Head, shoulder, knees toes

Well... I feel a little bit guilty for being so lazy that I haven't updated for so long, so here comes one epic entry!

On Tuesday I joined Ollie, Jennie and Sophie on a trip to see a HIV clinic in a village 40 minutes outside of Jinja. Ollie had met a woman called Fishy (that's her nickname, we aren't sure what her real name is) on his way back from a rugby match in Kampala and she'd invited him and anyone else who wanted to come to a clinic that she helps out with.

Ollie looking very dangerous

 in our taxi matatu thing 

(he plays rugby)

On the journey there I got to sit next to an open window, which was brilliant fun, because I got to take loads of pictures. Sadly, I found one nice way of taking photo's, and stuck to it. So, I've ended up with hundreds and hundreds of pictures like this.

And this

And this...

After taking the thousands and thousands of massively repetitive photos we stopped at the "Mzungu clinic" as the driver fondly called it. We had to walk about five minutes to get to the actual clinic, and I failed to take any photos, so will have to rely on my fantastic story telling skills.

To be honest, to call it a HIV clinic is a little unfair, its just like a hospital that deals with any problems people have. It does offer lots of support for people with HIV though, including social events for them to talk about how they're coping, medical help and so on. 

First of all we met a lady from Sudan whose husband works at the clinic. Her husband has gone back to Sudan now because they have offered him a free place at university. She told us that in Sudan the tradition for a prospective husband is to break into the village of the wife, with guns, and then steal the woman away. Obviously, if a woman just fell in love with a man normally then it would be slutty! 

After that, we got to look at blood samples under a microscope to look for worms. It all got more exciting later when we could look at what malaria looks like in the blood though!

After the clinic, we got to go back to where we'd been dropped off to a sort of meeting for pregnant women and young children. 

Sophie taking blood pressure

Jennie taking Sophie's blood pressure

I didn't really fancy taking blood pressure, and in the time while Jennie and Soph were taking blood pressure I amassed a huge crowd of children who all loved singing songs and doing silly poses. Lots of pictures ensued