December 19th and 20th
Church Sunday was not much different than usual, though more
people wore African clothing than normal. This Sunday was
Africana Sunday at Katherie church so everyone was supposed to
wear African stuff. The youth sang a song they made up about
Africans and serving the Lord and such. They did a really good job
considering they had only started working on it two days before.
These two little kids sat next to me. I don’t mind that they want to
be friends but they always want play around during the service
and it’s hard enough to understand the Krio anyway. I’m getting
there, I’m working on my Krio with Solomon, Samuel and some
other people. After church I didn’t do a whole lot, spent most of
the time just relaxing waiting for Tom to decide when he wanted
to go down to the hospital to start packing the staff gifts. Linda,
Jordan, Philip, Karen, Tom and I all went down to work on it.
People send things (clothing, shoes, hygiene items, etc) and they
pack them into bags as gifts for all the staff members. We had to
sort through boxes of stuff and then we packed 53 gift bags with
an assortment of things. We stopped a little after six to have
dinner and then Tom and I went back down to the room to finish
sorting things and putting all the boxes stuff away (we were
working in the outpatient/dispensary room and it needed to be
free for the clinic the next morning. After that I went to hang out
with Solomon for a little bit and then went to bed. Monday I went
on ward rounds in the hospital with Samuel. Rounds consist of
going through the wards, checking on the progress of previous
patients and seeing to any new ones. It’s quite interesting and it
gives me something constructive and useful to do during the
Christmas holiday when I don’t have any teaching to do. I will see
how this goes and then I might spend some time even after school
starts again doing it if I continue to find it interesting. I only teach
in the afternoon so my mornings are free and since that’s when
they do the ward rounds I think it could work. The very first
patient we saw was pretty sick, on top of that when they gave him
a transfusion of blood the day before they accidently punctured
his vein so some of the blood entered the tissues rather than
entering the blood stream where it belongs. Solomon wanted his
BP and since his right arm was swollen and sore from the botched
transfusion he needed him to sit up and turn so he could use his
left arm. He then proceeded to vomit on the floor. Surprisingly I
didn’t find it in the least disturbing and just went on listening to
Solomon explaining what he was doing and such. We saw the
rest of the patients without any real incidents. Solomon did a
really good job explaining, though at times he explained a little
more than he would have needed to, I know a little bit about
some of the things from studying biochemistry. But that’s ok,
I couldn’t expect him to know what I do and don’t know and I’d
rather get too much explanation rather than not enough. When
we came back in the afternoon to see some people who we
were waiting on lab results for we found out two people decided
they wanted to leave to pursue traditional medicine. The first
patient (who is very sick and we’ll not likely see again unless
he is very lucky if he isn’t he will likely die) and the other was a
guy who got beaten and had an upper arm fracture. Tom says
it’s likely we’ll see him again, to do an amputation. They try to
persuade these people to stay but if they want to go they have
to let them or if something where to happen they people could
place the blame on the hospital (sadly law suits happen here
too). When we had finished that Solomon and I were standing
just outside the medical wing talking about things I’d seen
today and he was explaining some other stuff. While we were
out there the brown men (they wear brown uniforms and go
by the brown men, they do a lot of the manual labor around
the hospital) came out carrying a stretcher with a young girl
on it who had died. They then proceeded to tie the girl to this
one lady’s back and then got onto a Honda and another woman
got on behind to help keep the girl on the bike. With the driver
there were four people on the Honda. This would be quite a
grim task. I don’t think I would feel comfortable doing that. But
if they don’t have much money then this is the only way, a car
is expensive and the only other alternative would be to carry
her (in this case 12 miles). I spent a little while hanging out with
Solomon and then I headed home. Karen has been sick and still
wasn’t feeling very well yesterday so I volunteered to make
dinner (nothing fancy, just spaghetti). After dinner Tom and I
went to the pharmacy and sorted some medications people had
sent over. A note, if you send spare medications and such,
don’t send a bottle with one or two pills in it. It serves no
purpose here if there isn’t even enough for a treatment. It
doesn’t do any good to start someone on a drug we don’t
have any more of. It would be better to send it as an
empty pill bottle so we don’t have to spend time trying to
sort out bottles of one or two pills. We need empty pill
bottles for putting specimens in (stool, urine, etc…). After
we finished there I went and watched the end of the Jesus
film in Loko, which was just as much gibberish to me as it
was in Limba. BS (the hospital administrator) returned this
evening, so I went there with Solomon and Samuel. BS is
Solomon’s cousin, so Solomon goes there a lot when he is
around to do things for BS. From there we went to a 40
day wake celebrations for a staff member at the hospitals
older brother. It’s a lot like a party, loud music, dancing
and other stuff. On the way there we came across a line
of driver ants we didn’t see until we were pretty much on
them, Solomon stopped me from walking right into them
but he got some of them on him. Not badly at least,
because they can be really bad in large numbers. We
didn’t stay very long, Solomon just went to be seen since
the youth asked him to be there. After we left he walked
me up to the house before heading to bed himself. I had
just laid down for bed at a little before 12 and was just
about asleep when I heard, not singing, but screaming
carolers. They were literally screaming out, ironically, Silent
Night. I don’t mind carols, but midnight and screaming? I
was quite irritated; I gave them some money, told them
to come early next year and sent them off. There is
something to be said about quality over volume but I don’t
think Sierra Leoneans understand that concept at all. For
them louder is always better. Anyway, that’s about all for
tonight. Good night all.

Blessings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks