Pictures

Hershel taking a jugular blood sample for Brucellosis testing in goats before they are bought. Brucellosis is an important reproductive disease of goats and can be spread to humans.

Hershel kidding around...

Dr. William from the District Veterinary Office with a herd at the Goat Breeding Workshop for local farmers. This Workshop focussed on a breeding nucleus where bucks would be sent to be exchanged between regions in order to maintain genetic diversity (prevent inbreeding).

Some of our beneficiaries in their land on a hot, lovely afternoon. Amazing how quickly they can get around barefoot on the rocky slopes.

Pam working with FAOC and paravet to vaccinate a goat against Clostridial disease.

Rocky, a quick draw...

Hershel and Janet, one of our excellent paravets on the way between farms, with cold vaccine in hand.

Ugandan people

It has now been 3.5 weeks since I arrived in Kampala. And we have been working for 3 weeks. The time has gone by incredibly fast, probably because I am enjoying myself so much. This week was very exciting, on Tuesday I was up and in town by 8am ready to pick up the vaccine. I was elated that it had finally arrived and that we were finally going to be able to vaccinate. The vaccinating days were so fun, the paravets being very helpful and doing a great job. They all have proved that they listened at the training session.
The aspect of our life here that I enjoy the most is the people whom we have met. Hilda, the program officer, is an amazing woman. She is truly an African woman, working so hard every day. The women here work extremely hard, when I go for runs in the early morning I find them all working in the field while the men go into town to work (or do whatever else to keep busy). And here, they do not have the luxuries that we have when cleaning, cooking and farming. Each time we make a meal we have to start the charcoal stove, which takes at least 15-20 mins (not like turning on a stove burner), then you have only one little stove (about the size of a stove burner) to cook on, so usually we make katoga, which means everything together in one pot. The other day I also washed our car with Milton, a friend of ours. He was insistant upon helping me, and so we drove down to the lake and hand washed the car, with a cloth and bucket and hand soap: no fancy pressure washer. It took some time to make it look nice, especially to wash off the stubborn red dirt that we accumulate during our field work.
Doing laundry is also a workout: no washing machines my friend.
Although everything is a lot of work, it makes you appreciate what we have and realize that we don't need a lot of the tools that we use. As long as you have a lot of time and a bit of patience.
Some mornings I get up, help Hilda sweep, do my laundry then start the charcoal stove and boil some milk from the milk man for African tea. I like being an African woman, and hope that when I return home I will appreciate the luxuries we are blessed with and remember how strong my African counterparts are.

super-white-stars

After our first real big day in the field we are all tired, dirty and smelling of goat, but satisfied from a great day of hands-on good-feeling work. We set out in the morning in a convoy of two vehicles along with the Global Vets crew who will be joining and assisting with our efforts over the next three weeks. Their help was much appreciated as we realized today how big of a mission will be to vaccinate (twice 3-4 wks apart) and tag all of our 1600 goats. If this many goats were all on one farm as is often the case with livestock in Canada, this could easily be done in a day. However, there are only a few goats owned by each beneficiary and each family seems to live down a distant, barely passable red dirt path. Then, when we arrive at where the goats ought to be penned we learn that we are to wait while the goats are gathered up from surrounding pastures. So, although we accomplished much of what we hoped to, even with the extra crew, we still fell short of our goal and realized that vaccination will take an extra few days longer than planned.
During our rounds throughout the parishes we’ve been greeted with openness and generosity by the locals. Often, the amount of attention that we get here in Uganda, especially in rural areas, just because we are white is not only a little overwhelming, but also mystifying. The children especially go wild every time we ‘Muzungu’ drive by. It often feels as if we are Hollywood stars driving past a crowd of screaming fans. Except we have not acted in any movies or had any records go platinum. We just happened to be born with lighter skin pigment and are fortunate enough to be born into a stable, wealthy nation. If a real, famous and black celebrity like Micheal Jordan or Morgan Freeman were to drive by these same children, there would be no response from the kids at all as they would probably just assume them to be fellow Ugandans, instead of the white-skinned average westerners that they get all riled up for. Francis, our local interpreter and FAOC accountant, put it well today by jokingly asking whether he would receive the same response from children were he to visit Canada. More likely to a Canadian child he would just represent another adult that all their parents have warned their kids not to talk to, not because he is black, but because he is a ‘stranger’.

Visits to Millenium Village and Godwins Junior Christian School

Thursday May 28

After meeting with Dr. Louis Aziku, the veterinarian in charge of livestock in the local United Nations Development Programme Millenium Village we went there together. The Millenium Village seeks to improve many aspects of society in areas identified to have the greatest need. In Ruhira, the UNDP's involvement supported schools, health centres, road infrastructure, water catching, and building infrastructure for animal management.

Although I'm sure the people in this area's situation has improved substantially, I question how sustainable such high inputs by the UNDP are? Dr. Aziku mentioned that family planning is an important part of health centres. However, with already dense subsistence farms blanketing the landscape and disproportionately large numbers of children, overpopulation strikes me as a concern.

With Dr. Aziku, we visited a few well built goat demonstration pens, built by UNDP and owned by local farmers. Dr. Aziku filled us in on how the farmers work their farms and the different forages fed to goats. We interviewed some farmers to get an idea of how much labour and time is required to feed his goats. One farmer reported that he spends 1.5 hours per day feeding his goats. (By bringing feed to goats in the pens, there are exposed to fewer worm eggs and other diseases)

Friday May 29

A week before, we were eating lunch in town and met Godwin, a principal of a school who invited us to visit his school. As we chatted with him we discovered that he has his own orphan children, in addition to the hundreds he supports with his work.

