African Time

Hello friends! Today is Monday 31 May, aka Memorial Day. I hope you all spent time with family and friends, maybe even had a picnic or barbeque. Today our clinical group was going to visit the TBA (traditional birth attendants) and we weren't sure exactly what we would be doing today. Our bus was scheduled to depart from Mum's at 0900. At about 0915, we started placing bets on what time the bus would actually arrive. Our ranges were from 0920-1036. We played by Price is Right Rules-so the girl who guessed 1036 won. Actual arrival time was just shy of NOON. So with an almost three hour delay, we embarked on a very bumpy ride on our bus into the remote village area. After trying to plow through the very narrow roads, with large potholes and steep ditches, we ended up getting off of the bus and going for a walk instead. The walk turned into probably a 2 mile hike along these narrow dirt/dusty "roads" to get to the home of the first TBA.

She has been delivering babies since 1979, and went through official training in 2001. It was actually a very interesting presentation, but we didn't get to see any deliveries or anything like that. We gave her lots of supplies, because she does not get paid for her work, and supplies like gloves, towels, basins etc. are very scarce. She was very grateful for our generosity and thanked us.

The second TBA we saw was not as interesting as the first. I am sad to report that I am feeling like many people, including small children correlate white people with money, and it seems that the well off people live off of the hand-outs intended for those who have less. One of the (in my opinion) useless BU women in charge (in charge of our trip because she has all of our money?!?!) demand that we give her our sandals so that she would be more comfortable to walk, and then when we refused (we would have been barefoot in cow manure, rocks, brush and dirt) she then demanded we give her a pair of the flip flops that we had purchased and brought to give to the peasant children, because they don't own a pair. When we again refused, she hitched a ride on a motor bike (or a moped) because she didn't want to walk. I don't recall if I told you that our group watched her counterpart, the other powerful woman that does nothing for us, demand that one of the nursing students pour a bottle of water over her hands so that she could wash her hands. This was instead of using a sink with tap water and soap, which all of the rest of us use. So if you are wondering why we haven't been getting the water we need to survive, it is because like many of the resources that are here, are allocated to those that do not need them (like using bottled water to wash your hands. Seriously.) I will point out that today, we walked close to 4 miles in the scorching African heat, sweated buckets and burned to a crisp, and we still did not receive the water we needed. I drank a total of 3 bottles of 500 mL water-I think I've peed a total of once today. Renal failure??? Dehydration??? Who knows. And then, when we returned to the hospital for our "lunch" (which I should add, that none of us are even eating because we physically cannot face the same food over and over) the BU instructors demanded that we give them flip flops for their children. Hello??? They are part of the "have" group, and our donations are for those who do not have anything! A side note about the catered lunch/dinner situation: not only is it the same food, but last week, one of the chicken pieces had feathers still on it, and there were chicken necks in with the serving bowl. AND when we had fish on one day, the fish were served with eyes and brains. No thank you. I just want a bottle of water; I cannot stomach that. Maybe that is why I got so sick. It seems to have resolved somewhat; I am feeling much better now.

All I can say is that today, I have been extremely crabby. I hope that tomorrow, I will wake up on the other side of bed. We are doing HIV outreach tomorrow, maybe doing some of our teaching projects and potentially doing some vision screening-it should be an eye opening and rewarding day. I am very much looking forward to being home though: 13 more days. I miss you all very much.