Wow! I haven't had a post up in about three weeks!
Well, in three weeks, I lost 15 pounds (this is not a good thing), got sick for the first time (it wasn't too bad, I just had to get rid of the thing that I ate. Although admittedly, it is not fun when food at various stages of digestion goes out of both ends of your GI tract at a hundred miles per hour), watched the dismembering of a goat (tastes like chicken), saw the arrival of seven new volunteers (in the town, there are now six German girls, two Swedish girls, and one German guy (I haven't met him yet), and been continuing to learn more of the work at the hospital.
There should be epic poems composed about how much I have read in the last three weeks. I have read "Things They Carried" (awesome book, couldn't recommend it more- I read it in one sitting), "Witch of Portobello", "Molokai", "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", "Crime and Punishment" (I started reading this before I came back from the Kakum/beach), and "Atlas Shrugged". At the hospital, after the initial flurry of activity in the first two hours (making beds, dressing wounds, removing stitches, etc), my job consists of monitoring vital signs every 15 minutes to an hour, so I take the three to four hours at the hospital during which I would otherwise be idle as well as the two or three additional hours at home after work to read. Unfortunately, I have exhausted my library, but tomorrow I will take the one hour tro tro ride to go to the nearest big town to pick up science textbooks that I asked my parents to send me.
I have been exercising very rigorously. Everyday, I do 300 push ups and 500 sit ups, and either run for 30 to 90 minutes (sometimes joined by Philine but usually by myself), or play soccer. The running trails here are beautiful. Once I run five minutes away from the house, I feel like that I am in an episode of Man vs. Wild, and I'm Bear Grylls venturing through the vast, green, interminable African jungle. A couple of times, I have gotten lost (very scary), but other than that, the runs are awesome. I never thought that I would enjoy running so much.
There is no other way to put it: I'm happy here. I've been told that human beings are the happiest when they have a daily routine, and so far, I have found out that this is true. In addition to waking up early and doing everything with a 100 % effort and fervent passion, achieving a comfort level with the Ghanaian culture has helped immensely. Somehow, I am just as comfortable here in the village using bucket showers (sometimes rain showers) as I am swimming in the pool in my parent's dream house.
It is rainy season. Sometimes, it feels like that the man or woman upstairs forgot to turn off the faucet to the sky. Perpetual puddles occupied by hundreds of tadpoles have formed in some of the paths. When it is raining hard enough, I take my shampoo and body wash and take a shower in the rain. It is actually very economic: saves the human effort of having to fetch water from the well.
If I could change one thing, it would be the presence of a piano. I have been inquiring constantly for the wooden instrument, but so far, I have not had any luck. Sometimes, I feel like a part of my soul is missing.
It is so weird whenever I come to the Internet Cafe and go on facebook, I see everyone back home posting about how college/high school is. It feels like high school was a lifetime ago. It's just a blurred memory that comes back once in a while.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
"Urgent"
Sorry about the absence of a blog in the recent days. I wrote one three days ago, but it turned out so dull that I decided not to post it.
Meanwhile, I have made it a daily routine to play soccer with my Ghanaian friends. The goals are a pair of rocks placed two to three feet apart and the field is on rather a severe slope, but it is refreshing to be able to compete athletically. Soccer is not my sport: in eighth grade I tried out for goalie, but instead of blocking the ball, I repeatedly panicked and rugby tackled the oncoming strikers instead. Surprisingly, attempt two has been better, as I have been competing at an acceptable level. This phenomenon can only be explained by the fact that I am the only person wearing close-toed shoes.
I started at the hospital yesterday. I was supposed to start last Monday but a series of professional mishaps combined to prevent me from possessing the paperwork necessary for me to start until this Tuesday afternoon, and as Wednesday was a national Muslim holiday, I finally was able to go to work yesterday. Tangentially, although Ghana is obviously a Christian country, there is no visible friction between the Muslim minority and the Christian majority.
The hospital is well run and organized, which is really all you can ask for in a rural hospital in the developing world. Yet, there is an obvious lack of funding and urgency. In the Western world, there are machines to measure vital signs, but here in Africa, one must do it by hand. So, one has to count the pulse for a span of a minute, measure blood pressure in a very rudimentary way, and count the number of times that the patient inhales and exhales in a course of a minute. This task and ferrying blood from the blood bank to the operating room for blood transfusions have been entrusted to me.
