African Hospital

I didn't have enough battery power to write about last night in my earlier entry so I will discuss it now.  At about 5:30 last night, Barbara (my supervisor) was informed that 5 of the children were really sick.  We needed to take them to the hospital (as there aren't any doctors offices or anything here).  I've experienced some pretty sketch hospitals in my life.  But I've never experienced an African hospital.

While everything else here isn't at all like the African stereotypes you may assume, the hospital is.  It's made of a bunch of different small one story buildings.  The cement paths between them are broken, uneven or not even there.  They are lined with people.  People sleeping, eating, or just laying there.  Inside and outside the floor is covered in urine and nobody is there to clean it up.  You must have a family member with the patient at all times because there is no one to help them if you leave.  You must feed the patient with food that you bring in, provide them with water, provide them with mosquito nets, and do basically everything for them.

There are a couple wards: the woman's ward, men's ward, children's ward, TB ward, surgical ward and the private ward.  A ward constitutes one big room with about 40 narrow beds that are about 2 feet from each other.  In order to be seen you go to the entrance of your respective ward.

So we took the kids and their mothers to the children's ward.  The wait to be seen by what I guess would be our "triage" was about 50 people deep.  All were mothers with their kids in their arms.  There were no chairs and there was no orderly line. Barbra somehow worked her magic and got some nurse who was just getting off duty to agree to evaluate our kids.  So I stood in the room (hidden because some guy from the psych ward kept following me) where this nurse was.  As the other mothers saw that we were being helped they all wanted to get into the room too and my job was to make sure she saw our kids first.  I felt like such a jerk pulling our girls in front of these other mothers whose children were just as sick but that was what the nurse and Barbra expected me to do.

So after they took their temperatures and such we had to split, some had to get lab tests and some had to wait for medicine.  One of the girls handed me her baby (it was her 2 year old that was sick, not the 2 month old).  So for a couple hours I felt like I had my own child. (And I love black babies so I was happy).  The place  was crazy and so unorganized.  They kept no record of their patients except for some notes in a notebook that the patient had to bring and keep with them.  Crazy.  So after a while I went back to the girl that was just waiting for medications.  She was still in the cramped, pee filled hallway.  She told me they hadn't given her anything yet.  Of course not.  They had no record she was even there apart from the notebook that was still in her hand.

So for the first time in my entire life I feel like I used my skin color to get something done.  I hate to even put this in writing because I know it's going to come off wrong but here it goes... I walked into the room with the doctor (which was stuffed with mothers wanting him to look at their children).  I put the notebook on his desk and said "this child's mother has been waiting for these medications for her extremely sick child, can you please help me find them for her."  Without second thoughts he got up and found the medications.  I hate it because he wouldn't have done that for us if she were the one to go in and ask but because I'm such a foreigner they assume I have money and/or power or something and will go out of their way to help me

Three girls got to leave late last night and two more are still there with their kids.  Thankfully the New Life Center is paying for them to have a private room.  Which, as nice as it sounds, means only that the two moms and children share a 6foot by 4foot room with one bed, obviously no air conditioning and broken windows instead of being in the big children's ward.  I guess that's something.  We've been bringing them food and water from here.

So yeah, that's my African hospital story.
Funny thing is, as horrible as it was, I don't think I'd mind working at a place like that at some point.