Stormy start...

Having had a very good time helping at the Developing Health course in north London for almost a fortnight, we traveled up to Derbyshire for the start of our church weekend and enjoyed the sessions that evening and the next morning on the topic "facing our giants".

Wedding of the year:
  Then on the Sunday down to the south coast ready for Ian's mother's wedding to Peter the following day.  Quite an occasion with a gathering of the clans including Ian's brother and family from France and his youngest sister who had flown across from Australia.  Ruth joined us to travel down from Macclesfield and Mark managed to get to the wedding so it was lovely to all be together again.  Ian had the unusual task of giving away his mum and then speaking in the service as well as doing a modified "father of the bride" speech at the reception.

The expedition begins:
We then traveled back late and due to the joys of the M6 were not back until 4am on the Tuesday morning.
Managed to get all the packing done, Hanna having a huge amount of last minute liaison regarding equipment for the hospital, and finally off to Manchester airport with Ruth and her friend Beth plus a huge amount of luggage.... Manchester airport was in beautiful sunshine, said goodbye and thanks to the lady who had kindly given us a lift in her large people carrier only to discover the flight to Amsterdam had been cancelled due to terrible thunderstorms in Holland!
So then had to organise trips to go home again, then up at 2.30am to do two trips back to the airport to catch the first flight out to Amsterdam.  We successfully boarded our main flight to Entebbe via Kigali.  Arrived safely but slightly late to find our lift had not materialised so had to get a local taxi to the guest house we had booked.
Up early the next day [Saturday] to set off on the 7 hour journey to Kisiizi.  Main road now has some quite good stretches which is good and work going on in other sections.
Past the equator into the southern hemisphere, down to Masaka, on to Mbarara and then onward on the road towards Kabale, turning off at Rubaale onto the rough "murram" dirt road to Kisiizi for the final 18 miles.

Arrived in daylight and started unloading our things.  Staying in a lovely little house set up by George and Doreen Wadsworth in a peaceful far corner of the hospital land.


Not long after we arrived Ian was asked to see a little 4 year old boy of a visiting family from UK who were helping raise support for the Kisiizi mental health programme.  Sadly he had been unwell since arriving in K a couple of days earlier and had a very serious infection.  In spite of intra-venous fluids and antibiotics he was deteriorating the following day and we had to give him a blood transfusion and then transported him all the way up to a Kampala hospital on the Sunday night, a 7-8 hour journey. Thankfully he tolerated the journey surprisingly well.  The team there ran further tests and he was then airlifted to Nairobi the same morning and treated in intensive care but tragically a week or so later died.  All the team here had been brilliant in the support and care given and it highlighted to us the difference in available resources for treating such a condition here compared to UK.

More storms:
The following week included other challenges including power cuts and then a very unusual severe thunderstorm which led to one person being killed by lightning on the hills in the area and others injured and some cattle dying.  The main new hydro-electric generator here was damaged by lightning which burnt out a circuit board and a transformer was also affected.  Thankfully with help from Charles Swainson who was in Uganda on a break from his current project in Rwanda, the power is now fully operational again.  Whilst it was off the hospital itself continued with the old hydro-electric generator but the residences and the community power was lost.

Internet has also been erratic, hence the delay in being able to put together this blog, but there is hope some changes in the next week will help improve its reliability.

We are so grateful for all the prayers and support we have received

Ian and Hanna