Iganga Bob
Dr. Ruby Dunlap's Uganda Fulbright Blog
The non-verbal expression, “eh,” is most consistently noticeable in North America among English speakers dwelling near and around the U.S.-Canadian border. It shares company with such verbal expressions as “you bet!” a response so characteristic of the area that when an agricultural expert from Minnesota answered a question with it recently, I couldn’t help but smile with memories of miles of northern forests and lakes riding in on the coattails of “you bet!”
My own southeastern United States, on the other hand, is known for the spoken elaboration of multiple syllables into words which are written with only one. One of my favorite examples was from a patient who asked me, “Can you give me a nerve pill—I’m fixin’ to have a spell.” I hadn’t realized before that moment how many syllables a southern woman could put into the word “spell.” Practice saying, “Spay--ee—ell” and you’ll get an approximation. Make sure you draw it out to communicate adequately the threatened onset of something most dire.
The Ugandans have taken a syllable elaboration similar to that of the Southeast U.S. and put it into their “ehs.” There are soft, short “ehhs?” serving as “are you still paying attention to me?” peppered throughout their speech. There are exclamatory “AYehs!” following some revelation by a speaker: “You don’t say!” or “That’s incredible!” There is an “ay-eh” which means, “OK,” said with an agreeable sort of rise on that last syllable. Imagine actual words strung along like beads on a line of lilting, non-verbal, multi-syllabled “ehs” and “hmmms” and you will get a notion of one of the things which makes Lugandan and Lugandan-style English quite musical.
Bob, whose health has, thankfully, been stable since suffering his allergic reaction and then weeks of painful furunculitis, is learning a few Lugandan words from his many friends in the mechanic and carpentry shops here at UCU. If the frequency of incoming cell phone calls is a proxy for popularity, Bob is by far the most popular of the three of us among the Ugandans. But more than words, Bob has got the “ehs” and “hmmms” down fluently. He has found these useful communication tools even when he doesn’t understand the conversation.
Early in our stay here, Bob was invited to help determine the cost of re-modeling a string of small stores into a farmer’s market, bakery, and restaurant in Iganga, not quite three hours east of Mukono. This past week, the three of us visited Iganga to meet, greet, and get to know some of the farming co-operative administrators who became friends of Bob during the few days he spent there.
Iganga is a town with a population of about 100,000, in a flatter, browner part of Uganda with fewer trees and more stretches of open farm land. It reminded me of the U.S.’s mid-west corn-growing regions. We visited the training center with Peter, the director, and Moses, the accountant. (Photo of Bob with Peter and Moses)
We visited the market place where the re-modeling job is waiting grant funding. Here, a baby was put into my arms with the baby’s mother standing proudly by. (Photo of baby and Ruby) Later that evening, we had a dinner of local foods in a restaurant with the co-ops officers and a city councilman. The background noise buzzed continuously and the Ugandan voices delivering impromptu speeches to the three of us were very soft.
Neither Bob nor Dad (both with some mild hearing impairment) understood a word of what was being said but Bob, on my left, manfully kept up “hmmmm” and “ehhhh” interjections at what he guessed were appropriate intervals. Dad, less willing to risk anything vocal, managed a look of polite interest the whole time. I would try periodically responding in a loud enough voice for the two of them to get some indication of what was being said. Our Ugandan feast included matooke (steamed plantains), millet bread, poshe (similar to polenta), a couple of kinds of rice dishes, Ugandan sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, goat, chicken, greens, eggplant, cabbage salad, and fresh fruit. It was all delicious.
The next morning we visited a small farming area, members of the co-op. They had a small training center where agricultural-related reading and mathematics are taught. (Photo) We strolled about coffee shrubs, mango trees, plots of maize, beans and “groundnuts,” i.e., peanuts. We saw a European pilot project for “no-graze” raising of dairy goats. The goats looked like they didn’t think much of the project and I couldn’t blame them. But, we were told, these exotic goats get hoof and mouth disease if allowed to roam free like the much tougher Ugandan goats. (Photo)
Dad, who has much interest in agriculture, particularly enjoyed this little trip. A young man, who has worked as a Peace Corps teacher in a small village in western Uganda for two years, told us that one of the ironies of Africa is that the big-hearted, well-intentioned compassion-driven charities end up hurting as much as they help while it is the small entrepreneurs who come to make money who actually, according to him, are what Africa needs most at this time. We saw some of the wisdom of his observation: farmers who learned agri-business and who increased both purchasing and selling powers through a co-operative were able to raise the standard of living for their families. In contrast, simply giving them cash would certainly have caused long-term harm. It made me want Belmont’s social entrepreneurship major to flourish and begin reaching around the world. (Photo of Dad and me)
Cara Felter, a 2004 DPT graduate of the School of Physical Therapy at Belmont University, has been named as an Emerging Leader by the American Physical Therapy Association. 
Not many a day goes by that Lynne Shores doesn‟t influence lives in the nursing world. As a college professor, author, lecturer and community advocate for more than 30 years, she has helped educate and direct the energy of thousands of registered nurses who care for today‟s patients. And, she has played a key role introducing hospitals and universities to safe patient handling instruction.
