I get peed on, John serves as a human mattress, and we all learn some English

On Friday (July 10) we went out to a very beautiful community that had a lot of open space. Upon exiting the car I spotted a woman holding an adorable baby girl. A few of us were saying hello to the mother and the baby, and then the mom just gave the little girl to me. She was one of the happiest babies I'd seen thus far on the trip. She would small and laugh and gurgle at you. So I'm standing there with her and talking to her when all of a sudden I felt something very warm and suspiciously wet on my side. I looked down only to realize that I was being peed on. And let me tell you, that baby girl had a LOT of pee in her little body. She continued to smile at me as her urine went dripping all the way down my leg to soak my sandal as well. Good morning to me!

That was the first time that our team went to greet the chief of the village. Paul, the doctors, Megan , and Rachel went to do that while the rest of us set up and got organized. I was on pharmacy with Rachel and Sheila that day, which was really fun but very busy. The village we were in didn't have many chairs of benches, so the vitals people (John and Jules) mostly stood to do their work. In pharmacy we were mostly standing, so we didn't notice as much. The kids crew (Helen, Chad, and Michelle) decided to do some bracelet making because they had a smaller group of children that morning. Or so they thought. About twenty minutes into their crafting we all saw a giant stampede of uniformed children running at high speed down the road towards us. They made a bee line right to where the other children were. I actually don't know how well that all played out, but no riots ensued so I assume there were no serious problems.

The lovely lady who gave me a golden shower

A while into the morning we noticed that both Doctors Steve and Joe were missing from their tables. A few minutes later we saw them walking back from a house, where they had lanced an abscess on the backside of a little baby. Sheila did some wound care on a man who I believe had burned his leg that day. Other than snippets of what was happening in the actual clinic I missed out on most cases because the pharmacy pretty consistently had a stack of prescriptions to fill and hand out. We gave out a lot of malaria medication that day. In fact we almost ran out of our main adult malaria medication that we had with us! Because we only had one translator on pharmacy we pulled over the teacher (who taught at the nearby school where the mass of children came from) to help translate for us also so we could get caught up. We originally had asked the pastor the translate for us, but his English was a little rocky and as its important for people to understand how to take their medications, he went off to help out Helen and Chad by translating their lessons to the kids instead. Helen told me that when he first came over he asked if they were going to start the story and she said "No, we're waiting for the pastor", to which he replied "I am the pastor!".

In the afternoon we got the opportunity to see a lot of Fulani people (a lot of women with their children). I've written about them before (check out my post "I write about the villages"). It was really cool to be able to administer care to these nomadic people who may not often receive healthcare. They are such beautiful and strong people. Their faces tend to have a longer, thinner shape than the Ghanaians do; they are often marked by faint tattoos on their faces or arms, and the women are always wearing bright colors.

As the day was winding down John found a little friend named Peter. He had actually seen the doctor and was being treated for malaria, and he really wasn't feeling well. He was sitting on John's lap and after a little while he fell right to sleep, his little head drooping to the side. As John resituated him he kept his arms around John. One of the other boys tried to wake him up but he just snuggled closer to John when he touched him. It was one of the sweetest things I've seen! It really is amazing how comfortable some of these children are with us.

When we return to the hotel in the afternoons our routine is generally to sleep, shower, or just relax until dinner at 6:00 and then to hang out either in someone's room or in the hotel restaurant. Sometimes we'll play Mafia, but lately we've been pretty tired so we just share stories or we'll ask a question and everyone will answer it. That night I had put off showering until after dinner so I missed out on a bit of the hang out session. When I showed up to the room where the rest of the interns were I found out I missed out on two Chad stories! The Chad stories thing started on the way up north when we tried to force Chad to tell us about his first kiss; he wouldn't tell us that, but he did tell us another story that was hilarious! Ever since then we'll ask him for a Chad story, and when he delivers it is never a disappointment. So imagine my chagrin when I missed TWO of them! Luckily he recounted them for me, but it was still a bummer. I'd also missed the confusion of my US teammates when the UK folks started talking about wearing a vest under a shirt. (In the UK a vest is what a tank top is in the US). This sort of thing actually happens quite often. The number of differences in US vs. UK English is higher than most people probably realize.