Emily’s friend left Wednesday morning and it was sad. It was fun having her here. We stayed and worked and came back to teach English at 4pm, but no one showed up, so we sat outside the clinic with the two nuns that work there and had a good time laughing at the one nun who knows no English and who was trying to learn. Her pronunciation is terrible, but hilarious, and we were all laughing and joking with her. After a while of that, we all walked home together. Emily got a little sick Thursday morning, so we both just stayed home that day. That evening, one of the teachers from the primary school came over to help us learn Kinyarwanda. He is a really good teacher, but I just need help speaking and he had us writing stories, etc. Friday, I went to work by myself because Emily was still not feeling well and I took the blood pressure of about 60 women and when I was getting ready to go home for lunch, one of the nuns ran into the exam room, grabbed something and ran back out. The nun who speaks English told me to go with her, so I followed her into the labor and delivery room and there was a mom on the table with the baby on her abdomen. He was too tired from the delivery and was having trouble breathing. He was quite blue, so we put a respirator mask on him and sucked the gunk out of his mouth and nose. Then they took him and put him on the table and put a piece of gauze soaked in alcohol on his chest. I don’t know why, but it seemed to work. We kept shaking him and using the respirator, and he was doing better when I left. I don’t know if he made it or not. All the blood and guts from the mom were still everywhere and the smell in the room didn’t go over well with my stomach and I got really faint and lost the hearing in my right ear, so I had to leave. I don’t know how many births you have to attend before the pain and blood and guts don’t affect you in that way, but I am definitely not there yet.
Saturday, I took the moto to the town on the road and my friend picked me up. We went into town and bought a few things and then picked up my other friend and we went to the hot springs. It was quite a different experience than the last time I was there. It was overcast and kind of cold, so the hot water actually felt good (last time it was so hot out the hot springs felt like a sauna, it was not nice) and children did not surround us and stare at us for hours on end. It was really nice. We all came back to my house and I made fried rice for everyone and we listened to music.
Sunday, my friend realized he had left his camera at the hot springs, so he wanted to drive back and see if it was still there. His truck is only a two seater, but Saturday he had a mattress in the back that I just laid down on. Sunday, he had taken the mattress out in his search, so Emily and I both sat in the seat together, me on top of her. Let me tell you how painful and uncomfortable a ride it was! This is a terrible dirt road with many twists and turns and ups and downs and I thought I was going to die. It takes about an hour to drive to the hot springs from my house, so by the time we got back I was in pain! He didn’t find his camera and we were all really glad we didn’t come to swim that day because as soon as we started driving in, the truck got surrounded by children. I’ve got some nice bruises from that drive.
Monday was super boring. I went into work while Emily stayed home with our house girl. I went into the ARV room where one of the girls was handing out medicine and I helped her enter data into the computer. That lasted about 45 minutes and then I just played a lot of solitaire. I got bored of that and decided to go through patient files and found that there are quite a few who have not come back after being diagnosed. One woman was diagnosed when she was pregnant and hasn’t been back to the clinic for a check up in 416 days! This really worries me because the child needs to be checked out and she needs to know the correct way to care for her child so it doesn’t contract the virus. The rest of the week was pretty boring as well, not much going on. I did teach Kangaroo Mother Care to some of the staff though, so hopefully that will be implemented when necessary and I gave a condom demonstration to a group of people, and again there was an old (60’s or 70’s) man who I had practice and it was really awkward and he had no idea how to do it. He kept saying, “I’m old; I don’t need to use condoms”.
On Friday though, all of the Nyamasheke crew met in Cyangugu and we had lunch together and hung out and ran some errands. I had 6 boxes at the post office!!!! All my packages got caught up somewhere and were delivered all at once. We went back to Tricia’s house and had a good dinner with wine she brought back from South Africa and watched a movie. The next day wasn’t so good. I got stuck trying to get home at every instance and I almost flipped my lid. 7 months of being stared at and followed and talked about kinda wears on you and you go a little crazy. Emily and I were not happy campers after that experience and we just stayed in the house on Sunday. Work was fine during the week, had another condom demonstration to the pregnant women and their husbands, gave out polio vaccine to babies and weighed and measured them. We had a few newborns who still had a bunch of gunk of them, it was kinda gross.