A couple of days before the ride and concert, Dierks surprised the physical therapy students by coming to class to thank them personally for all their hard work in making this even a success. Bentley told the students "We could not have taken this event to the level it now is without the help of my friends in the School of Physical Therapy at Belmont University.” He explained that this year’s money would be going directly to families affected, who had children being treated at the hospital. That way they didn’t have to worry about all the ‘other stuff’ and they could concentrate on their child’s illness. 
At the show, Wynonna kicked things off. Dierks introduced her himself, expressing how amazing it was that the legendary red head decided to join the ride. Wynonna worked the crowd well and seemed very at ease; joking all the while. Eric Church was next and seemed genuinely surprised by the reception he received. Several other celebrities jumped on stage to perform however Darius Rucker was definitely the crowd favorite. He sang the longest set off all the openers…All of his hits and then some including his Hootie and the Blowfish stuff…Which, by the way, the crowd LOVED!!! 
Dr. Scott McPhee, Professor of Occupational Therapy, had a chapter recently published in the book, What you need to know about Nursing and Health Care in the United States (B.L. Nichols & C.R. Davis, Eds., New York: Springer Publishing). This book is intended for foreign trained nurses who are applying for a visa to work in the United States. 
Dr. Bethany McKinney Froboese, a 2003 graduate of Belmont’s School of Physical Therapy, has been chosen as an Outstanding Young Alumna by her undergraduate alma mater, Austin Peay State University. The award recognizes her contribution to APSU as a volunteer. Froboese will be honored with other alumni award recipients during homecoming festivities at the end of October.
Along the stone retaining wall outside our apartment is a row of snowy white daylilies. That is, I call them daylilies because of their leaf, stem and bud shapes. If not actually a daylily, they must be close kin to the daylily tribe. The flowers start out as a daylily bloom, a suggestion of a white trumpet on a slender stalk. But then the Designer of this flower changed His mind. Instead of the expected trumpet shape, the flower turns into a loose fringe of white, the petals going abruptly from wide to narrow in a graceful drape. I do not know which gives me more pleasure, the recognition of a familiar plant type or an unexpected variation in that type. This daylily illustrates my conviction that our appreciation of diversity needs to be anchored in an appreciation of unity. Otherwise, diversity becomes mere difference and mere difference seems to me to degenerate easily into competitive hostility among differences. 
Saturday, my second year students and I participated in a nurses’ “journal club” event at the national city hospital, the Mulago Hospital. As far as I know, all my students have had one kind of experience or another with this huge hospital. The hospital has both a nursing school and Makerere Medical School attached to it. A student who has worked as a nurse administrator at this hospital for many years took me on tour. We walked together through clean halls with lofty ceilings. Two men briskly rolled a long cart with a domed lid past us. The patient under that lid was going to a cool ward where none of them moves or will ever move on his own again. One might see such a thing in any hospital on the planet, a place for both arrivals and departures.
A student later on told me an average of 80 babies are born each day in this hospital not counting “Caesars” or those with complications such as hypertension. Four nurse midwives attend these births. Whether it is four because of the shortage of midwives or because of the shortage of funds to hire more, I didn’t ask. Often it is a complex mix of both.
Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and U.S. Representative Jim Cooper provided the keynote addresses for “Diagnosing Our Future,” the inaugural presentation in Belmont University’s Gordon E. Inman College of Health Science & Nursing Speaker Series. The event was held on October 13 in the Frist Lecture Hall in the Inman Center on Belmont University’s campus.
The Nashville Business Journal recently honored professor Jane Shelby as one of the 2009 Health Care Heroes in Middle Tennessee. Shelby is a professor of nursing and the former director of the university’s undergraduate nursing program.
Second year Student Pharmacists who have completed their first practice experience rotations recently presented posters summarizing their experience in the Frist Lecture Hall. Fifty-six posters in all were displayed showing unique characteristics of the practice sites and the learnings achieved at these sites. First year pharmacy students, who will begin their practice rotations in January, attended to get tips on site selection, and pharmacy faculty attended to learn about student involvement at the sites. 
R. Clayton McWhorter has been named the recipient of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee's 16th annual Joe Kraft Humanitarian Award. McWhorter, a businessman and former health-care professional, serves as chairman of the board for PharmMD, and he is on the board of trustees for Belmont University.
As Dad and I walk down to the track most mornings around 6:30 AM for exercise, we meet many elementary school children in neat uniforms headed for school. They walk purposefully and soberly but their faces break out into smiles as we greet them. “Good morning,” Dad says, “God bless you. God loves you. Have a good day at school.” And they beam with pleasure, receiving the gift as Dad intended to give it.
In addition to the meeting the challenges of school fees and heavy examinations, public caning is common practice at elementary and secondary schools in Uganda. The student may be caned for misconduct of any kind but can also be caned for scoring poorly on exams or failing to answer a question a teacher asks. I’ve heard from several different sources that the caning is done publicly, in front of the whole school, and that it is male teachers who administer it. 
Here’s how I’m trying to understand it. Our grading systems require us to judge student work by narrow criteria so that if a student meets the criteria, the student earns 100% of the grade. We use grading rubrics for this purpose. “You do the work, you get the grade,” I’ve often told my U.S. students. This one to one correspondence between a grading rubric and a grade seems to be foreign to the British grading system at least how it is practiced in Uganda. We Americans also conceptually tend to start from 100 and subtract points as we evaluate student work.