Our Walk to Work

Kisoro District Hospital is just around the corner from our house. It's a very easy walk and one that we've done almost everyday since arriving. Here is a glimpse of that journey:

The view from our little porch

down the driveway...

past the bean-patch (which was just sprouting when we arrived)

take this little dirt road...

...to the main road in town

past a pretty typical Kisoro scene (sugar cane by bike, boda drivers {motorcycles} waiting for customers)

and through the hospital's front gate

our little office on a neater day

The hospital itself is spread among many one-story buildings on a fenced in campus. Pediatrics has its own building as does surgery, the outpatient department, and the male and female inpatient wards. I'm often working in our little DGH office in the pediatrics building and Katrina has gotten pretty familiar with the inpatient wards through the different clinics she has helped run.

Open-air paths (mostly covered because of the frequent rain!) connect all of the buildings. Alongside the paths and spread out on the grass are the families who have brought their sick loved-ones here. The nursing staff at KDH is notoriously overworked and underpaid (if they're paid at all!) and so much of the patient's care is left to the family. While medicines are nominally free (though frequently in short supply), families are responsible for bringing the patient's food, bedding, and sometimes even the mattress they'll sleep on.

Outside, women wash clothes and spread them in the sun to dry. Babies are rocked to sleep. Young girls make trips to the standing faucet to fill up big yellow plastic cans. Somehow, steaming pots of potatoes and beans get cooked and shared among groups seated in the grass or up against a building. Life outside the hospital buildings is a stark contrast to the dark, fetid hallways of the interior and the crowds of pensive, waiting people.