Tales from a Wild Vet

by Jo Hardy

  It was Tuesday morning and I had arrived in Uganda the previous evening. My flights, from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg and then on to Kampala, had been nice and smooth, and as we flew over the vast stretch of blue that is Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, I could see fishermen out in their boats.

  In Entebbe Airport I was hit by a wave of heat that shocked me. I had thought South Africa hot, but this was far hotter and more humid and I felt instantly sticky. I was due to be met by Reverend George, who would be my host, but before I could get through to arrivals I had to go with my fellow passengers through the Ebola checkpoint.

  Ebola was the virus that was spreading like wildfire around several countries in West Africa. It had already killed many thousands of people and the authorities were desperately trying to contain it. No country wanted to allow someone in who might be carrying the virus, so those who had it were immediately isolated until they either recovered – which was unlikely – or died.

  One of the signs of the disease was a raised temperature, and as I had a nasty stomach bug that had started on my last day in South Africa after I cooked us a rather elderly chicken for dinner, I was pretty sure mine was raised and was terrified that I’d be picked out and put into an isolation unit. I was hot and nauseous and I looked ill but, amazingly, after having my temperature taken and being asked a list of questions, I was told I was free to go.

  I emerged into the arrivals hall wondering if I would be able to spot George. I needn’t have worried; he bounced up to me, dressed in his black suit and dog-collar, with a big grin on his face and said, ‘Jo Hardy? Very pleased to meet you.’

  After pumping my hand for several seconds he led me out of the terminal towards the car park. As we walked a sheet of insects that looked like mosquitoes flew over us – I’d never seen so many. Despite the heat, I put on my jumper to avoid being bitten, conscious that malaria was extremely prevalent in Uganda.

  Vincent was waiting for us with the car and, after the introductions, George insisted we pray for the success of our journey before they drove me to my hotel and dropped me off for the night, promising to be back early the next morning.

  It was a relief to have a good shower – my last for a month – and to sit on my bed, bug-free under the mosquito net. I couldn’t make any calls until I bought a local SIM card, so I settled down to watch Friends on my tablet, but I felt too nauseous to pay much attention. The stomach bug was making me feel awful. On top of which I was in a strange land, about to set out on an adventure I knew so little about and I was missing Jacques so much that it hurt.

  I had wanted to come to Uganda to help and to be useful, and I tried to remember that and to feel cheerful and confident about the coming month, but at that moment what I actually felt was ill and tired, a bit scared and also homesick, but I wasn’t sure if I was homesick for England or for Jacques.

  The next morning I managed to eat a couple of slices of bread and jam at breakfast but my stomach still felt decidedly dodgy. Half an hour later George and Vincent picked me up with the car now filled to the brim with luggage and shopping and George’s sister, Joyce, and her baby girl Tulita, who got into the back beside me. A few minutes later we stopped for Liz, who smiled hello and clambered in beside us.

  We were on our way from Kampala, which is towards the south of the country on the shores of Lake Victoria, to Owiti, a rural community close to the city of Lira, in Northern-central Uganda. Our journey took us on a wide detour around Lake Kyoga, much smaller than Lake Victoria but still covering several hundred square miles. I was amazed by how lush and green Uganda is in the south and how as we travelled north it became so much drier. Much of the country is at a high altitude, on a plateau surrounded by lakes and mountains, so there’s a great deal of agricultural land planted with huge crops of sweet potatoes, plantains, cassava and maize, as well as coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton. Over three-quarters of the labour force in rural areas is employed in agriculture.

  George explained to me that Owiti was where his family home was, but that his parish, which included several churches, was actually three hours’ drive away. Much of his time was spent at his parish, but in honour of my visit he had taken a month off to spend in Owiti with me. I was touched.

  George, who looked as if he was in his mid-thirties but must have been at least a decade older (because he said most of his children were in their late teens and early twenties), was a warm, kind man who was very excited to be bringing me to the community. I was to be his honoured guest and to stay in his home, which was the only brick house in the area. I felt very touched by his generosity.

  I had been told the journey would take five hours, but it actually took eight. We had several stops, including one in Lira where I managed to buy a SIM card, and several at the homes of villagers in the community where George gave away the pineapples that had made their presence so uncomfortably felt on the journey. I felt humbled that George was giving to the poor, despite being poor himself.

  When we arrived it took some time to get all of us as well as the luggage out of the car. Stiff, sore and tired, I was nonetheless excited to see where I would be spending the next month.

  We had been driving for the past hour through a rural area of rough roads and mud huts, but we had stopped in front of a small brick house, built around a yard on three sides. George’s wife Lucy, round-faced and smiling, came out to greet us, followed by Joshua, their youngest son, who looked about 10. Lucy, who came from the local Luo tribe, spoke very little English, but she smiled and nodded warmly, making it clear that I was welcome.

