Departing DC tomorrow

Tomorrow is Departure Day. My room looks like a typhoon hit and I need to do laundry and a few other things. Bringing us out to DC for staging was perfect, it has been so hot and humid that we have a real taste of what life will be like in Uganda. Yesterday we went to the sim lab at George Washington University and had an amazing introduction to skills that we will be expected to know and have in our respective hospitals and centers. This might seem like a given for many of us but we have been busy with our own specialties and not delivering babies (ever for me) lately for some. The Simulation lab is just incredible and we all gained so much from this experience. We have been led by an incredibly knowledgeable crew that have tried their best to impart a huge amount of knowledge to us in this short time. We had our closing ceremony today and received our white coats and our pins of Peace Corps and Seed. Very impressive and heart warming. We are ready. Picture from Seed Global FB page

Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

A really big deal: Orientation DC

One week completed. We have had lectures from some of the best in their field and the lectures have ranged from creepy skin disorders to effective teaching methods. Every hour of every day has been scheduled and several days we have had meals at the PC headquarters delivered in while we eat and learn. Nothing has been boring or not important to what we will see in the year to come. The lectures are engaging, interactive, and have included how to learn a language, cultural awareness, and diseases, of course. In all it was a satisfying week. On Tuesday I was wondering how not only I could have lived abroad but how I could have taken my children to the third world but today it is starting to all come together, or maybe it is just Friday afternoon.

Here is a picture that I took from the Seed Global FB page that they posted of some of us.

Peace Corps Headquarters DC, Seed Global Orientation 2015

Plenty of discussions this week on the mosquito.  They were a big deal in all those other countries where I lived but seems to be a much bigger deal in Africa or at least I am finally paying attention. We all did have pretty severe malaria in India once upon a time, it was absolutely awful and terrible to watch my kids suffer from it too. I don't think I was paying enough attention to how dangerous it was as I was caught up in how uncomfortable it was, and I was too sick to care.

1. One advantage I have is that mosquito's have never really "liked me." I hope the ones in Uganda feel the same about me, certain these little buggers will provide me with many opportunities in the year to come though to see the damage that they can do. Hope to have very few encounters but the more I listen the more I learn how we will be front and center. 

We have had the chance to meet with numerous volunteers who are just returning from our three countries of Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda and those who served two years ago. We have had lectures of some of the DC areas finest professionals and have learned about everything from how to avoid malaria to how to teach a good class. The co-ordinators from our respective sites were brought in from Africa to meet with us and to share from their experiences on what we can expect, they headed back today and will be there to meet us when we arrive next week. Bonny the director from Uganda was here and was receptive to hearing about our questions and aspirations.

The Program Managers from Tanzania, Malawi and Bonny from Uganda with Pat Doust who has been an important part of the development of Seed and also in my own journey will be missed as she moves on to a new position.

Returned Physicians and Nurses brought in to share a wealth of information 

Carrie and I representing Uganda!

Carrie is a former PC volunteer who just came back from Lira having just completed a year with GHSP living and teaching in Lira. She was one of my first contacts in Lira after I learned I was going and she was the first person to respond to my email some months back with me saying "tell me everything." We set up a Skype call and with the other nurses and she has continued to provide me information and encouragement. We met up for dinner and Carrie was one of the excellent presenters who shared her story about what it is like to teach in Lira. She has been a fantastic resource and I am grateful to her.

Bonnie gave out the schedules of what our program looks like and ....... it is pretty remarkable. We fly into Uganda and if all goes well we touch down at about 10:45 pm after a very long flight that goes via Amsterdam and one other stop. We meet for breakfast the following morning (Saturday)  at 7 and the day continues on to a get together at 6 that evening. Somewhere in there they even have a language class scheduled, ha ha! I'm sure I will ace that one. The schedule continues into Sunday which is a full day and then into the week. We go for a homestay in our towns on Thursday and I will be with a Ugandan family in Lira and will have a chance to meet my counterparts at the University. Looks to be a very full schedule. The one thing I am confident about is that I am in very good hands. This is Group 3 for this program and they continue to learn from their experiences with the other volunteers. VERY interesting! All of it.  My assumption was that we were arriving on Friday so we could rest up from the trip over and begin fresh on Monday.  No whines, just observations.

