January 27th

So, today I went ahead and went on rounds with Solomon. We
started out in the pediatric ward and took care of them fairly
quickly. There was a lady with two children (twins) one was a boy
and the other was a girl. They were only nine days old and the boy
was literally almost twice the size of the girl. The girl was so small
but very cute. They referred them to the Alpha unit which is a
ward in the hospital that deals with malnutrition. The woman had
twins but only had the tool to feed one (if you catch my drift) and
so Solomon decided they should get some help with that. After
finishing up with the pediatric ward we moved on to the men’s
ward. I like this ward but I think that could be that I’m most
familiar with it and some of the patients who have been there
longer are quite friendly to me (and most of the ones who are new
cases are usually pretty friendly too). The cases are always
different. Even the people with malaria almost never present the
same way. It takes quite a familiarity with all the possible
presentations of malaria to be able to say (without a malaria test)
that a patient has malaria. My favorite part about helping in the
hospital is looking at the patients, their symptoms and trying to
come up with the possible ailment. I think the medical field
could be for me. Don’t quote me on that one but you never know.
After we finished up rounds I headed back up to the house. I
checked on my spliced together plant, all the leaf/branch things
are dying but there is a little new growth on the top so I’m hoping
it’s going to work. I also spent some time writing some of my past
blogs, I got a little behind (surprise surprise), until Tom came up at
a little after 12. By time we got done with lunch it was 1ish and so I
decided to relax for a little bit. I have an easy teaching day on
Thursdays, three periods with the SS 1s. Unfortunately there was a
small complication today, I had a migraine. Teaching went ok but I
had to keep on my sunglasses and continually ask the kids to try
and keep the noise down. I taught them bio for a period, then they
have a period in between my bio class and my chem class (they are
supposed to have physics but the teacher doesn’t come) so I
decided that I will try my best to help them with physics during
that period since I don’t have anything to do that period anyway.
We worked on the metric system and converting distances today. I
think we made good progress, but I need to check them when I see
them tomorrow. Then we had chemistry and by the end they were
pretty restless (I think just about anyone would be after 135
minutes of listening to me drone on about biology, chemistry and
physics). After class I called Solomon to see if we could practice on
the Honda some and he said he would have to check and call me
back. Which pretty much means no if I don’t call him myself so when
Tom asked if I wanted to go on a walk I said sure. We took some
petrol cans with us since we needed some and would be passing a
fuel station on the way to where we were going. We walked down to
one of the low areas near Kamakwie where they actually used to
mine diamonds. Now they gather sand there and use it to make
concrete blocks. It’s actually quite a laborious process. The sand is
actually dug out of an embankment into some water. One guy does
this and then once he has enough in his water pit he spends about an
hour stomping around in the pit to separate the dirt from the sand
(the dirt enters the water in suspension while the sand stays settled
out). Once he’s done with that the same guy uses a shovel to toss the
sand up onto the embankment (which is higher than his head so not
an easy task). Then some younger kids fill bags and big bowls with
sand and carry it on their heads up a little ways to a place where they
make the concrete blocks. They leave the sand there and someone
else mixes the sand with some cement to form the concrete, place it
into a mold and then set them up to dry. Once they dry the Sierra
Leoneans will come and take two blocks and carry them on their head
to wherever they are doing a building project. I haven’t picked one up
but I cannot imagine that they are even remotely light in any sense of
the word other than that they are a pale grey almost white. I plan on
going back once I’ve got my camera to take some pictures because
it’s absolutely fascinating and the place where they are cutting the
sand out of is actually quite beautiful in a way. After we got back we
finished watering some of the plants in the yard. Once we had
finished with that Tom and I decided to walk downtown to pick up
some bread for dinner. It was only a little after 7 but that’s already
dark. After dinner I spent some time looking at a map of Sierra Leone.
It’s got quite a variety of geological features. There are numerous
national forests, a few mountains (some exceeding a mile in height,
I’ve been up to 12500 feet (more than two miles) but that’s starting
from a higher height as well. These mountains come up from land not
too high about sea level. I think it would be amazing to go climb them.
After I got bore with that I decided that I should finish my other
blogs and write this one. But now that I’ve finished I’m heading for
bed, good night everyone.

Blessings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks