9 August 20022

Today we filmed the Community Pharmacy pharmaceutical care videos at Extra Care Pharmacy in Gayaza, one of my friend, Gonsha’s, pharmacies. I can’t believe how well everything went. It was much more involved and it took much longer than I anticipated. There was a crew of 3 led by David Mulindwa. There was fancy lighting, lapel mics for the actors, and at least 2 cameras. It was all fascinating to watch but Kalidi, Winnie, and I had the easy part- watching the process. Thank you so much to our wonderful actors, Pharmacist Nickson Drabe and Pharmacist Paul Kakande. They had to repeat the scenario very many times so the camera men could get all of the angles, not because they were making a lot of mistakes. David explained you have to film the scenes from several angles to get the actors faces and make sure the lighting is just right. He will then take all of the segments of video and put together the best ones for the final film. I’m sure Nickson and Paul are now happy to be pharmacists and not actors as acting is hard work. Paul was portraying a very sick patient and by the end of the session, I’m sure he felt as tired and worn out as they patient he was playing. And Nickson had lots of lines to memorize and had to keep repeating over and over for each take but he stuck with in and I’m sure we will have a good outcome with the videos. Tomorrow we film the Hospital Pharmaceutical Care Videos.

On the way back to the Mulago Guest House, Kalidi invited us by his home for “tea”. “Tea” turned out to be a full meal which was super delicious. We had fresh squeezed passion fruit juice, rice, avocado, Irish potatoes, a mixture of peas and some other vegetables, fish fingers (fried fish in the shape of sticks or fingers), and a delicious beef sauce for the rice. We ended the meal with the sweetest, most pink watermelon I’ve ever seen and yummy Uganda bananas.

This evening I had the pleasure of meeting up with an old student from Makerere University Pharmacy School, Sam Twahirwa. He is now a PhD student at the University of Oklahoma in the USA. It is kind of funny that we both had to come to Uganda to see each other again, even though you we are closer in distance in the USA. But, as he has realized, the US is quite large. It would take me 2.5 to 3 days to drive to Oklahoma from New York. He is here for a short visit and then will return to go back to his studies.