Leah Chapin

Tuesday June 5

June 9, 2007

I was surprised Tuesday morning, when after such a long journey I woke up without an alarm at 7:30am.  Elizabeth had told me to sleep in and that she would be by at 10:30 to take me to a different house.  There is a big group of people on their way to BMC and the room I had stayed in had four beds, so I was moving to a smaller house on the compound.

It seemed that no one else was in the house.  I would say everything was quiet, but that would disclude the soundn of th ebirds and insects ouside.  Despite the absence of human sound, it was really quite noisy!  most of the birds here do not sing a pretty little tune, but rather squawk or chortle strange noises.  There is a fenced in area behind House Number 6 with a log, that served well enough as a bench, facing a field.  I sat there silently, reflecting on yesterday’s long journey and the providence that had led me to where I was.  A worker, who i presumed to be a sort of ground’s keeper, greeted me.  I was still quite ignorant of the language (I later learned the local language is Mamprusi), so our conversation was limited.  he had a dog with him who was very friendly, and eager to be scratched behind the ears.

I wnadered back inside and spent some time typing up some of my experiences from the day before, and before I was even half way through, I heard a strirring in th ekitchen.  Heading back into the living room, I chatted with David for a while.  He was perusing this gigantic book on tropical medicine that was in the house.  David is just beginning his second year in medical school.  he had been an engineering student in his undergraduate work, but half way through his sophomore year he saw a video of an orthopedic surgery and thought, “hey, there isn’t any reason why I couldn’t do that!”  He attends a school of medicine in North carolina, and while he is unsure of the exact role that missions will play in his life, he knows that he is being led in that direction.

There was a knock on the door, then Mona, one of the missionaries at BMC, and two of her children, Abby and Benton, come in.  They had heard of my adventure the day before, and had come to meet me.  I was also very interested to meet this family.  One of the things I had hoped to learn from coming to Nalergu was what raising a family with children in an environment so removed from US culture would be like.  Abby and Benton seemed to be very friendly, but they didn’t stay long because they were headed off to the school house.  Mona teaches them every week day, and aparentloy they also attend a school in a different town serveral months out of the year.

After Mona and her children left, I met Jisah (prounounced Yee-sah, the Mamprusi name for Jesus).  Jisah works at BMC preparing meals, and keeping people well-fed and comfortable.  he made me some Bongo tea with sugar and milk, and cut me a slice of the Ghanaian bread which is so wonderful, and I headed outside to the log bench to enjoy my breakfast.  After breakfast I came inside and David was speaking with Jisah in the kitchen about the various problems that Christians in Ghana face, especially in marriage.  He said that there is a lot of fighting in the home when there is not enough money.  The man is expected to provide the woman with enough money every three days so she can go to the market and buy okra, spices, eggs, and flour.  On top of that, the man must have enough money for other kinds of supplies for his house, for his children’s school fees, for cloth, and for paying medical bills when his family or someone else in his tribe is ill.  There is a strong reliance on family in Ghana.  If someone comes to nalerigu from a distant village to be treated at BMC, the family in town of the same tribe is expected to house them, feed them, and even to pay their medical bills!  This is such a foreign idea to me, as in America our families tend to be small and distanced.  It is a good system, though, and I was reading in Acts how after the ascension of Christ, th enew believers lived together and shared all of their possessions so everyone had what he needed.  And here in Ghana, I can actaully see hwat that may have looked like!

Elizabeth came and took me any my bags to the house next door to the Faile’s ouse, House #10.  it really is a house, with a kitchen (complete with stove, refrigerator, and filtered water), a dining area, living room, two bedrooms, and hto, running water.  I hadn’t really known what to expect coming to Nalerigu as far as housing, but I most definitely hadn’t expected such nice accommodations.  There is a screened0in porch along the front of the house, and I like to sit out there for breakfast, or just to refelct.  I left my bags in my room, and Elizabeth took me up to the hospital for a tour.  In the front of the hosptial is where the outpatient clinic is held.  There is also a pharmacy and a lab there.  The wards are arranged along a square that encloses a courtyard.  There is a men’s ward, a women’s ward, a maternity ward, a children’s ward, and an isolation ward.  The isolation ward is divided into three rooms:  one for infected wounds, one for meningitis, and one for TB.  There is also a TB village where patients are sent to live for 8 months in order to complete their therapy wihtout exposing others.  They pay upfront for th ecost of the medicine, food, and housing for all 8 months.  The patients in the TB isolation at the hospital are there for some other illness, but must be isolated fromother patients.  One side of the square has the “theatre” (British English term fo roeprating room).  There is also a “clean” procedure room and a dirty procedure room.  Ultrasound, D&C, and abscess/wound care are all done in the dirty room.  EGD, spinal taps, and ophthalmologic related care are done in the clean one.

I met Dr. Hewitt in the surgical ward, and he was headed up to th eoutpatient clinic to do TB clinic.  TB patients with outpatient complaints were seen one at a time.  Dr. Hewitt has been here, I think, about 17 years.  he is very capable in speaking Mampursi, and it is very entertaining to hear him speak mamprusi English  If you have seen the movie Blood Diamond it is a lot like hearing Leo speak English with the local accent.  It makes it a lot easier for the saff to hear English when it is spoken this way, and I have found myself using it some, though not as well as Dr. Hewitt.

After we were done with TB clinic, Dr. hewitt invited meover to have lunch at hsi house with his family.  The Hewitt house is very nice and homey.  When Mona and the kids (along with Emily, their oldes) got home from school, Mona heated up some lunch for all of us.  Two other American girls showed up for lunch as well.  they had walked from a nearby village, trying to take a short-cut which wound up taking them a long way aournd, so they were pretty hungry.  Katie and Lydia are students from the US that have come to Nalerigu to stay in a nearby village.  So, they are not staying in a place with running water and toilettes, but reather in Jisah’s brother’s house, which consists of multiple huts enclosing a courtyard.