Oh, and when I was working in the ARV room Monday, a young boy (probably 12) came in and I met him and talked to him and then he came back to the clinic on Tuesday and when I was at Tricia’s house, I walked over to the hospital to go to the cantina to buy some eggs in the morning and he was at the hospital! I talked to him and asked if he was sick and when he was returning to Mwezi. He didn’t know. I hope to make friends with some of the kids and get to know them by name. Supposedly my organization gives my clinic money to do a club thing with the HIV+ kids, but I have never heard of it, so I am going to ask my titulaire about it and see if I can get it up and running.
Sorry I haven’t written in so long, my internet decided to crap out on me, so I haven’t been able to get on and do things. I turned in my culminating paper for my MPH program and now I am DONE!! J
Friday, August 28, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
IST in Kibuye
I had a weeklong meeting in Kibuye with Peace Corps. It was really fun to see everyone again and the hotel was right on the lake. I went into Kigali on Saturday with a friend and on the way there we had to stop in the middle of the road going through the forest because a huge troop of about 20 baboons were all over the road. My friend had to go into the city because some of his workers had gotten in trouble at the airport for being drunk and got arrested, so he had to go try and get them out and onto the next flight. I drove around with him to the jail and to the embassy and then back to the jail and it was just a crazy day with no one being helpful. Makes for a funny story now, but it was frustrating then. Sunday when I tried to get my bus to Kibuye for the meeting, the guy who told me his bus was going, I only had to wait for it to fill, decided to go to another town instead after me waiting around for an hour and a half and then I couldn’t find another going, so I had to call PC and tell them I couldn’t make it. Turns out a few other people didn’t make it either, so I bought tickets for the three of us for Monday morning and we all made it there safely. The meetings were long and kind of boring, but it was interesting to see what everyone has been doing at their sites and on Friday we had a really useful presentation on Kangaroo Mother Care. It’s an innovative way to care for low birth weight babies in settings where there are no incubators. I want to introduce it to my clinic and teach it to the community health workers, in case they run into a home birth and the baby is small and the mom cannot make it to the clinic.
Wednesday afternoon we all took a boat out to Amahoro island and had lunch there and went swimming. I swam to two other islands and caught a fish with my bare hands! On the island there was also a monkey tied to a tree. It was sad. People kept giving him food and we filled a water bottle with soda, and then later on with some beer and he enjoyed it. Almost every day after the meetings I went swimming. The hotel is right on the lake and it was so beautiful, I didn’t want to leave. I got a ride with PC back into Kigali on Friday afternoon and stayed with a friend. One of Emily’s friends who is a PCV in Cameroon came on Friday, so we all went out to dinner and she is going to come stay with us for a few days. I got lucky and got a ride home in a CRS car, so all in all, I only had to take one three hour bus this whole week! I had to squish into the back seat with 3 other people and I had the belt buckle up my bum the whole ride, but its better than the giant buses with people puking. On the radio there was a talk show and interspersed with the talking was a guitar solo of away in a manger… so strange. Right when we got into the forest there was a huge troop of baboons again! So, I got to see them on the way out and on the way back in. I got dropped off at the town on the road and took a moto back to my house. It was getting kind of late and the sun was starting to go down and over the tea fields there was a rainbow; very nice welcome home after 9 days away.
