Last weeks of August

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