At Christmas time some friends from the company 'Cargill Cotton' worked hard to raise money for our patients at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital and we also received some very kind donations from friends and relatives. With the money we had planned to give each patient at the hospital a small Christmas gift. Unfortunately, Karen fell ill the week before Christmas and so we were unable to carry this out. However, as Easter came around we thought we'd try again and provide an Easter distribution instead!
We decided to give each patient a very English treat - tea, milk, biscuits and sugar! With 250 beds at the hospital the scale of organisation could not be underestimated as Karen and I went to the market and bought 300 sachets of tea, 15 kilos of sugar and 23 litres of milk! We made some of the market sellers very happy that day. We also needed something to package the gifts in and so we went to an older man in the market who sits selling plastic bags all day. Whenever we see him he always tests our Acholi language skills and gets very excited when we can answer his greetings! When I asked him for 300 'caveras' (bags) I don't think he could believe his ears! He was overjoyed when I handed over 30,000 shillings (just under 10 pounds).
On wednesday night, while the local bakery were making the 600 biscuits we had ordered, Karen and I started a production line arranging the sugar and tea into all of the bags. This job took us 3 hours into the night and left Karen and I feeling slightly hysterical with tiredness and absolutely covered in tea and sugar!
Thursday was distribution day. After hiring a vehicle to transport everything to the hospital one of the lecturers at the medical faculty very kindly let us use his office to sort out what was to go where (we rewarded him with some left over biscuits). We started by going to the Nutrition Ward and Paediatric Unit where the mothers were extremely grateful for our little gifts and we had a great time greeting all of the patients and talking to the staff. We even got a round of applause when leaving the Paediatric Ward! We then went to the TB Ward, Acute Paediatric Unit, Casualty, Surgical Ward, Medical Ward, Maternity Wing, and Mental Health Unit. We had some amazing reactions while going around the hospital. One older lady in the Surgical Ward gave both of us a huge hug and had the biggest grin on her face - it was priceless. We had extra parcels and so managed to share these with members of staff that were on duty who were also very grateful. Such a small present caused such excitement around the hospital, it was so great to see. Thank you so much to all of our donors for allowing us to distribute an Easter present to each and every one of our patients! It was a day that Karen and I will never forget.
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