Chad loses a sock, I make a pun, and a few of us get pooped on

As I sit at home in the US writing this, I find I'm actually thankful that I slacked off on my blogging while in Ghana. There are two reasons for this. I'm thankful that I gave myself the option while overseas not to write every day. It took stress off of the day, and allowed me to be in the present moment with my team and with those we served. Additionally, remembering these experiences now is a way to hold on to them a little bit longer in the forefront of my mind.

As of this moment I've been home for about 24 hours. I have to admit that it's not easy being here. My heart and head are still thousands of miles away, and I ache to be somewhere that I'm not. I know that time will lessen the yearning to some extent, but these first few days back will be a bit trying for me. It's a small kind of comfort to be able to come to this blog where I'm wrapped in my African adventure. Speaking of the adventure, let's pick up on Monday, July 13...

Monday morning was a tad rough for room 65 (Megan, Helen, and I) because, as I mentioned before, we had a late night of talking on Sunday. But nevertheless, we roused ourselves in time to catch breakfast. When John came down that morning he reported that Chad was not feeling very well and didn't know if he'd be coming out with us. I said that I bet he would rally and end up coming (I was hoping so since he was doing vitals with me that day!) and I was correct!

A few of the women washing clothing

When we got out to the village that day we discovered that the shaded area where we would be working was provided with shade by two large trees that had a TON of bats swooping around them. I was personally really surprised to see so many bats flying around during the day. There were a few incidences with bat droppings that day, and I know that at least one of our docs had to move his table out of the line of fire! Chad also had an interesting situation when we got to the village that day. I've debated whether or not to write about it here, but I think I'll leave the details between those of us that he chooses to tell. I'll just say this: if you ever find yourself in a tricky bathroom situation in an African village, remember your socks. If you're wearing sandals, well, may the force be with you. That morning seemed to have quite a few interesting scenarios, as we discovered while setting up that we had left the vitals box back at the hotel. I proceeded to make a hilarious pun about it being vital that we have that box (my pun received no laughter by the way. Not even a sympathy laugh). But we scrounged up some BP cuffs, and we found our thermometers so we made do with what we could get.

So as I mentioned, I was on vitals that day. That was my second day vital-ing. I found that I really enjoyed this job! It could be a little rushed feeling at times when we needed to get patients to the docs quickly, but in slower times it was nice to be able to spend a few moments with each person. And of course being able to hold the babies to weigh them was a joy (that is, when they weren't screaming). Chad actually ended up getting just about every screaming kid in the village that day. Poor guy. A lot of the children in that village were a little wary of us, and the children's ministry folks had a hard time getting the kids to warm up to them at first. The one thing that made vitals tricky for me that day was the fact that women would come up with children and then would announce it wasn't their child; I'd ask who the mother was and they'd call for another lady who would come running up with the rest of her brood. I think that's a really good example of how community driven the people were there. Babies and children aren't only under the care of their birth mother, but of many of the women in the community. Some of this has to do with the fact that many Muslim men have multiple wives. We met a lot of women who were one of two or three wives. In these situations it appeared that the multiple wives would sort of share the child rearing responsibilities, regardless of whose child was whose.

The little girl with the high fever

That day we saw a couple of kids who had epilepsy. Some team members who had been on previous trips had said that epileptic people are looked down upon, and we'd had some encounters with that attitude on our trip to. It was encouraging to me to see these epileptic children being taken care of enough by their parents or guardians that they brought them to see the doctor. There didn't appear to be any public shunning or anything either, which was also encouraging to me. Near the end of the day I was wrapping up vitals when Steve sent a little girl, maybe about ten years old, over to me to have her temperature taken. You could feel the fever on her skin. I've never touched human skin that hot before. It was literally like touching an oven burner. She ended up having about a 105 degree fever. Steve remarked that it's amazing to see how a fever of that severity differently affected her than it would most of us. She was by no means jumping around, but she was walking about on her own, giving no large indication that she was burning up. On the contrary if I had a fever that high, I'd be in bed in a weak state.

When we arrived back at the hotel that afternoon a few of us were discussing the prospect of getting our hands on some FanIce. We asked the reception if there was a place nearby where we could buy some. They said that there was, so our next objective was to get Dr. Joe (who was sitting in reception) to walk with us. He really didn't want to. We saw one of our translators, Richard, walking by, and in an attempt to prove to Joe how quick of a walk it would be we asked Richard how far down the road the FanIce place was. He said not far, and we continued to plead with Joe but Richard said that he would drive us. So the few of us that were in the lobby piled in the van to go up the street. At the very last second Dr. Joe came running out of the lobby to join us. Which just goes to show that you can't resist a cold FanIce on a hot day in Africa.