Amy.Gress

Class 7 students join us in the warm breeze as we garden. We dig holes, throw in manure/compost, and plant tomatoes, peppers, carrots, kale, and spinach. They are amazed by my insistence of adding mulch and more mulch to protect the roots from the sun and to keep the moisture in the earth. 10 centimeters of mulch? Yep, that would be about right, I say. We work together and all our hands are muddy, but I see that we are all smiling and having a good time, knowing that good food will come out of our labors. I pray that this will be a successful garden, as it hasn’t rained as [...]

The sky is orange and purple at 6:05am in this part of Kenya and the birds start their frantic cries, as though looking for a lost one. They bring in the day with a racket and I realize how little I know about birds. I don’t recognize a specific type of cry they make, which leaves me with a bit of a sad feeling. It is almost as though I can’t greet them properly if I don’t know who they are. Two kids are sick in the small hospital, seemingly with malaria, but no one is sure. The nurse is in a training in Nairobi, leaving the hospital in the [...]

I hear what sounds like thousands of birds tweeting and I find myself drawn to them. I walk towards the sound and can’t believe the cacophony! I ask the hospital administrator if these are birds and he says, “yes, they are bahds”, in his beautiful Ugandan accent.  I ask him what sort of birds they are and he says he doesn’t really know their name, but that these birds are thought to sometimes pass on ebola or rabies to people.   Completely confused, I ask if birds can actually share rabies and ebola and he says, “of course, as they are mammals”.  Now, I find myself thinking – “a mammal [...]

She walks alone for a long time, for a very long time.  Finally, she arrives, exhausted, at the clinic, where her real work begins. Hours later, the babe arrives. Twin screams are heard – one leaving this world and one entering it. No father is known and no one visits the clinic, asking for his wife or baby. Staff are left with this little one and they agree to raise her as their own, to love her, to care for her, and to give her a home. Someone must have been humming a tune that day because the baby is named Grace. Seven months pass and I meet Grace, with [...]

I have been given a new name. We start the day early, heading out of Kampala towards the east of the country.  We pass by the town of Jinja, where the Nile starts. We drive through gorgeous views, boasting 100 colors of green.  Plantain trees, tea farms, corn fields, newly planted potato plants, cassava, rice paddies, and all sorts of vegetation fly by as we make good time towards a hospital called Holy Innocents.  When we think we are close, we find out we are not.  We turn off the main road onto a road made of red. Red dirt is everywhere, breaking up the green and I enter into [...]

It’s hard to believe that the Centers for Disease Control doesn’t pay for third line anti-retroviral medicine here in Uganda.  They are the CDC, for crying out loud!  They have quite a bit of money at their disposal and while I understand that third line is super expensive, THEY ARE THE CDC! Well, five kiddos cared for by our partner, Baylor-Uganda, need third line medicine in order to live.  As in, if they don’t take it, they will die.  No questions asked.  There is nothing else they can take.  So, when Baylor asked us if we’d provide the kids with the medicine, we said yes.  For two years now, we’ve [...]

Kibito Hospital is the exact opposite of when I saw it last. Betsy, Fred, Karina, and I visited the hospital two years ago and it was a thing of beauty.  Brand new construction, gorgeous floors, nice sized hallways, a large surgery room, etc.  Problem?  It was empty.  All this room and all these dreams stood empty. Next door, what remained of a small clinic was still functioning in an old building which had survived a flood.  Today, that building is still used and it looks as old as ever, but it is packed and well used.  The new construction – let me say…it is what hope looks like.  The maternity [...]

“Ma’am, I must tell you that you missed your connecting flight to Entebbe, so make sure you make arrangements to spend the night in Addis Ababa when you arrive, ok? Don’t worry, your bag will go straight to Entebbe.”, says the beautiful stewardess when asked if she thought my bag would make it all the way to Entebbe, even though I have a short connection time. Ugh. I must arrive in Uganda tonight because I have a 5-hour drive tomorrow to a city called Fortportal, from where we’ll visit a couple hospitals AFCA supports. My prayer is now that not only will my bag make it, but that I will [...]

She pushes up the sleeve of her shirt and I take in a deep, but silent sharp breath. She shows us what looks to be a specialized cancer that HIV+ people sometimes get and my heart breaks. Her baby needs to nurse, so she rolls her sleeve down and puts the baby to her breast, where the little one feeds hungrily.  My head can’t stop the thoughts – is the baby ok?  Is mom taking her medicine to keep her viral load low, hopefully suppressing the passage of the virus to her baby?  As I try to think as positively as I can, I know I am fooling myself and [...]

Mombasa. Just the word brings such memories to mind, as I’ve been coming to this city for 11 years now. Mombasa, Kenya – a city of contrasts: dust, dirt, poverty, wealth, loud music, the historic old town, horrible and smelly slums, malls, and humidity. Mombasa, I am sure, has great hotels, but right now, I am in one of the not-so-great ones. It is safe and clean, so I am not complaining. I am merely explaining the situation here: loud music fills my ears as well as the call to prayer from some nearby mosque. The fan above my head moves slowly, unable to penetrate the mosquito net above my [...]