Welcome to the Balkans!

Out of the frying pan into the deep freeze – and the locals haven’t even started wearing coats yet!

Google ‘Prishtina’ and you get mixed messages One website suggested:

Pristina is the city many of us love to hate... it's grey, dusty and traffic-clogged

Whilst another said this

Prishtina is a bustling capital inflated with the activity and personnel of foreign agencies, plus all the bars, restaurants and internet cafés to service them.

We have found them both to have elements of truth but have warmed very quickly to this war ravaged country. Whilst it is undoubtedly a post-communist, bomb-damaged eastern-block concrete jungle – it is very like-able. It might be the Coventrian in me – but the limited architecture doesn’t detract from the multitude of cosy coffee shops and restaurants that cover the city – and it certainly has earnt its reputation for having the best coffee outside of Italy. Crossing the road is mildly terrifying and everybody smokes like a chimney – but it all adds to its charm.

Prishtina is the youngest capital city in the world. 70% are aged under 28. We have rented a room in a student hall of residence (cheap – but better than you’d imagine) – and I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on campus with grey hair! It could be that that makes us stand out – or it could be the fact that we are wearing coats, hats, scarves, gloves, another coat, two pairs of socks and shivering in the biting wind, whilst everyone else potters around likes it's early spring. Our other distinguishing feature is our lack of Albanian. Whilst the locals are overtly friendly and will happily interrupt an entire restaurant to find an English speaker to translate our order – our lack of language skills is much more of a problem than in Uganda.

The hospital is large and imposing – but significantly better than Gulu. Power and water and free flowing, and there are plenty of doctors and nurses. Indeed, many doctors struggle to find paid employment and the emergency department seems slightly over-staffed. Whilst this is good for patients – it does make our tasks slightly less well defined. Fortunately (for us!), there are still obvious gaps in medical training and some of the care is very different from what we are used to at home. How we are going to be of use, with little language skills and plenty of staff – is less obvious – so we are exploring other activities including education and research.

Two views of the city:

We’ve arrived home after a 3 months in Gulu, Uganda. Despite a challenges, frustrations, culture differences and the odd illness, we had an absolutely fantastic time!

Shortly before leaving the hospital, we organised a ‘clinicians meeting’ with the other guys from the Manchester group so that we could present some of the work we had done during our stay and hopefully stimulate some discussion of the issues amongst hospital staff. After a nerve-wracking first half-hour sitting alone, people finally began turning up and we eventually got going, 50 minutes late but with a good turn-out. The presentations were well received and definitely stimulated discussion. One of the problems in Gulu is that the staff in different specialties had stopped talking to each other and it was so encouraging to see how keen the hospital staff were to talk and think about the issues and come up with ways of improving patient care. After all, they’re the ones who will be making all the changes after we’re gone. The plan is for the clinicians meeting to be a monthly occurrence from now on. 

Looking back over our time in Gulu, we’re hopeful that things are and will continue to improve, despite all the challenges the hospital faces. And although a culture of acceptance has certainly developed amongst some staff, following years of poor funding and lack of government support, this is changeable. As new young people begin working at the hospital, they will help to raise expectations and encourage and motivate others to work towards a better level of care. And also, the work of the Manchester-Gulu link is set to continue, at least for the next 10 years. Who knows, maybe we’ll be back in Gulu in the next few years on one of the short-term projects – we’d like to think we will be.

Despite our pleading for a small affair, we were thrown a big going away party by the hospital. We had some concerns over the money spent buying an entire goat for the event, but it was a lovely evening and a great excuse for all the staff to have a good meal and socialise. We realised how many friends we’d made during our short time and were really sad when it came to saying goodbye.

We left Gulu on the Saturday morning, with flights home booked for the following Friday. This gave us a full week to explore some of Uganda and enjoy the last of the sunshine before heading back to English autumn. The highlight was definitely going to see the mountain gorillas in Bwindi National Park, an incredible experience that we will never forget.

We arrived home to a large family gathering at my parent’s house in Salisbury and had a lovely weekend wrapped up in jumpers by the fire. We’re now in Coventry with Dave’s parents for a couple of days before flying out to Kosovo on Wednesday (9^th).

So, until next time…..

The hostpial in Gulu