes, g-nut sauce, and rice.  We all tried hard to eat as much as we could, with the looming fear of getting sick from using local water for cooking, and enjoyed what we could.  Robert, one of the friars, made fun of us for our weak appetites and told us if he comes to America he promises to not refuse food – so we agreed we would feed him to the point where he had no choice but to say no.

The lunch prepared for us.

Katie and Marc eating ALL THE FOODS.