Physiotherapist on rough deck in the bush

Motorcycles with rough tires are a super-efficient tool when our physiotherapists visit patients in the roadless villages that are several kilometers away from the main roads.
TEXT AND PHOTO: MAGNE REIGSTAD

Turen går på gode og til tider støvete veier

Physiotherapist Emuro Lamech is getting ready for another trip in the field. It is already 25 degrees in the shade, but our regulations say that the motorcyclist must wear a helmet and the baggy "protective suit". He is going to villages where the belief in the power of witches is disturbingly strong, and for many parents this power is the very explanation why their children were born disabled.

At the back of the luggage tray, Lamech fastens the mat to be used for training, as well as a number of other simple devices - such as a colorful, small abacus. Now an hour-long drive awaits in dense, smelly city traffic inside Lira city - and through more uninhabited but lush green areas.

Close follow-up in the home is an important element in the Adina Foundation's overall philosophy. The home visits provide good contact with the parents in a calm atmosphere. The training can be arranged in accordance with the possibilities available to the family. It has become a "talking point" that Adina's employees get so involved in the families, and the family groups have become our extended arm in the bush.

And the physiotherapist knows that if the treatment that started at the center in Lira is not followed up at home, the children can quickly move back to the start. Therefore, it is imperative for us to show results through the children's progress. Changed views of the disabled are an important part of the modernization of Ugandan civil society.

The trip with Lamech goes in the middle of the rainy season. Tropical torrential rain is bad on the roads, but patients from the Lira Rehabilitation Center will be followed up. The motocross bike is therefore an ideal means of transport in the bush. The physiotherapist winds elegantly over the ditches, along the remains of a road before disappearing into the green with man-high reeds on both sides.

Well back home, the report is written, perhaps about gratifying progress - or about disturbing failure in the follow-up at home. The goal is always for the boy or girl to stand on their own two feet, but the road there can be tortuous in more ways than one.