Hippos and Hospitals

1/10

Dr. Boateng at my hospital is quite a talker, but has a lot of interesting things to tell me about his practice. Everyday during rounds there is some lesson and today’s was about treating appendicitis and avoiding surgery. He administers a combination of about 4 drugs to treat the inflammation and infection. The medication basically kills the appendix and leaves it a lifeless almost tendon. Then there is no need to operate. The patient is the hospital for about a week and usually never returns. Surgury here can be dangerous, when you think about the risk for infection, loss of blood, and cost. The man with AIDS is doing better today. He was moving around and sitting up in bed. I was happy to see him feeling a little better. The man who underwent the hemorrhoidectomy was discharged today. After the hospital I went into town to pick up a package. The tax on my packages is usually under 10GHC, but today they made me pay 47GHC!!! I was furious! They do not have a good system for charging people. They make you open and show them everything in your package. Sometimes they ask for some of it. Umm…NO! If they were typing in a brand and quantity in a computer to get a price and used it for every customer I would feel better.  Instead they look at things and decide what they think I would cost. Some people get shoes and clothes…they have no way of knowing and charging for maybe a real Louis Vuitton bag or even a knock off! But they charged me $15 for a bottle of vitamins! I mean they price I paid to pick up the package was almost the price mom and dad paid for the items inside! CRAZY! Tonight I watched a full Nigerian film with the family. I was determined to sit through it. It was actually not that bad. I mean it was the typical soap opera style film where the wife is kidnapped and the husband falls in love with another woman and turns out both women are pregnant, but in this version one woman is a witch and they use a preacher to shake the Bible and straighten things out. Everyone was happy in the end. …don’t worry I will bring a movie or two back for everyone to see! :)

1/11

Today at the hospital I helped change several dressings. One was a woman who had a tumor removed from her abdomen. The stitches went all the way from below her belly button to her sternum. She was admitted with a distended abdomen, so there had been severe sepsis. A drainage tube was coming out of the abdomen near the scar and another was a nasal tube that was bringing fluid out from inside the stomach. The tube directly out of the abdomen was attached to a bag, but the one from the nose was just draining into a plastic bag on the floor. I cleaned and changed the dressing over the wound and around the drainage tube and ten we removed the nasal tube. I think the nasal tube should have been left in longer or maybe a clean one put in, because there was still thick yellow fluid draining out, The 24-year old man who has been in the hospital for over a year with the bed sores had a surgery this weekend. They attempted to remove the edge of the sores and close them up. The skin just does not seem to want to adhere to itself and close the wound. The stitches are separating and you can see from the fluid coming out of the wound that there is infection.

This afternoon I helped cook dinner! I fried the plantain. We started by cutting and soaking the plantain in salt water. Then using red palm oil on a skillet over a coal burning chimney grill I friend the plantain. The family thought it was funny that “obruni was frying the plantains.” They all were taking pictures of me and were impressed at my frying skills…I don’t think they know how much bacon I eat! :)

frying plantain

1/12

Today they pulled the drainage tube out of the woman with the abdominal mass removed. The whole in her abdomen, where the tube was, drained for several minutes and they kept pressing her stomach to remove all the fluid. The man with the bed sores is not doing very well either. The stitches where they attempted to close the inverted sore had split apart and the skin refuses to bind together. After the hospital for our weekly meeting, Projects Abroad took us to a Soccer game. We saw the Kotoko team from Kumasi take on the Cape Coast Dwarfs. Kumasi won! There were several new volunteers that arrived this week. They were from America, Denmark, and Canada.

1/13

Today for outreach, because I am the only medical volunteer left, it was just Enoch, Chief and myself. We went to a school we had been to before Christmas. At this school the first time the kids cried and were terrified of white people. This time they all wanted to hold my hand and they chanted a song that basically means “welcome white lady.” The older kids asked where I was from and when I told them I was from America, they asked if I knew Obama. I told them we were best friends.

1/15

This morning I left Kumasi by myself to travel to Nkoranza and meet the other volunteers for a weekend trip. They went to several places I had already been so I just met up with them to go the Bui National Park. My trotro arrived fine in Nkoranza and I met up with my new roomates, Casper and Louisa, Jan, Camilla, Catherine, Marguerite, Louise, and Anne. We went to a hotel called the Pony Hotel up the road in Wenchi.

1/16

This morning all the new people were feeling ill, so Anne, Louise and myself made the trip alone to Bui. We first went to the trotro station in Wenchi and ate breakfast at a little stand at the entrance. We had fried egg, bread and coffee. It was delicious! 

