Uganda, Day One, 8/11/07

We have finally made it to the hospital we have heard so much about over the last year. This is our first view of anything in daylight: the city, the facilities at the hospital, the people. Wow, the people...they are beautiful, but their faces are hardened by their world. Their stares are stern and blank, but reverent. However, many of them break into grins when you smile at them.

We are given a tour of the 1500-bed hospital and all the wards. I am startled at the condition of some of the patients. We made a brief stop in the pediatric ward where many children need shunts (small pumps designed to drain fluid away from the brain) to alleviate the pressure in their heads created by hydrocephalus, an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid under the dura-mater--the brain's outer-most membrane. The skull continues to grow to accomodate the fluid, and some of these kids--mostly around 6 months to 2 years of age--have 50-60 cm crania. Some cases are so bad that the children have massive pressure sores on the back of their heads because of their inability to move them. Others cannot close their eyes because the skin is stretched so tightly. Many of these patients and their families have trekked across the entire country because they had heard we were coming to Mulago. Some had employed--with little to no success--the services of witch doctors before coming here as a last resort.

As we "pressed the flesh" with all the local dignitaries--cameras rolling, reporters prodding, nurses cheering--I can't help noticing a young mother covering up her child in the back corner of the ward. This is not a cheerful day for her.

There is also a banquet held in our honor, hosted by Dr. Mallinga, several doctors from the hospital, and a representative of President H.E. ("His Excellency") General Yoweri Museveni. Dr. Mallinga likens our arrival to that of the Yanks landing at Normandy. "The Americans have landed, and things will not be the same," he states. Our reception at Mulago has been extremely warm and gracious.

We spend the rest of the day trying to find our equipment that had been delivered in crates. To our amazement, not one crate was lost in transit. I don't think you can fly from Raleigh to Atlanta without losing something! We had no tools to de-crate the big stuff, so Robbie Diggs (our hero of an engineer), myself, and a team of men we assumed were hospital employees used a flat-head screwdriver and a random 2-foot rod we found on the floor of the warehouse to pry everything open. We all spent the balance of the day setting up the OR's, or "theatres" as they are called here.