In Sierra Leone, as soon as the sun starts rising the birds go crazy. Not like they do in the U.S. in the mornings, they are loud and they live in very dense populations in the mango trees, and they are quite colorful. It’s almost impossible to sleep after about 8, since the sun is fully risen and the birds are so loud, but it doesn’t matter much because the power goes out at 22h00 (10:00pm) and there’s really nothing to do since it’s SO dark, everyone goes to bed. Without a flashlight, you wouldn’t have any hope of finding your way from your bed to the attached bathroom in the night. Dark in Africa is a different kind of dark.
So we got up about 7:30 and I read for a bit outside before Dr. Erdi walked by and said she was going into town to find bread and asked who wanted to go with her, so of course I went along. Many “traders” (the families who sell things on the street) set up stands alone the main road where the car traffic is, so you can pull over a bit and ask for things through the window. It’s like the African version of a drive-thru, only with much better bread, and I wouldn’t trust any of the meat…
Once we got back to the compound, I wondered into the kitchen where Charlotte was making our fruit salad for our “special breakfast” that Dr. Erdi wanted to have with us and asked what I could do to help. Come to find out, no one had ever eaten a pineapple still in the rind before, so I jumped up and started cutting it. We also decided to make pancakes, but no one knew how to make pancakes from scratch. Except for the girl who’s dad has made pancakes from scratch all her life. Thanks dad!!! Haha, so I guessed at the ratio of egg to flour, and told them to mix in and start adding milk until it was thinner than they would think it should be. While they were doing that, I started frying the beacon. Once we decided the pancake mixture was good, I started frying them up. Once we had breakfast ready, we had our first “African” breakfast, and I was deemed the “domestic” one, and in charge of breakfast on Sundays henceforth.
Every day except for Sunday we have a cook to make us breakfast and dinner, and lunch is on our own (basically bread with the topping of your choice). On Sundays all meals are on our own. So after a breakfast of fruit salad, pancakes, and bacon, we mostly hung out and read. There are two cats that live with Dr. Erdi but spend quite a bit of time here at the guesthouse. Their names are Bo and Freetown, and they are full-grown but look like kittens! Every animal, even humans, seems not to get as big here, and I’m not just referring to the American epidemic of obesity. All the dogs are on the small to medium side, and none of them are what I would call big by any means. Most of the men are shorter than I am, and the women even shorter.
At about 11h00 (11:00am) we heard screaming and wailing from the Children’s ward. Later we found out that a young boy that Dr. Erdi had operated on Thursday of last week passed away. When he arrived, he had severe Typhoid, and had so many bowel perforations that Dr. Erdi didn’t think he would make it, but she operated anyway. It seems that it didn’t make a difference, since his kidneys ended up shutting down.
In between the unpacking, reading, playing card games, and napping the wind started to pick up, which is very unusual for Magbenteh and Sierra Leone as a whole. Then it poured hard for about thirty or forty minutes and everything cooled down and it was so nice!
At about 17h30 (5:30pm) we went over to Dr. ABD’s house, who had invited us over for a special meal and to spend time with him and his wife, Koomba. They have a nice big house, but it is crowded because all his extended family assumes that he has lots of money and so they come to stay with him and think they will live off of him. They had a beautiful table set for us, and his wife made lots of good food like fried and spicy chicken and fried rice. His wife is beautiful and so nice, as is his whole family. After we all ate, we were rested and we noticed that some of the people living with Dr. ABD, especially the smaller children, were crowding near the doorways to peek at us. Tanis started playing hand games with them, and before we knew it the room was full of children and teenagers asking us to “snap” them, which meant take a picture of them, or asking our names and teaching us their rhymes and such. Clem started just doing really goofy things with a group of kids, and they started imitating everything she did and it was a RIOT!!! I got a video of it, it was great.
After a while, Dr. ABD came back in the room to find us having a party without him, and only then did we realize that he wasn’t there any more. One of our friends, Marcel, had gotten stuck trying to get his car out of Dr. ABD’s driveway and Dr. ABD had been helping him out. After a little bit, we decided it was time to head back home. When we drove near the market area, I thought it would be dead. On the contrary, it was even busier than it had been when we’d gone during the day! Everyone seemed to be hanging out there, and everyone was just walking down the middle of the road, and the motorcycles were driving just as reckless as they do during the day, it was insane!
Once we got back to the compound, we only had a little while before the lights went off, so we counted up all the medicine that Tanis had to donate to MCH, I showered, and now it is time for bed. Tomorrow I plan on following Dr. Erdi on her rounds to see what she does here at the hospital.
This post is dedicated to the young boy who died today of kidney failure.
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