Me, Louise, and Anne at breakfast

We then found the tro heading to Wenchi and got on. After about 2 hours of driving down dirt roads and scary wooden bridges we arrived at the Bui village. When we got out of the tro we asked the driver what time he would retun that afternoon so we could get a ride back to Kumasi and go home. He said this was the last trip of the day and the next tro would arrive at 530 the next morning. We all were only prepared to stay the one night before with clothes and money. So we figured everything up and decided we came all the way out here to see Hippos at Bui that we would scrape the money and stay the night. We booked a room at the camp and prepared for the hike to the fishing village. We were also not prepared to walk very far so I only had sandals. 

Anne and Louise walking

our guide...note the flip flops and socks...

We walked for about 2 hours to the village where we rested while the guide prepared the canoes. Several village kids came over and were showing off in front of us. 

me and Louise

me with the kids

the kid in the red was hysterical!

After one kid licked the dirt for our entertainment we stopped showing them as much attention. We then walked a little further to the water. 

our canoes

We took a 30 minute canoe trip on the Black Volta to an area where there are usually hippos. During the canoe trip we noticed these little black bugs that were on us. Once they sat for a while the spot started to sting, but otherwise we did not notice them. When we knocked them off they would leave a little blood spot. Several times I would look at my legs and they would be covered in these bugs. We parked on a sand bar and watched 2 hippos interact in the water in front of us. They would mostly stare at each other, but occasionally they made noises and would yawn and show off their huge mouth and teeth. 

me and Anne

hippo!

yawning

Louise and Anne

We watched them for about an hour then made the trip back to the village we were staying in. 

dirty feet after the walk

Thankfully there was water, but we had a local woman make dinner for us because there was nothing else to eat in the village. We ate rice and tomato sauce. We had to walk about 50 yards to a shed in the back of the village to use the bathroom, but the smell, the fact it was a hole in the ground and that there was no light led us to just go in the grass behind the building. It did not seem as strange as it should though because that’s how everyone in the village, or in most villages for that matter, goes to the bathroom.

            Much of the land around where we were staying is used as a lumber yard. There were sounds of chainsaws throughout the day. Also up the river a company is building a dam for electricity. The dam will flood almost all of Bui. Many animal species including the hippo could be wiped out from this area. The people in all the surrounding villages are being relocated. I think it will be about 19 more months before they are finished and will begin flooding the area.

The sun sets very quickly near the equator so after eating a quick dinner and going to the bathroom it was almost dark.the light in the room was not much to speak of so we quickly got ready for bed and played cards until we felt tired. We tried to go to sleep about 8:00. The sounds of people, bats hitting the roof and windows, roosters, goats, sheep, birds, possibly monkeys, insects crawling around, the complete isolation and darkness, and heat from there not being a fan kept us awake. I decided not to check my watch and just lay there. I kept feeling those flies biting me even though we doused ourselves in bug repellent before we went to sleep. When I did check my watch I thought it had to be 3 in the morning, but it was only 11:56!

1/17

By 230am I was angry, tired, hot and restless. I noticed the other girls awake too so we turned on the lights and talked. We did not sleep the whole night. When the lights came on I realized my legs were COVERED in red bumps. I was itching like crazy! There were also giant larvae looking insects crawling on the floor. Finally 5 o’clock came and we got up and got ready to meet the morning trotro. Getting out of the room was a slight issue because the door can be pushed from the outside but there was not handle on the inside to pull it open and it was a tight door jam. 

opening the door

We finally got it open. In the hallway was a giant spider and many more larvae insects. The guy who runs the lodge walked us down to where the trotro comes. There were about 10 people waiting fort he tro with us. When it arrived it was compeletely full. Only 2 or 3 people got off at our stop and everyone crammed in very quickly. We were determined to get on and get home, however. Several men got out and sat on the roof and then we sat behind the front seat on the engine piece facing the back of the tro. Including the people on the roof there were 26 people in the trotro that should legally hold 13 people! It was very tight and a very uncomfortable 2 hour ride back to Wenchi. When we arrived we ate breakfast at the little place we ate at the day before. After standing up and getting circulation in my legs, I realized how bad and how much my body was itching from the bugs. The guide had told us they were “African Black Flies.” We the n found a tro heading back to Kumasi and made the trip home. Once in Kumasi we went for lunch at a local place and got really good spicy fried rice. After this trip we just wanted to go home, sleep, and shower! We did not bring clothes for an extra day and did not plan on showering since we were only suppsed to be gone the one day! We were pretty filthy! When I got back to the house the gate was locked!! The family was out for the afternoon and I had forgotten to call and say when I would be home. So I went down the road to a little pub and got a drink and read and watched TV until they got home. It all worked out in the end, but this was by far the most eventful trip I have taken! I also have 123 very itchy bites all over me!! 

bites

this is just one of my legs covered in bites!