About My Trip
My trip has taken on many levels of concepts, and quite honestly the final project will really have a lot do with the stories that I am able to create with my camera. The idea started from my daughter who pulled together birthday money and allowances to give Gail a donation for kids uniforms. As Gail and my mother were leaving, my daugher looked at me a expressed something to the effect of, what if we could change one childs life and he becomes like Dr. Sam. Dr. Sam is the head of the Nkoaranga Lutheran Hospital where Gail has been living and working. Words like this get you thinking, even dreaming. I have been a photographer for years, it was my talent growing up, though through the years it has taken the back burner to other amazing events. Going digital 5 years ago help spark my photography work again and I have been able to start showing my work again and have been publish in a few books.
The funny thing here in this trip is the word thousands. I photographed my daughter soccer game yesterday and took 100 photos in 40 min. When I was in China with my family I shot 1400. I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot of photos taken, the hard part is putting it all together to tell a story. My goal on this trip is to tell stories hope with my photography that will bring awareness and raise money for the hospital. When I get back I hope to do a photography show and have a book published with proceeds going back to the hospital and another group that I have been associated with EPIC change.
I will be staying at Nkoaranga Lutheran Hospital and Orphanage it was opened started in late thirties as a small dispensaries by missionaries. Then was expanded to a hospital back in 1969. It has 2 graduate doctors and one assistant doctor and one assistant dental officer. There are 4 nursing officers an 13 nurse midwives and about 10 nurse assistants.
They face may tropical diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS, pnemonia diarrhoea, Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, meningitis, and now lot of patients with diabetes, and hypertention. They have very limited resources and mostly use clinical diagnosis on starting treatment although our laboratory can do some few tests.
In the orphanage they have about 25 children and they range from 1 month to 5 years. These are children who either one of their parents died or both, but mostly mothers are the one die and they die during delivery most of them. However they do not keep children of the mothers who die from AIDS, instead they send them to a center where they specialize in these children.
There are many stories here. I can not wait to get there.