Scholars, Traffic and Baboons, Oh My!!

Well, we are back in Kampala after a very stimulating trip out to remote Kisora. This is the hilly forested area where tourists come to see the gorillas. That would be fun but we are here only to work so no gorillas for us! We did see baboons along the roadside and that was fun. We traveled with Sr. Cathy from the Catholic Bureau out to Mutolore to see our scholars Immaculate and John .

We left for this 39 hour trip at 6:00 am and reached Kisoro at 5:00 pm. We were met by the head of the Nursing School Marcella and proceeded straight into meetings. After this we met our scholars who proudly shared their report cards with us. They then led us all on a tour of the nursing school and hospital. We were impressed with everything we saw and we are very happy our students are studying here. We finished the evening with a welcome dinner of African food prepared very lovingly for us.  We had no problem sleeping that night!

 We had breakfast and said our goodbyes by 7:00 am the next morning. We were sad to leave our scholars after such a short visit and they were very sweet and asked us to return soon. Before leaving, they had presented us with posters that they drew for us along with presents from local basket weavers.  We were so very moved by their gratitude and thoughtfulness.

We then took a deep breath and our driver started us back on the very very bad road! It's hard to describe to you just how bad the road out there is. Half of it is under construction and there were long waits and incredibly teeth rattling bumps and potholes of unbelievable size. We were very relieved that we had hired such a skilled driver and he really earned his wages in these two long days.

About midday, we arrived at the University of Mbarara's School of Nursing.  This visit was a follow-up from one we made in 2010. We are extremely pleased to see the improvements the government has made by adding on a modern hospital wing and we hope to send some of our future scholars here as funds permit. After meetings followed by a tour of the school and hospital, we returned to Kampala and arrived at 9:00 pm. We hit our beds exhausted but extremely pleased with the success of our journey and its findings. (JP)