trying to persevere

June 9, 2009

Because I never know when I will have access to internet, as there is only one device that can plug into one computer at a time and there are a lot of people staying at the UVP office who need to use it, I am going to type my blog entries in notepad and then post them when I get a chance. This means three things: (1.) hopefully this means I will be able to write more about my experiences here, (2.) Notepad doesn't have spellcheck and I'm a terrible speller so these posts have the potential to be riddled with spelling errors and (3.) the date I post the entries will most likely not be the date that I write them.

This morning I woke up around 5:30am with my mind full of different stresses and couldn't fall back asleep so I decided to start writing. Maybe it will help me figure out why. I actually tossed and turned all night so I'm pretty much exhausted. For many reasons, this developing country experience has been drastically different from any other that I've had. Usually, because of the lack of technology and slower pace of life, I'm typically much more relaxed in this type of setting. For a plethora of reasons I'm sure, I have been really stressed out since I arrived in Uganda. I really appreciate all of the encouraging e-mails and prayers and scripture that people have sent. I hope this gets better soon, or it will be a very long two months.

Yesterday we had a meeting with Dr. Waiswa, a professor at Makerere University, who is doing a project with Save the Children, Saving Newborn Lives, in the Iganga/Mayuge demographic surveillance site, which includes the district we're working in. This meeting was essential as it turns out the capacity and knowledge assessments that we were planning to do at the Iganga district hospital and outlying health centers have essentially already been completed by those performing this study, something that we had suspected.

The study period for Dr. Waiswa's project is 2007-2010 and the overall objective is to improve "newborn health and survival in Uganda through community based intervention linked to health facilities." Utilizing community health workers, they're in the process of creating trainings within the villages to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality. He gave us information regarding the SNL project including the key findings from the formative research in areas such as antenatal care, maternal and newborn danger signs and complications, birth preparedness, skilled attendance at delivery and postnatal care. The fact that we have this information already, interventions are already being implemented and another project with similar objectives to ours called Safe Mothers, Safe Babies will commence in July, we must decide where to go from here. Fortunately, Dr. Waiswa is more than happy to share information regarding the findings of his formative research and able to identify gaps and potential intervention areas to target. Hopefully I will continue to be able to work with him and learn from the SNL program. Together, we're trying to identify other projects that have collected similar, useful data and determine if we can get that information from the organizations involved.

I have to head to Kampala to pick up two more members of my team so I will write more in a few days.