Nicole's Volunteering and Adventures Abroad

The most beautiful thing about Paris, and every country I visit, is the language.   Even though I cannot understand the other languages for the most part, I love to hear people speaking.   I enjoy hearing the way that people speak, the inflection, the rhythm of their sentences; most of all, I love trying to imagine what they are saying.   When I began my trip, I used to wish that everyone could speak the same language because I thought that would make my life so much easier but as time pressed on, my previously rigid thoughts on language began to soften.   I started wishing that, instead, I could speak every language.   People helped me to understand that without different languages, there would be some sort of loss of culture.   We have so many different communities and ways of life throughout the world, but a large part of human diversity is attributed to our ability to communicate with each other.   So I encourage everyone, before you tra...

After leaving Uganda, I was happy to finally completely relax from all of my volunteer work and see family for the first time in nearly 3 months.   As a retirement present, I had invited my mother to spend the New Year with me in Paris!   We stayed in a little AirBNB on rue Montorgueil in central Paris and had a great time exploring this beautiful little city.   Being in Paris during the winter would at first seem unattractive, but I personally thought that it was a beautiful time to be in the city.   Walking around in the weeks following Christmas meant that there were beautiful string Christmas lights and joyful holiday spirit.   We had the opportunity to stroll through a holiday market where local vendors sold craft goods and delicious foods.   We had such a great time exploring the city that by day three my feet began to throb from all the walking that we did.   Since we were spending a week in Paris, we decided to get two all access passes t...

Just when I thought that I would not get anything more out of the experience, a child was born.   I went into this trip hoping that I would see something amazing, which is hard to do considering all of the amazing things that I had seen over the past 3 months.   Only 3 days before leaving Uganda, a friend and I took yet another trip to the maternal clinic.   I had made the nearly 1 mile trek through the streets of Kabale to the clinic five different times, through terrifying traffic and across sidewalks littered with people trying to get to where they are going.   Each time, I learned something new at the clinic.   I learned more about the cases that the midwives and doctors had to deal with.   Each time at clinic, I was shocked by the conditions that they worked in, the situations these mothers had to live in and carry their babies to term through.   As we sat that day waiting for patients to come in for evaluations, a pregnant woman rode ...

At first glance, you wouldn’t even notice the presence of the KIHEFO HIV/AIDs clinic when you walk down the street.   If you looked closely, you may see a sign in the window that offers different precautions to prevent the contraction of HIV.   Other than that, there is no sign that behind the doors to the clinic there is a bustling staff dedicated to bettering the lives of men, women, and children living with HIV.   When Dr. Anguyo Geoffrey (known by the students as Dr. G) began training in general medicine in Uganda, he was immersed in cases involving HIV and AIDs which had spread over much of eastern Africa in the eighties.   He often talked about how the world that he worked in when he was training to become a doctor is something that younger physicians may never get the chance to experience.   A large portion of the hospital admissions cases during that time was for HIV patients and this no doubt scared many African people into getting tested.   He w...