  George explained that he and Lucy had seven children. The two eldest, a boy and a girl, had died in a car accident five years earlier. Their daughter had been ill with malaria and their son was taking her to hospital when they were killed on one of the country’s treacherous roads. It must have been the most devastating loss, but George spoke of it calmly. Of their remaining five children only Joshua was at home; the other four were away at secondary school and as there was no school locally they had to board and come home at weekends. There was also Kochas, a young man I gathered was from a troubled background whom George had brought into the household. George told me that he and Lucy also had several adopted children. If someone needed help or a home, he said, he would do his best to take them in.

  He escorted me proudly to the newly built guest room that stood on one side of the yard. Painted green, orange and pink, it was a little room containing a very small bed and a small bathroom, which was basically a hole-in-the-ground toilet and a shower served by a gravity tank, which, he assured me, someone would climb up to fill every day. The electricity was provided by small solar panels, which, he said proudly, would provide light for about two hours each day, so I would be able to have the light on for a little while in the evening.

  I was to be the first person ever to sleep in this guest accommodation and I could see how much trouble they had gone to. There was even a mosquito net over the bed, for which I was hugely grateful. Most Ugandans don’t have a mosquito net; they are a luxury, despite the number of mosquitoes and the incidence of malaria. George told me he had built the room to bless his visitors, including those who came from World in Need to help. ‘The more I bless my visitors the more blessings I receive from my visitors,’ he said.

  George was in charge of World in Need’s operation in the north of Uganda. The charity aimed to help provide aid and education, mainly by donating funds to buy goats for the community – something that George was in charge of – and to sponsor children to go to school.

  Supper that evening was eaten on our laps, sitting on bright blue plastic chairs in the yard. The food was cooked over an open fire in the cooking mud hut, which stood on the third side of the yard. Lucy had cooked a special welcome meal of goat, chicken and rice with savoury bananas and tomatoes. Joshua went round each of us, offering to pour water over our hands to wash them, and before we began to eat George asked me to say Grace, but by that time I was
close to tears. I felt so touched by their generosity and the warmth of their welcome, which I didn’t feel I deserved at all, and I was so tired and unwell that I felt suddenly overwhelmed and as I said Grace my voice cracked. With my stomach still queasy, I struggled to eat and soon after supper I excused myself and went to my room where I climbed into bed and, once I’d messaged my parents and Jacques to say I had arrived safely using the exceptionally slow and limited mobile network, sobbed myself to sleep.

  The following morning, after a breakfast of a kind of flat bread, scrambled eggs and cold meat, George showed me around his small farm. They grew sesame and cassava as well as banana and mango trees and had a few cows and goats. When he was away at his parish, which was the majority of the time, Lucy and the children looked after the farm and were able to sell some of their produce and make a small income to add to the modest one he earned from his parish work. George also received a small payment from World in Need, but how he managed to support so many people on what he earned I couldn’t imagine. School was not free, it cost around £60 a term per child and he was paying for his five and several others, too.

  As we reached the goat pen George asked me to look at one of his goats, which had been mauled by some dogs. It was badly injured and although I flushed out the wound, sprayed it with antiseptic and gave the goat antibiotics, it died a few hours later. I’d come to the area to use my skills as a vet, so it didn’t feel like the best start.

  George showed me the five large boxes of medicines and equipment that the World Veterinary Service had donated and sent out ahead of me. David Shamiri of World in Need had visited a few weeks earlier and had brought out a suitcase containing all the goody bags the British Goat Society had sponsored. They had also helped with some of my travel costs, as had the Veterinary Christian Fellowship and the British Veterinary Association, which had donated books that I could sell to raise travel money. All these generous organisations had made my visit possible and I didn’t want to let them down.

  Most of the people of Owiti lived in mud houses with thatched roofs, scattered across a wide area around George’s house, and that afternoon we set off on a walk to meet some members of the community. The first home we visited belonged to Anna, a woman in her thirties who was bedridden and dying of AIDS. Emaciated and clearly very ill, she managed to sit up in bed and she apologised to us for being so tired. Her daughter, Pasca, was out collecting wood, but I met her when she came home, a sweet, shy girl of around 12. Her father had already died of AIDS and she and Anna had no other relatives, no land and no animals. They survived, somehow, but when Anna died, Pasca would be alone. Before we left George gave them 6,000 Ugandan shillings, worth just over £1 and the equivalent of a day’s salary to many people there.

  Our next call was at Richard’s house. He was a white-haired elder, respected as a highly placed member of the community. He welcomed me and insisted on giving me the money to buy myself a soda, or fizzy drink. I felt embarrassed taking his money, but it would have been rude to refuse, so I thanked him and promised to enjoy my soda.

  A soda was a big treat in Owiti and when I saw the village water supply I understood why. The spring was situated at the bottom of a hill and the water that bubbled up from it, which was dammed into a pool with stones, instantly became muddy and dirty. People were scooping up water, using cups and bowls, and transferring it to big yellow jerry cans to carry home. At the same time there were several women washing clothes in it, animals walking through it and there was a steady stream of waste-filled water flowing into it down the hillside.

  After meeting several more householders and gathering a group of excited children who followed us, chattering and laughing, as we walked, our next stop was a small tin shack that turned out to be the local Health Clinic. George introduced me to the friendly man working there, who was a member of his church. He was a public health worker, trained to take blood samples and run some tests in the lab, which was in Lira. It was hard to believe that in this tiny little shelter they were able to take sterile blood samples that could be tested for diseases like typhoid and malaria.