They have more confidence in me then I have in myself that I might be up for any language learning the day after that trip but here we go.............anything is possible! I might actually learn something.

Just completed day 2 of this amazing introduction to the PC and GHSP. It is very informative and very interesting but I had this feeling today that if I had ever heard this much prior to fist getting on a plane and flying off to live and work in India, Viet Nam and all those other places I would never have left the US to begin with. The information is important, there are shortages or no supplies or staff, there is a huge gap between how US nurses are trained and those in Africa but ....... surely we will find some common ground. This day was intense, and it isn't over.

Here is the most important thing I took away from it from one of the summaries of a powerpoint.

1. Don't get bit
2. Don't get hit
3. Don't get lit
4. Don't do it
5. Don't eat shit


That sums it up!

The best profession and maybe even the oldest

I know some people might want to debate that point but seriously how could anything come before nursing, healing people, and taking care of others? 

I love the thoughts shared by Kelly a nurse who has been working in Uganda as they so clearly echo my own feelings about being a nurse. I have often worked in places where people are less then enthusiastic about nursing as a career and this sums it all up!  

"Teaching is not what I do, it is who I am."   Dr. Jill Biden

Slight change To "The Plan"

Nice call from Julie at Seed, I do love that girl she is so easy to talk to. I have had some serious doubts since I received word about my posting if the person who was going with me, was going with me. She has wonderful credentials but from the day we heard about our post (months ago) she has been oddly silent, nothing seemed to prompt her to write, call, contact any of the other volunteers, etc. Just silence. I wrote an email about a week ago to Seed asking if they were sure she was coming, then felt guilty about it as she did respond saying she had to rent her house and was busy. Okay, that was ......fine. We will be in DC for training in a week how could things possibly go wrong? The phone call today........she isn't going. I actually feel I could become a psychic at this stage of my life. I knew that she wasn't coming, I KNEW it. So I am fine moving to Lira, Uganda on my own, right? Right!

One week before departure

Fireworks Last Night In Denver! 

Next week this time I will be on the flight to DC for staging prior to my departure for Uganda. Thousands of thoughts in my mind and packing is the foremost. We had a big 4th of July celebration with all the family yesterday. So nice to have the kids and grandkids here, running about, all the BBQing and laughter, these are the things that I will miss. Back to the Apple store for the 2nd time this week to get additional cords and plug in's for the projector which I will need for my classes. I purchased the awesome little pico pro which is about the size of my Samsung phone. Only gitch has been getting anything to work with the Mac, it projects beautifully from the phone, just not the Mac.

Mac Now Supports Windows 

I continue to follow various groups on FB and learn so much for them, one that I enjoy is PC for 50 plus volunteer. Some of the posts really are funny, people actually think that 50 is old! The 50's feel like a distant yet beautiful memory for me at this point in my life. I would like to always live like the best decade of my life is yet to come. Most people imagine the typical Peace Corps volunteer as someone who recently graduated who is in their twenties and of course this is true of most volunteers however the Peace Corps has always been open to people of all ages and Lillian Carter, the mother of President Carter might be one of the most famous PC volunteers and she went to India as a nurse when she was 68. 

Received the schedule from the PC of where we are staying in DC and what our 10 days there will look like. I'm absolutely fine about everything except a little uneasy about having a room mate ..... I shared that concern with a few other volunteers who said that it was a big deal with them to but that it worked out fine. All the things that I could worry about seem to focus on the little things. I am to have a partner living and teaching at the University in Lira with me and although I have had long conversations and communications with the outgoing Seed group who are now back in the US the person that I will be spending the next year with has been very silent. In that she is probably the person I will be sharing a room and a house with for the next year I suppose we have plenty of time in the future to get to know each other.

Good old LEFTY 7  

Sold my car :(  Almost 60,000 miles of coast to coast fun and games!

Anyone can go to youtube and google Packing for the Peace Corps and see that I am not the only one wondering what to take, not to take, and with things scattered about. 35 years of living outside the US has given me a pretty good idea of what I want or need abroad, but in Lira, Uganda who knows. The former nurses who were there said that they did not have any power at all their first three weeks in Lira. No Power At All? That is too big of a problem to even start worrying about as no amount of battery packs would take care of that. 

It feels like I have been waiting for months to write the words, "next week" or "tomorrow" I will be departing...... and here we are. 

See LIRA up there?