Hospitals and HIV testing

hey all. i've had a fairly uneventful couple of days, but i'll fill you in on the details anyway.

yesterday i was ten minutes in to teaching a class (which was going very well, by the way!)when a child was shoved at me with the declaration 'he is sick. take to hospital.'

i was somewhat taken aback and also pretty pissed off with this development, but i took him anyway - what choice did i have?they were convinced he had malaria, and he did have a skin complaint which looked a bit like scabies on his wrists.

when we got to the hospital it seemed unlikely that he had malaria but the drugs were prescribed for him anyway. he had a blood test which was negative (though not very high tech. they put the blood on a slide and look for 'bugs' under a microscope.)when i got him back to school i tried to persuade his teacher who is a bit of a dragon to let him take it easy for the rest of the day, but she wasn't having any of it. one of the teachers took all of the tablets from him and said she was taking him home. whether or not the drugs made it home with him is another matter.

that evening me and one of the other girls from the lodge, rachel, went out for dinner to sky blue, which was really nice. i had a rolex and chips, which was waaay better than what was on offer at the lodge.

today i went over to school for break, where i noticed that brian, who has been absent for several days, had conjunctivitis symptoms again. since he had it less than a month ago and still hasn't managed to shake it off, i was worried, so i walked through the mountains back to his house to ask the mother if the drops had been helping. she told me that she'd been putting them in religeously but it wasn't making a difference. i tentatively enquired if they would allow me to get him tested for HIV, and the parents agreed to this. i took him back down the mountain and we headed off to hospital. i have had a child tested for HIV before and it was no issue, i asked and they did it. well not today. dr moses wouldn't budge. he wanted to the parents o be there, despite the fact they had agreed to the test but declined to accompany us. it was very frustrating,. but he did at least provide some alternative treatment which will hopefully be more effective.

i have to take him home later and ask one of the parents to accompany me to the hospital, so he can have the test, though both parents refuse to be tested themselves.

tonight is sophia's birthday, so we are going out to a concert by some ugandan pop sensation, which should be a laugh, i'll repot back in a couple of days!

love, Lucy xxx