Brooke Does Uganda: Move-in to Seguku and a Full Week Two

This past week, I officially moved to my own 2-bedroom house all to myself (connected to 2 other houses) in a neighborhood called Naziba Seguku. It's a few kilometers toward the airport from my work, and I feel very safe here. I can't even believe my place-it's a lot better than I thought it would be. I am grateful and prosperous! My landlord is amazing and greeted me with a newly-purchased flat screen TV for my place, and I have a booming stereo system, hot water, and a fridge. I can't even explain the excitement. About a 20 minute boda ride/14 kilometers from central Kampala. Guest room will be ready shortly and I want to have a lot of guests! I think I am fairly close to some Lake Victoria beaches as well.

Funny work story:
One of my coworkers Bernard, the head pharmacist that I share my office with, said out of the blue, "Can you get your haircut like everyone else here in the salon?" He didn't have much experience with my hair type before. He came to the conclusion that "Life would be boring if we all looked the same. If we were all white or all black. We need to be a mix of people! God had some good ideas." I really loved that.

This past week, I decided on objectives for the next 6 months to review with my amazing supervisor, Sister and Head Nurse Deborah. We agreed that my work plan will generally be the following, but it has some flexibility:

August: Learn about how clinical quality control/improvement works at JCRC with the head quality person. Distribute 150-200 surveys to patients in the clinic to establish wait time in different areas of a visit. Produce a formal report with this information and suggestions on how to improve with a clinical display of patient flow at clinic for better patient understanding of clinic flow. Create and implement TB screening protocol for patients.

September-October: Collect data on ward in support of setting up high dependency/infectious disease unit and create formal report for leadership review in support of more staffing and need for units.

November-January: Help to actually create units. Create general work day outline for high dependency unit. Focus on more collaboration with Hospital Uganda to provide comfort care for very ill patients. Infectious disease investigation/implementation of quality control measures in ward and then how to improve it.

And then 6 months will already be gone. It's already going entirely too quickly.

I really like how much flexibility I get thus far and I am really looking forward to making a measurable impact at JCRC. Right now, I am working on a client waiting time survey to see how long different patients are waiting in certain areas and how much time they are spending with providers. One of the largest complaints is long wait time, so I am getting baseline data in order to make good suggestions on how to make the clinic flow better.

Quick weekend recap:

Friday night, I headed to Kampala to check out the GHC house where GHC fellows can stay in Kampala. Spent the evening at Casablanca with primarily Devin and Danielle. Attempted to find out friends to no avail, but enjoyed some quality time together. Amazing.

Saturday, we went out to Casablanca and the Bahai temple and then a bar called Iguana at night to dance.

Sunday, we got a slower start and I ended up at home around 5 with a ton of fruits and vegetables! It was so amazing to hang out with the group I did this weekend. Everyone is so intelligent, hard-working, and of high moral character. To Heather, Danielle, Graham, Devin, Sharon, and Bryan-thank you so much!

Next weekend: Housewarming party and beach time.

In the works: A trip in September to Malawi to attend the infamous Lake of Stars Music Festival. http://lakeofstars.org/index.php/festival/

Stay tuned for more!

Full length mirror!

Master bedroom with my bed and mosquito net

Guest room (not decked out yet!)

Bathroom with "shower" (but hey-it has consistent hot water).

Living room with couches, TV, and stereo system

Front door and table in my living room

Kitchen with FRIDGE and micro?

My sweet ceiling light

View from kitchen looking out of the front door

Emergency rolex

My flatscreen TV and stereo system?

JCRC Campus

Data and training block

Canteen where I have lunch and get morning tea/chapati

16-bed ward where I will be working in the upcoming months

Library

Co-fellow!

Termite hill

View out from JCRC toward Kampala

Laboratory

A group at the Bahai temple. The boda ride up there was crazy. I have a ton of fruit in my mouth-one I have never tried before. It tasted like to many things that we just called it "omnifruit".