Additionally, there is an utter lack of urgency in the hospital. A patient under operation had life threatening levels of hemoglobin, so I was sent to the blood bank "urgently" to fetch some blood. I found that there was no one in the blood bank, so I had to go to the front desk, then to the lab, to have a guy, who was talking on the phone and laughing, ambling in ten minutes later. The guy seemed to have some trouble finding the blood, and once he did, I had to wait for it to be warmed for another five minutes. Luckily, the patient survived.
The children at the orphanage have heartbreaking stories. A lot of the little ones did not even have any clothes to wear and many were starving before they came to the orphanage. This makes you subconsciously exaggerate, or otherwise invent their positive qualities because you are so overcome by their unfortunate circumstances. As an adviser of mine put it, I have to be careful to not let the emotional override the rational while working with the kids in the orphanage. All their needs cannot be met, and it would simply be unrealistic to expect them to be.
More optimistically, Julia and I will be heading to Cape Coast/Elmina tomorrow where we will be joined by Bianca. Bianca is riding the 12 hour bus from Tamale to Accra today and tomorrow, she will ride the three hour bus from Accra to Cape Coast. Unfortunately, after this trip, she will be going back to Belgium.
A great thing about living in a developing country is that the travel costs are insanely cheap. A bad thing about living in a developing country is that you never know when a road will be abruptly broken by a river and when you will have to charter a canoe to get to the other side.... Anyway, barring road flooding, this will be a very welcome get away.
Meanwhile, I have made it a daily routine to play soccer with my Ghanaian friends. The goals are a pair of rocks placed two to three feet apart and the field is on rather a severe slope, but it is refreshing to be able to compete athletically. Soccer is not my sport: in eighth grade I tried out for goalie, but instead of blocking the ball, I repeatedly panicked and rugby tackled the oncoming strikers instead. Surprisingly, attempt two has been better, as I have been competing at an acceptable level. This phenomenon can only be explained by the fact that I am the only person wearing close-toed shoes.
I started at the hospital yesterday. I was supposed to start last Monday but a series of professional mishaps combined to prevent me from possessing the paperwork necessary for me to start until this Tuesday afternoon, and as Wednesday was a national Muslim holiday, I finally was able to go to work yesterday. Tangentially, although Ghana is obviously a Christian country, there is no visible friction between the Muslim minority and the Christian majority.
The hospital is well run and organized, which is really all you can ask for in a rural hospital in the developing world. Yet, there is an obvious lack of funding and urgency. In the Western world, there are machines to measure vital signs, but here in Africa, one must do it by hand. So, one has to count the pulse for a span of a minute, measure blood pressure in a very rudimentary way, and count the number of times that the patient inhales and exhales in a course of a minute. This task and ferrying blood from the blood bank to the operating room for blood transfusions have been entrusted to me.
Additionally, there is an utter lack of urgency in the hospital. A patient under operation had life threatening levels of hemoglobin, so I was sent to the blood bank "urgently" to fetch some blood. I found that there was no one in the blood bank, so I had to go to the front desk, then to the lab, to have a guy, who was talking on the phone and laughing, ambling in ten minutes later. The guy seemed to have some trouble finding the blood, and once he did, I had to wait for it to be warmed for another five minutes. Luckily, the patient survived.
The children at the orphanage have heartbreaking stories. A lot of the little ones did not even have any clothes to wear and many were starving before they came to the orphanage. This makes you subconsciously exaggerate, or otherwise invent their positive qualities because you are so overcome by their unfortunate circumstances. As an adviser of mine put it, I have to be careful to not let the emotional override the rational while working with the kids in the orphanage. All their needs cannot be met, and it would simply be unrealistic to expect them to be.
More optimistically, Julia and I will be heading to Cape Coast/Elmina tomorrow where we will be joined by Bianca. Bianca is riding the 12 hour bus from Tamale to Accra today and tomorrow, she will ride the three hour bus from Accra to Cape Coast. Unfortunately, after this trip, she will be going back to Belgium.
A great thing about living in a developing country is that the travel costs are insanely cheap. A bad thing about living in a developing country is that you never know when a road will be abruptly broken by a river and when you will have to charter a canoe to get to the other side.... Anyway, barring road flooding, this will be a very welcome get away.
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