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Published: October 19th 2008
I'm really glad I'm doing this project! It's a good organization, well-organized, and it's good to help out where help is really needed! So Wednesday I was at Linda Clinic again. And it was baby day! Once a week each clinic has baby day where the mothers bring their under 5 children to the clinic to get weighed and immunized. Each baby is supposed to get weighed every month. There were 3 volunteers at the clinic so I got to help with the babies while the others took vitals of the other patients. At first I was just recording and graphing but then I actually got to weight the babies! The scale is essentially a bag hanging from the kind of scale that you would hang a bag of fruit on to weigh it. We took it outside and the mothers lined up all the way across the line to wait for their turn. Some of the babies were adorable! Most looked pretty healthy but there were quite a number of them who hadn't gained any weight for several months or who were losing weight. Which of course is not a good thing! Some of the moms were really young! Some my age and some even younger! I guess though there are young mothers in the States too.
In the afternoon I did sports coaching again. At Livingstone Primary it was an actual soccer team. At Nakatindi it was just students who wanted to play. We did some futbol drills, frisbee, relay races, and a bunch of group games. There weren't any girls at all. Just boys. I guess the girls have to help out at home. We had a fight as well. 2 boys started going full out because of something that happened in the soccer game. And of course then all the other kids gathered around and egged them on so even after we separated them we had to work to keep them apart. There seem to be more fights here among the younger kids.
Thursday was Maramba Home-Based Care again. There were 2 nursing students from Norway who were also there so we split up the patients and got done really fast! We saw the same patients as Tuesday which I was actually kind of annoyed by. Our home-based care book has over 30 patients in it. We generally see about 4 people a day, 5 days a week. That doesn't even add up to 30! So why are we seeing the same patients when there are other ones who won't even get seen the whole week? And we can't do much except make sure they don't have any new symptoms and give them medication. So of course it's good to see them more often, but it seems like we should make sure we at least see all of them once a week before we start seeing some of them twice! Since we got done early we went to Maramba Clinic to help out with their baby weighing day. Some of the mothers, especially the young ones, don't get their kids vaccinated because they either don't know that they need to or just forget or are too busy. So a big part of the weighing day is reminding the mothers to get the immunizations and check-ups. And also to give them some info and advice about nutrition and care for their babies. It's actually quite a good idea.
Thursday afternoon I went farming. The money made from the farm supports Maramba Home-Based care. We were just watering because it's the dry season. The pump is basically a stair-stepping machine so we got a good workout! It was actually a kind of cool pump. Very basic, hand-made, and creative. It's pretty broken though so it doesn't pump water very fast so we had to sit there and wait for the buckets to fill each time so that we could lug them into the field for watering. And guess what??? We got about 10 drops of rain! It's almost the rainy season so any day now the rains will start. It should make it cooler, but it will also be a pain to have it raining!
Friday I was at Libuyu Clinic. In case you don't remember, that's the really unorganized one. We can never find the patients' books. So Lynette and 2 of the student nurses took vitals and did registration and I decided that it was ridiculous for us to not be able to find anything so I started organized! I got through most of the mixed stacks and reordered the 7000, 8000, and 9000 stacks (patients' numbers). So now it's a little bit better, but it won't stay that way for long. In the afternoon I had family support. Which is basically playtime with a bunch of the local children. We take books, jump ropes, frisbees, soccer balls, and ourselves and just play with the kids for a couple hours. It's really good because then they get attention and we also watch them for any medical conditions that they might have that need to get checked. We were supposed to have 4 volunteers, but there ended up only being 2 of us. With over 60 kids running everywhere and climbing all over us. We would have 3 or 4 or 5 kids literally attached to us at pretty much all times. It was fun, but tiring! Arctic day camps last summer were pretty good preparation. But there at least everyone's first language was English!
In the evening Lynette and I tried to make brownies because we both love them and really miss them! We thought we found mix at the store but it turned out to be pre-made chocolate bread/cake stuff. Not very good and definitely not what we were expecting! A big disappointment!
Saturday we went to Zambezi Sun and enjoyed the sun all day. It's nice and relaxing after a week of working! Then in the evening we went to Rhapsody's for dessert (and some people got dinner), then Fez Bar, then Fairmont Club. This morning after sleeping for about 4 hours we got up for the all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast at Zambezi Sun. It was spectacular! I love breakfast so it was a nice change from cereal every day! Pancakes, fruit, waffles, eggs, omeletes, potatoes, bacon, sausage, pastries, and a bunch more. Plus all the fruit juice you can drink! At once point they brought out croissants fresh and hot from the oven and they were AMAZING! Definitely worth it! And now we won't be eating again until dinner because we're way too full! Madeleine, Jen, and I went to the market afterwards. Most of the stuff here is wood carvings. Which are way too big to carry home. There are really nice paintings too, but I don't know where I would put that kind of stuff...
We hear and see some really depressing stories here! One home-based care group saw a patient with a terrible story. She was kidnapped, taken to Namibia, and raped. She managed to escape and made it home but she was pregnant and had contracted HIV. Her family threw her out because they said she had run away because she still had the clothes that she left with, nothing had been taken from her. Another woman took her in, but now she is without a family, with a young child, and has HIV. Of course, we don't know for sure that she was kidnapped. It is a very plausible possibility that she ran away to Namibia with her boyfriend, which would explain the family thing. This type of stuff happens every day! She's one of the lucky ones for escaping!
Most people here talk a combination of English and Nyanja. We'll be listening to a conversation and then we'll randomly understand some of the words. English ones are mostly the transition words. It's weird though how English has been integrated into the local language.
Next week I'm going to Zimbabwe! 12 of us are going for 5 days to one of the other African Impact projects (Lion Rehabilitation). We walk with lions and go on game drives. Should be fun! If I can get money changed. We have to pay for everything in US dollars and they don't have many here because they rely only on people changing money. So we'll see. I might not be going afterall...
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doug eby
non-member comment
wow
Wow - sounds like lots of amazing experiences. Makes me pretty thankful for the life we have here... The Zimbabwe experience sounds pretty cool.... You aren't going to want to leave when it is time....