This Is Africa

So the doctors here say T.I.A. all the time.  Racking the medical part of my brain, I came up with transient ischemic attack.  Which made absolutely no sense in context.  So I finally asked.  It stands for “this is Africa” and they use it as a way to explain the unexplainable, the rare, and the ridiculous.  You might hear it said when you see a child dying of an easily treatable disease or you might say it when a lizard craps on your head.  It’s quite the versatile phrase.

Anyways, my point in all this is that yesterday was my day to realize that this is Africa.  And it is absolutely nothing like home. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, but when jet-lagged, hungry, and homesick, it is quite overwhelming.  Today I am feeling a bit more adjusted (and less homesick thanks to lots of emails from friends and family.  You guys are amazing!), so I think I’m ready to write about everything.

I started my first day in the pediatrics ward.  Bryan, Brett, and Dandi split up between the male and female wards.  Within the first hour, I saw five patients with diseases I had never seen before.  There was tuberculosis meningitis, Kwashiokor malnutrition, and worms to name a few.  Although I expected to see very sick children here, I did not expect SO many to be THAT sick. It was a lot to take in.  The other three had similar experiences with new diseases and procedures.  Dandi got to do a spinal tap on her own and Brett got to drain the fluid off someone’s chest.  The opportunities to learn new things here are amazing.  They are so short-staffed that they are essentially letting us function as much like doctors as we are comfortable with.  For instance, one of the staff physicians and I ran the high risk prenatal clinic today.  They do not have specific ob/gyn docs here, so we pretty much split up the patients and he trusted that I knew how to manage them as well as he did.

Although the patients were just as sick today, it was a much better day for me. I realized this morning that, medically, there is very little to do for some of these children.  But they are still kids, and still want to be treated like kids.  So, some of the healthier kids and I moved the beds to the side and kicked around a soccer ball on the ward today.  It was an amazing experience.  Neither the kids nor I could understand a word of the other’s language and yet we had so much fun.  They were shrieking and laughing and looked like normal kids again.  One of the boys had a leg fracture and was stuck in bed.  He looked sad that he couldn’t play, so I took the ball over and threw it to him.  During our game of catch, what with my great aim and all, I accidentally bounced it off his head.  I have never seen a group of kids laugh so hard.  They thought it was the funniest thing of all time and spent the next ten minutes trying to bounce it off my head. It was also great to see their mothers relax a bit when their children were having fun.

As I knew I would, I have already grown attached to a few little guys.  One of them is two years old with HIV, tuberculosis, and severe malnutrition.  He has a type of malnutrition where his head and his belly actually swell so he looks really fat even though he’s so sick.  His pajamas are gigantic on him and he looks like a little old man.  He’s mr. independent and wants to hang with the big kids on his ward all the time.  His mother has abandoned him here for the time being so he mostly just does his own thing.  Today, he wasn’t his normal happy self and wouldn’t stop crying just standing in the corner by himself.  He eventually wandered over and started pulling on my pants.  The instant I picked him, he stopped crying and fell asleep.  I guess he just needed a little attention.  I’m gonna have a hard time not bringing him home with me. J

I know this is getting long, but just to end things on a lighter note, here’s a few blips of humor from the past two days.  We made the trek to the town’s grocery store yesterday.  It was a zoo! I almost got runover on the way there.  The German doc who is here pulled me out of the way twice!  Guess I can’t cross streets like I do in Lawrence, Kansas! The store was crazy….sooooo many people.  We found a few more edible foods, but it’s still pretty slim pickings.  Last night, we tried to make spaghetti for dinner.  Turns out, not only can you not turn on two kitchen appliances at once, but you can’t turn on two burners either.  It takes a little while to cook noodles, meat, and sauce that way.  Surprisingly, I have not seen a mosquito since I’ve been here.  Apparently the mosquito nets are actually more to block lizard poop, but it’s so small it falls right through the holes so I’m not sure what the point is.  Brett says he’s done with his cause he keeps waking up with the net along with lizard poop on his face in the morning.  Lastly, there is a very confused rooster somewhere in this neighborhood.  He fails miserably as an alarm clock, but crows from about 3:00-4:30 a.m. every night. T.I.A!!!

Miss you all and hope you are enjoying the updates.  I’ll try to keep them shorter now that I’m all settled in.



Our humble abode




My seat and the luggage that took it over



The hanging of the mosquito nets

Our shower--try not to be jealous

Louis, the resident gecko