Monday, I heard some kids outside yelling “good morning” to me, so I went outside and talked to them for a minute and then told them I couldn’t visit because I was sick. Later a group of about 15 people came and were yelling at me from my fence and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that many people, so I just hid inside the house. Then after they left (they stayed for about 20 minutes) I heard some crunching leaves and went out to see who was here now and it was 4 little kids, no more than 8 years old. I knew one of the girls, so I talked to them for a while and gave them some empty bottles I had lying around the house. I went back inside and then heard a branch snap and giggling, so I went out and saw one of the kids on top of the fence climbing over and then two came around the corner, who had already jumped the fence. I yelled at them and told them they were bad and it’s not okay to climb my fence and showed them out. They didn’t leave and I got really frustrated. Emily and her friend showed up while I was still dealing with the kids, so I didn’t notice that they were still around and then there was a big group of many kids of all different ages. They started yelling “good morning” and “what is your name” at us and I told them to leave and they wouldn’t go and so my girl who cleans the house once a week came and yelled at them. We decided we should burn the trash pit, since that was the impetus for the jumping of the fence (they wanted to grab things out of it, which is why I was so angry at them…I don’t want them playing with garbage!), so we set the pit on fire and went back inside. We heard some yelling and Emily came out to put her laundry in and she starts yelling “Ali, Ali, Ali, I NEED YOUR HELP!!” I ran outside and our fence was on fire. It’s the dry season so there are a lot of dried leaves and the fire jumped out of the pit, burned the dried leaves on the ground and then caught our fence on fire. So we all started filling buckets and throwing water onto the fence, all the while the kids are still yelling “good morning” (it was about 4:30pm at this time) and “what is your name”. I was so annoyed and fed up with the kids that I yelled at them and then went and got one of the nuns. She came over and they disappeared. Nuns are very respected and since our house and the fields around it is their property, the kids knew to take off.
Wednesday afternoon we all took a boat out to Amahoro island and had lunch there and went swimming. I swam to two other islands and caught a fish with my bare hands! On the island there was also a monkey tied to a tree. It was sad. People kept giving him food and we filled a water bottle with soda, and then later on with some beer and he enjoyed it. Almost every day after the meetings I went swimming. The hotel is right on the lake and it was so beautiful, I didn’t want to leave. I got a ride with PC back into Kigali on Friday afternoon and stayed with a friend. One of Emily’s friends who is a PCV in Cameroon came on Friday, so we all went out to dinner and she is going to come stay with us for a few days. I got lucky and got a ride home in a CRS car, so all in all, I only had to take one three hour bus this whole week! I had to squish into the back seat with 3 other people and I had the belt buckle up my bum the whole ride, but its better than the giant buses with people puking. On the radio there was a talk show and interspersed with the talking was a guitar solo of away in a manger… so strange. Right when we got into the forest there was a huge troop of baboons again! So, I got to see them on the way out and on the way back in. I got dropped off at the town on the road and took a moto back to my house. It was getting kind of late and the sun was starting to go down and over the tea fields there was a rainbow; very nice welcome home after 9 days away.
Monday, I heard some kids outside yelling “good morning” to me, so I went outside and talked to them for a minute and then told them I couldn’t visit because I was sick. Later a group of about 15 people came and were yelling at me from my fence and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that many people, so I just hid inside the house. Then after they left (they stayed for about 20 minutes) I heard some crunching leaves and went out to see who was here now and it was 4 little kids, no more than 8 years old. I knew one of the girls, so I talked to them for a while and gave them some empty bottles I had lying around the house. I went back inside and then heard a branch snap and giggling, so I went out and saw one of the kids on top of the fence climbing over and then two came around the corner, who had already jumped the fence. I yelled at them and told them they were bad and it’s not okay to climb my fence and showed them out. They didn’t leave and I got really frustrated. Emily and her friend showed up while I was still dealing with the kids, so I didn’t notice that they were still around and then there was a big group of many kids of all different ages. They started yelling “good morning” and “what is your name” at us and I told them to leave and they wouldn’t go and so my girl who cleans the house once a week came and yelled at them. We decided we should burn the trash pit, since that was the impetus for the jumping of the fence (they wanted to grab things out of it, which is why I was so angry at them…I don’t want them playing with garbage!), so we set the pit on fire and went back inside. We heard some yelling and Emily came out to put her laundry in and she starts yelling “Ali, Ali, Ali, I NEED YOUR HELP!!” I ran outside and our fence was on fire. It’s the dry season so there are a lot of dried leaves and the fire jumped out of the pit, burned the dried leaves on the ground and then caught our fence on fire. So we all started filling buckets and throwing water onto the fence, all the while the kids are still yelling “good morning” (it was about 4:30pm at this time) and “what is your name”. I was so annoyed and fed up with the kids that I yelled at them and then went and got one of the nuns. She came over and they disappeared. Nuns are very respected and since our house and the fields around it is their property, the kids knew to take off.
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