One way to get used to the heat and surprisingly makes you sweat less is if you drink massive amounts of water. I’ve been pounding water since I got here, not only because I’ve been super thirsty but because the more I drink the better I feel and because I was loosing so much water sweating. But the more water I drink, the less I sweat, or maybe I just don’t notice it any more. Anyway I’m much more used to the heat, and I can tell it’s hot but I don’t feel obsessed by it any more. The water here is from the tap in our house, which comes unfiltered up from a well, and then we fill up our fancy filter thing and the water it filters is safe to drink. Or at least I have been believing it is because Charlotte and Nicole haven’t gotten sick off of it, and neither have I as of yet. The filter is made up of two large metal pail shaped containers that fit one on top of each other. The top on has two of the filters screwed in, so that the water is pulled down to the bottom container through them. I don’t know what the filters are made of (they look like some sort of calcified salt) or how they work, but I guess they work fine because I feel good.
Even though I slept well last night I didn’t want to get up. Yesterday was a big day and I was very tired. Finally I got myself out of bed and had breakfast. Today Jack made oatmeal and cut up pineapple to go with breakfast. I decided to go down with Nicole to the “Under Fives” clinic, where they see all children under five. The Sierra Leone government offers free vaccinations as long as they are all give to the child by the time they are nine months old, and discount health care to every child under five if they have the right card. At the Under Fives clinic here, we treat all children at the discounted rate, because otherwise parents might not bring their child in. Children are not of the same importance here as they are in the U.S. Here, the man of the household and all the other adults are fed first, and the younger you are the less likely you are to be fed if you have a big family, which is why they have a lot of malnutrition. Most of the children who come through for treatment are diagnosed basically on the spot with malaria since it’s so common, are given a bag with medication, and sent out the door. The more severe cases get admitted to the hospital.
To give you an idea of what happens at Under Fives, here’s the process. First, all the women with their children line up to wait to be seen. And the head nurse, Sally, makes us wait until there’s a nice long line before we actually start checking kids in. After there’s a like of about thirty, we can start. To check a child in, the mother steps up to the desk and Sally asks them to pay. She then asks for their Under Five card, and starts recording their information. About halfway through recording their information, she strikes up a conversation with someone nearby. It doesn’t matter whom, just anyone in the vicinity. About ten minutes later, she’s recorded info that should have taken a minute or so to record and passes the paper she’s filled out on to the next person and the Under Five card back to the mom. The next person copies down the name of the patient, the address and sex of the patient, and the tribe of the father. They normally do so very slowly, because normally it’s not someone literate, so they copy each letter as they see it very slowly. Then the sheet would be passed to me, so that I could record the patients name, sex, age, and whether or not they paid in another book, as well as get their temperature from Charlotte who takes temperatures before the kids get to the front of the line, and the weight from Nicole. Only after I’ve finished does Sally start on the next patient, so each one takes 15 minutes or so. It’s so frustrating, because it could go so much faster, but if you try to push them to go faster, they get confused and mess up, so you can’t go any faster.
At about 10h45 (10:45am) I got so annoyed with it that I had to go find something else to do. Tuesdays are surgery days, so I went to check if surgeries were going to start on time, which is 11h00 (11:00am). When I went up to check, they weren’t anywhere near ready to start, so I went to find Mr. Swaray, who works in the Under Fives and the TFC. He has a document that he has on paper, but wanted on his computer so that he could type it up rather than make a copy and hand write it every month. The problem is, it’s a document that was made in Excel with blanks that he wanted to fill in. He told me he has no idea how to get it on his computer, so I told him I would try. His computer is actually pretty up to date, and I was able to make the document in Excel for him, and showed him how he now has a blank, template version, so at the end of the month when he fills it out, he just needs to rename it for that month, and he’ll always have a blank one to work with. He was so happy, he kept telling me how happy he was, and telling me he’ll bring me something tomorrow, and that he’s just amazed at how it all works. I’m happy I got to do something that makes me feel like I accomplished something.
I also watched a hernia repair today, which was fairly standard, and the cleaning of an amputated arm, the same leg from yesterday, and watch the uterine scraping of a woman who miscarried at home. I have pictures of some of it, and will post some soon.
After surgery I took a nap because I was so tired, and for dinner a huge group joined us. Katherine, who’s from a school in Indian, who stays in Makeni and does research, Rudy, the German repair man, a French woman named Audrey who is here in Makeni for another month volunteering, and an English couple who work at another hospital north of here. So far, a very laid-back day.
Charlotte has been doing research about the civil war here, and has found that most people lost family members during the fighting. This post is dedicated today.
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