Project Update:

On Friday, Alex and I volunteered with Grace at the Physical Therapy unit again. She let us do some hands on things with her patients and it was really fun. I felt like I was actually learning something and accomplishing something. I wish I had worked as a PT Tech before coming to Africa so I'd have more skills to contribute, but surprisingly, a lot of what I learned over the years in dance is helping a lot, and what I learned in Anatomy of course, and the things that I don't know I'm picking up from Grace and Alex.

Yesterday was probably my favorite project day so far. Alex and I went out to a village called Kiyunga with our clinical medicine doctor friend Immanuel. He and his brothers own a health clinic out there and invited us to go do physical therapy there. We saw 12 women and 1 man, mostly elderly people with back pain. We had to kind of improvise as we went, but we'd prepared some general exercises before hand and did basic massages and exercises with all of them. The only set back was that none of them spoke English, but Immanuel and his brother Kyobe translated for us and we became experts at using sign language. When we tried to assess the patients' pain scale, the doctors told us that they all came in with severe pain and felt significant relief after treatment. I don't know if that was all true, but they seemed much happier when they left. I hope we helped! Hopefully they will continue doing the exercises that we taught them and maybe we will see some improvement in their conditions when we return next week.

The village of Kiyunga where the health clinic is isn't too far away, but because public transportation is so slow it took us nearly three hours to get home. We definitely missed our seven o'clock curfew... opps! I felt terrible. We told Immanuel we needed to be back by then, but Africans just don't understand the concept of being on time. We made it back safe and sound though and we learned our lesson. Won't happen again.

This afternoon we're going to go help with HIV/AIDs testing again and tomorrow we're doing an outreach with the Chairman to neighboring villages. I'll write more about the details after I see how it goes! Everyday just keeps getting better!