Omwana Asula Wa?

I wake up and go into the living room. It has two upholstered chairs, a small coffee table and a bench. Rebecca is there. She has brought eggs and Gapati for breakfast with fresh milk from a cow. It has been boiled and is hot in the thermos. I add it to my Soya and it is wonderful. (except for some floatees.. like the skin of cooled soup.)

Have I described hanging mosquito nets? Jeff goes with Rebecca. Kelly and I go with an L.C., Godfrey. L.C. stands for “Local Council,” elected officials that act as sort of mayors of the villages. We split up to cover more ground so we can meet our goal of 100 nets in two days.

Godfrey takes us around to different houses with pregnant woman and families with young children, and some suffering from HIV - the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of Malaria. We first want pregnant women, because Malaria in pregnant mothers can cause birth defects in the baby.

Godfrey doesn’t understand much English. He takes us to an old woman who must be nearly 100 years old. As we follow this woman to her house Kelley asks, “Godfrey, does she have HIV?” He says no.

“Is she pregnant?” I ask, although it’s a ridiculous question. We explain to him again that we first want to provide all the pregnant woman in the village with nets and then after them we can give to the others in need. It is sad that we have to look at it this way, but we don’t have enough nets to give to everyone and we want to help those most at risk.

We are happy to give this woman a net though, because after seeing her home we realize that is she got Malaria, she probably couldn’t afford the medication to treat it.

One house we went to already had nests. We are confused why the think they need another one. Another house has a net, but it is filthy and has holes in it that they’ve tried to patch. We are glad to give them a net because we know that they will actually use it.

Some houses are mud and sticks, some are concrete. Sometimes we have to nail into the walls. Usually the concrete is soft and is easy, today it seems to be difficult. We use a “jinja” (rock) to hammer them in.

Godfrey is understanding now and taking us to the right houses. He teaches us to say, “Omwana asula wa?” (the baby sleeps where?) We always make sure we’re putting the nets over beds the babies sleep in. Now we hang nets over the parents’ bed as well as the kids’ because we don’t know if when we leave the parents move the net over to their own beds.. who knows.

At one house we go to, or sort of block of houses, we put up a net over the bed of a woman with HIV and a pregnant woman who is “deaf and dumb” – as they say in Uganda. Though this woman was not dumb. She had her own sign language and the L.C. seemed to know some of it. I used some basic universal signs from ASL – like tracing the outline of a house with your hands. She kneels on the ground and takes our hands laughing and thanking us. She is a very happy woman.

We meet back up for lunch and stick together to hand out the remaining nets. Geoffrey comes with us. He helped with construction of the school when the Irish were here. We give him a net as well because his wife is pregnant. (we were half way through putting it up when he let us know this woman was his wife. We thought it was another villager he took us to.)

We finally finish around 5 o’ clock. We’re exhausted. We get so much sleep and work a few hours and get so tired. I don’t know if it’s the sun and our position, so close to the equator or if it’s the doxycycline I take for Malaria prevention. My Florida pride says it isn’t the sun.. but maybe I’m wrong.

We go to the trading center and walk around. There is a three-story building that is deserted. The entire wall on the backside has fallen and the insides are exposed. There is a painting on the wall of the first floor. A mural of some California town. Palm tress and water. A big diner on top of a hill. The wall is dirty and paint slightly faded.

It looks like those building you see in WWII photos of cities where there was fighting or bombs. Jeff and I climb the concrete steps, which slope towards the opening. We explore the second story, going into rooms and carefully walking towards the edge. Birds are the only tenants here and swoop in and out of the room into nets they've built in the corners and doorways. One grazes Jeff's arm as it swoops into the room we just left.

It is eerie and shortly we decide to leave, feeling like we’re going to somehow fall or get sucked out of the opening.

We later learn that the construction workers were supposed to put concrete columns on all sides of the building but put in fake ones on the back. When the building was falling the owner’s wife was running back and forth rescuing children and the building crushed her to death.