  Near the health clinic were several other small tin shacks. This was the trading centre where people could buy a few basic provisions from men sitting on chairs behind tables, surrounded by goods in cardboard boxes. Quite a few of them were filled with sodas – Fanta and a sickly-sweet fizzy drink called Mirinda. The man behind the table politely brought out plastic chairs for shoppers to sit on outside the door while enjoying their drinks.

  Uganda is a land of many languages, but most of the people in this area were Luo and I learned my first words: apwoyo, meaning ‘hello, how are you?’, and apwoyo ber, meaning ‘good, thanks’. I would soon come to learn that apwoyo was a valuable word to know, as it could be used in many situations, not only as greetings – apwoyo matek meant ‘thank you very much’, and the usual response to that was also apwoyo, meaning ‘you’re welcome’.

  By the time we got back to George’s home it was dark. Uganda is on the equator, so the sun sets at the same time every night of the year, very fast, between 7.00pm and 7.15pm. After supper we sat outside and George told me about some of the local customs and traditions before wishing me a good night. I showered in water warmed to tepid by the sun and crawled under my mosquito net where I read by the light of a dim, flickering lamp until the electricity ran out.

  I was keen to get to work, and the next morning George introduced me to the local animal health worker, Maurice, who was going to accompany me on all my rounds. Shorter than the average Ugandan man and very chatty, Maurice was about 25 and, like most of the men (apart from George, who always wore his black suit and dog-collar), he was dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops made out of old tyres. He spoke good English and he told me that he had studied for a few years in an agricultural university. In most places in Uganda animal health workers like Maurice were substitutes for vets. He had little knowledge of farm animals, but he knew a bit about drugs and he was keen to learn more from me. I told him I wanted to learn from him, too, as he knew about the local animal diseases.

  It seemed that Maurice had recently come out of prison. The story went that for some reason a neighbour came round in the middle of the night to the mud house where Maurice and his mother lived and their dog had bitten him. The neighbour wanted the dog to be put down but Maurice refused. The case went to court and Maurice was ordered to pay compensation to the neighbour. As he didn’t have the money, he went to prison for six months instead. This seemed especially hard since the dog was simply doing the job it had been trained for. I was introduced to the dog in question – a small, black, shorthaired dog with a face like a collie – and she was lovely. She’d just had puppies, four little balls of fluff that I checked over. They were all healthy, which was good news, as Maurice was hoping to sell them.

  Prison had interrupted his studies, so now he was studying alongside helping people with their animals in return for whatever payment they could manage; mostly some fruit, savoury bananas or cassava. But with limited knowledge and very little in the way of equipment, there was only so much he could do.

  I had brought him a little box of health equipment: a stethoscope, thermometers, bandages, alcohol gel, syringes, antiseptics and extra gloves – and he was delighted.

  There were about 120 households in the community, split into four groups – A, B, C and D. Each group had a leader and as George was considered the leader of the whole community, he had spoken to all four group leaders, two men and two women, explaining who I was and that all the groups would have regular visits from me.

  I had piled a rucksack full of drugs and equipment such as syringes and hoof-trimmers to take with me that day, so Maurice and I set off straight away to work in group A, where I was based, visiting each home to ask if they needed help with their animals. Many homes had animals that weren’t producing or growing as well as they should, usually because they were either sick or malnourished, so we treated the animals and also tried to ed
ucate the owners in how to look after their animals better.

  We started with some cattle. I saw a cow with metritis – an infection of the uterus – another with diarrhoea and a calf with heartwater, a tick-borne disease that can affect farm animals of any age but is often seen in young animals. The calf had been spotted coughing for the past few days, it wasn’t suckling very often and it was having mild tremors. Maurice recognised the symptoms; heartwater is unknown in England but common in sub-Saharan Africa. In the later stages the animal will die, but this calf was still in the early stages and I was able to give it antibiotics and tell the owner that it should recover.

  By midday everyone had taken their cattle out to graze, so we decided that the next morning Maurice and I should set out at dawn so that we could see as many animals as possible.

  After that, every morning Maurice and I set out on our rounds at 5am or 6am. We would meet each group leader first and they would show us who we needed to see. We covered those within a radius of a mile or so on foot, and for those that were further away we cycled. Maurice had a bike and George lent me his spare bike, which had a flat tyre and no brakes. On the slopes it was terrifying. I was constantly shouting, ‘I can’t stop!’ as I rattled down the hill behind Maurice.

  One day I pushed off my bike on uneven ground down a slope and, since there were no brakes, crashed straight into a tree. Everyone was laughing at me as I got to my feet, brushed myself down and said, ‘I can cycle, honestly!’

  One of the charities I’d contacted before my trip, the Worldwide Veterinary Service, had sent out several boxes of medicine and equipment in advance of my visit, so I had plenty of basic antibiotics, pain relief and so on, which was a great help because almost every household had animals with problems. With some of the extra money that had been donated to me by the British Goat Society I bought dewormers, too.