Waste

When you compare Uganda to America it is crazy how polar opposites they are.  Here all the soda is in glass bottles.  If you buy a soda at a store you have to drink it there because they need the bottle back.  When you go to the market to get a plastic bag you pay separate for it.  If you buy beer and want to take it home you must bring the bottles back.  Yesterday we got 30 eggs to bring to the island.  Normally if you buy a few eggs you carry them in a cloth or in a bag.  But we had 30 and wanted to bring the egg carton.  This is a crappy moldy reused over and over again pice of cardboard.  And the shop owner only would let us take the cardboard for extra cushioning on our hike if we promised to bring it back.  So at 10:30 at night after hiking all day we had to take a long detour to return this moldy old reused egg carton.  In America we get coffee 3 times a day and throw away the cup every time.  At the supermarket everything is double bagged and those bags are used for 15 minutes while you carry your groceries home then sit in a land fill for all eternity.  Any fast food place you throw away all the boxes wrappers packaging.  The contrast is pretty amazing.  

On a different uplifting note.  A 6 month old came in to the emergency/critical care area and I called the pediatric resident to come see the baby.  She placed oxygen on the baby and sent off a hemoglobin and type and screen it was obvious that the baby needed blood.  Within 2 hours the baby was dead.  There was nothing we could do.  We just don’t have the means to handle and stabilize patients that sick.