Ashley Shira’s Blog

Day Nineteen

Day Nineteen

Dr. Akosua called us this morning to let us know she would pick us up at the hospital between 9 and 9:30am to head to Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.  She ended up having car trouble and she finally arrived to pick us up around 10:15am.  She pointed out a lot of interesting things to us on the drive through Accra into Korle-Bu and it was nice to have a tour guide.  When we got to the hospital we did a driving tour of the grounds.  They have living quarters for all the medical students (actually all health sciences students), doctors, and nurses.  They ranged from large dorm-like buildings to nice single-family homes for the doctors.  They even have their own schools on the “campus”.  After the driving tour we parked in front of Dr. Akosua’s dad’s hematology clinic and went in to visit him, but he was out of the office.  We decided to walk around the hospital and see how much we could see…..we weren’t sure b/c Dr. Akosua hadn’t asked permission to bring us so there were a lot of places were weren’t allowed to go.  We saw the pediatric clinic, emergency room, and ward.  In the ward we were able to check on the little girl we referred there on Saturday morning for seizures that we couldn’t control at Manna.  She was doing much better! We also walked through the “accident centre” (which is sort of like a trauma center) and the adult emergency room.  They were packed full of people.  It was unreal! There were people on the floors and on stretchers in the hallway….wherever they could put them.  Some you could tell were very sick, but they just don’t have enough space for all of them.  After our tour we went back to the hematology clinic and visited with Dr. Akosua’s dad for a  bit.  While we were in his office she got a call from her son’s school saying that he had a fever again so we had to cut our visit short.  We had her drop us off in Osu so that we could get some fabric for our dresses and some lunch.  We spent several hours just walking around and shopping at the many street vendors.  We finished our day in Osu with a trip to Koala for a few groceries then we grabbed a taxi and headed home.  When we got to the house we decided to walk to Gilbert’s wife’s shop and drop off our fabric, but it was already closed. We enjoyed just walking around in the neighborhood.  The children often point at us and say ”Obroni” (not sure I spelled that right) which means “white person”.  In the smaller communities I don’t imagine they see very many white people.  The smaller children are especially fascinated by us. When we got back to the house Izzy and Andrew had just returned from their time in Akosumbo on the boat.  We walked with Izzy to get MTN credit and a few items from a stall nearby.  Andrew was in the office checking his email so Kim went down there and asked if we could borrow the laptop for the evening.  We bought a DVD (which has about 10 different movies on it) on the street in Osu and we were excited about the chance to watch it on the laptop.  Before the movie, we decided to make dinner.  Kim and I purchased some chicken kabobs at Koala as well as a bag of frozen broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.  (we have been missing vegetables!!) We decided to make dinner for everyone (although the portions were a bit small, but the company was great) and we even called David and he came over to eat with us.  After dinner he taught us a song in one of the tribal languages….it was very cool!! After dinner, Andrew taught us a Ghanaian card game he learned on the boat and we watched Bridget Jones’ Diary on the laptop before heading to bed.