On May 29 am we went for the Friday assembly which involved outdoor prayer songs via microphone, synthesizer and musically talented teachers. After some time of song and prayer, Godwin introduced us and we described how we are Canadian Vet Doctors and visiting Uganda to help orphan children by helping goats in the hands of those who care for orphans. Godwin asked who of the children is an orphan and a dozen or so hands went up. Pam and Rocky mentioned that I play guitar, and they suggested I play a song... so I played the Hornby Song after describing where Hornby Island is. The children and teachers sang along (unlike North Americans tendencies) and seemed to enjoy it. Towards the end, Godwin mentioned that goat's milk is very healthy and invited us back to teach some nutriation and other subjects.

In Uganda, goat's milk is not very common and somewhat taboo to drink. There is some work to be done in order to create demand for goat's milk among the local people and in the cities. Such education is one of our next challenges. Today (Sat.) we found out that the delivery of our vaccine is slightly delayed...

Training Day Pictures

Due to spotty internet access we've had some trouble uploading pictures.... Let's see how many we can get going now. This first picture is of us with FAOC staff and our paravets shortly after doing our training session on vaccination. The day was a great success as Pam described...

The Big Training Day

Yesterday we headed out of Mbarara to the village of Kiberebere to meet with the paravets from all of the parishes and do a one day training session on vaccinating. We are planning to vaccinate around 1600 goats in the next week upon the arrival of our vaccine in Mbarara.
Immediately when we arrived at around 10am there were a bunch of people gathered outside the hall. My stomach was churning with butterflies as I wasn’t sure how they would receive our presentation. They were very happy to see us, and extended a very warm welcome to us when we arrived. A few spoke English, most spoke only a little but their smiles and gestures said it all. We started out chatting, then we sang a song for them that we had made up about Kaberebere, which means ‘let them come and see for themselves’. It is a really cool name. They sang along with us, and then once everyone arrived we moved into the hall to start the training (the people from far away took longer, and we are on African time so nothing starts at the time you set).
With the help of Hilda, Francis, and our friend Sajja who acted as our translator, we had a good discussion about sudden death in goats. We explained to them in a simple manner what we are going to vaccinate against, and how. It is difficult to explain such a topic as clostridial disease to someone who does not speak English, and who has not learned in depth about the immune system. They were very good though and when we asked them questions after each concept, they all responded with correct answers. And they asked us some very good questions, which means they were absorbing the information as well as understanding and attempting to figure out the process themselves.
We had a wonderful lunch made by a local woman named Margaret, who made matoke, sweet potatoes, cassava, g-nut sauce, dodo, bean sauce and many other local dishes. The paravets all ate with their hands, but we wimped out and used forks. There were some real characters in the group. All of them were very sharp, but a few of them were really keen. Innocent, a paravet from Nyamuyanja parish asked a ton of questions. And Ibriham is another very swift learner. We gave them some dewormer, and every time they were grateful to us they would clap 6 times, put their hands together and motion towards us, sending us their thanks. We would then respond by opening our arms then drawing them in, as if we were hugging ourselves, to accept their appreciation.
About the end of the day there was a paravet named Nakate who made up a song about us, in which she thanked all the Canadian vets for training the paravets. It was a beautiful song in Runyankore, the local language. We talked a bit more with them about some of the issues they are facing, and what further training they would like, which we said we would be happy to work on.
The best part of the day for me was when we asked the paravets if we could have a hug before they left, and they all laughed and came up to us for a farewell hug.
At the end of the day when Hersh, Rocky and I were reflecting on the training session, we all agreed that we were so impressed with the enthusiasm and learning capabilities of the paravets. It is exciting that we will be working closely with them in the next 2 months.

Simon Says

At the end of our first week on the project we were given a reminder by a well spoken local Ugandan named Simon that we met at a tea house than we ought to see his country from beyond the confines of our project. I had mentioned that essentially we arrived into Uganda and hit the ground running in terms of getting right down to work on our project. In a way I was proud to be able to say that I was not simply a tourist and was here to contribute and do ‘important’ work. Yet Simon had a different perspective. He was concerned that too many ‘Muzungos’ (foreigners) come to his country with similar, altruistic objectives and so are often exposed only to what he deems as the uglier side of Uganda – poverty, HIV/AIDS, ect… . When these expatriates go back home they report of their experiences, and as a result, Simon explains that Uganda is too often portrayed to the rest of this world only in this negative image. Simon encouraged us to remove our heads from the dirt and go explore the beautiful parts of Uganda that he and his countrymen are so obviously proud of. Not that we were going to forever ignore the fact that there are Parks teaming with African flora and fauna within a short drive of our base here in Mbarara, but there is nothing like a little local encouragement to help us appreciate Uganda for all that it has to offer.
So, this weekend we visited Lake Mburo National Park to get our first exposure to the wilds of Africa. You know you are in Africa when zebra and impala are darting across the red earth road on which you drive! In the park we met up with Dr. Siefert (wildlife vet) and the Global Vets crew who were working on projects such as tracking down and trapping an injured Leopard. We spent the night tenting in the park, but unlike Hershel and Pam, I came unprepared with only a flimsy blanket (courtesy of Air Canada) - I was to learn the hard way that African nights are starkly chilly compared to the day. Aside from trying to make my miniature blanket stretch across my shivering body, I spent much of the rest of the night listening to warthogs snorting outside the tent and to branches snapping and rustling, wondering whether each rustling bush might shortly turn into a lion visiting my tent. But surprise, I made it through the night with no lion induced injuries. We had a blast in the park and are now ready to get back to work here in Mbarara.