When I complimented Mona on the tasty chicken finger and green bean lunch, she informed me that she doesn’t cook!  She has a cook who makes all of the meals for her family, and she gives them new recipes to try from time to time.  I found out that it was Mona and Earl’s anniversary, and Mona had had the cook make a lemon meringue pie to celebrate.  The pie was VERY good!  Apparently, she had just given the cook a recipe.  It was just like any lemon meringue pie in the states, except they had not made the meringue into peaks, so it was just a golden dome, but just as good.

After lunch, Katie, Benton, Emily, and I played Clue!  I thought it was funny that this would be my first time ever playing clue, since I have recently been included as a suspect in a geocaching version of Clue.

When we were done with Clue, I headed back to House #10, and made it my home.  I got all of my belongings (really not very much) and put them in drawers and cabinets.  It is kind of funny thinking that i will have this whole house to myself for an entire month!

As soon as I was all unpacked and settled in, I headed back up to the hospital to see what was going on.  I found Dr. Faile performing a hernia repair, and Peter, who wants to be a nurse anesthetist, filled me in on what had been done so far.  I wasn’t scrubbed in, so I stood back and watched from a distance.  There is window unit AC in the OR, and it was strange to be so cool for a while.

When the surgery was over, I went into the clean procedure room and saw an EGD being done on a woman who had been vomiting blood.  It was pretty gruesome, because they do not anesthetize patients here for EGD, and she continued to vomit blood during the procedure, around the scope.  Dr. Faile informed me part way through that Mona was headed to the village to drop of Katie and Lydia, and they were waiting to see if I would come with them.  So, I headed out to the village and swa where they were living.  They have to carry their water quite a ways from a well to their home.  The children in the village were all very excited to see us, and crowded around.  Katie and Lydia showed us inside their hut compound, and they are sleeping on mats on the floor!  Very adventurous, I will have to come spend the night with them sometime.

When I arrived back at BMC, it was about dinner time, and so I went to #6 and had chicken pie with
David, Peter, and Emily.  After dinner, Jisah’s wife, Joyce, came over bringing all different kinds of colorful cloth.  She is a seamstress, and Emily ordered a couple skirts, I ordered a dress and a skirt, and David ordered a shirt, each of us picking out our own material.  Joyce is a very beautiful woman, and she was very kind, letting us take our time with picking out fabrics, and discussing lcothing styles.  I couldn’t wait to see what she would make me!  For the dress, I chose this red, black, and purple fabric that had a symbol on it that represented God reaching down to people on Earth.  It turned out that it was the same fabric that David chose to have his shirt made out of, so we agreed to avoid wearing them on the same day, so we wouldn’t be embarrassed, LOL!

Both David and Peter had mentioned a man named Tommy who works and lives in a village near Nalerigu.  Tommy used to come with his wife to Ghana to work and live for serveral months, returning to the states for several months, back and forth.  When Tommy’s wife died several years ago, he moved to Ghana, and hasn’t left since!  He is fluent in the local language, and pastors a primitive church.  Everyone who speaks of Tommy holds him in high regard, so i was excited to learn that I was being invited to come along with Emily, David, and Peter to a night-time worship service out in the bush!  Tommy speaks with a southern drawl that he retains from his birthplace of Misssissippi.  He ddrove us all out in his truck.  The roads were bumpy, but reallly I think I have seen worse in Kansas City, ha, ha!  On the way out, Tommy stopped the truck and made us all get out on the road.  He pointed to the Southern Cross in the sky…I was so excited!  Mom had told me that I should e able to see it, but I had kind of forgotten abou tit, and there it was!  Tommy had us notice that it was tilted towards th eleft, and said we would look again on our way back and it should be pointed to the right.

When we arrived at the palce of worship, there were only a couple of people there.  both of them were younger boys and one of them had some drums.  After we had been there for a bit, more people came, and we started to sing.  Well, more like they started to sing, and I tried to sing.  The songs they sang were done as kind of a call and response.  There would be one leading, who would sing through a verse once, then everyone would sing the same verse together.  Each song would have the same melody for all of the verses, and the sound of it was very strong and rhythmic.  Each verse would be repeated over and over agian, so on some of the less complicated ones, I would eventually be able to join in.  More an dmore people started omcing, and eventually we started walking in a ring around the drum player, calpping, and singing.  Tommy would translate to us what the words meant.  There were a lot of songs about baby Jesus being born.  One of the girls who lead many of the songs had a beautiful voice.  It was very clear and strong…I wish I had brought my video caera, so I could have recorded her voice.  When one song was finsihed, another one would be started right away, and we went on that way for quite some time.  After the singing, all of the opeople sat on the ground, and on some improvised benches to hear a local speak out of the bible.  Apparently, this same meeting happens weekly, and he has been teaching about the birth of Christ in Bethlehem.  Tommy was sitting nearby, and he would translate from time to time.

When the service was over, we got back in the truck.  On the way back I decided to sit in the bed of the turck.  Actually, I laid down in the bed of the truck, so I could watch the stars all the way back.  The stars were very beautiful and bright, and the Southern Cross really had rotated to the right.

Patients:

One Inguinal Hernia Repair (observed)

One EGD per hematemesis (observed)

8 TB outpatients

Maprusi:

Umpusia –I thank you

Tepusia –We thank you

The Plan

June 7, 2007Now I will tell the story of my arrival in Africa.  As some of you know, my plane left from JFK International Airport at 3:00pm.  Curiously, though some of you knew that, I did not.  My thoughts Sunday morning, after a meager 3 hours of sleep, were that my plane would be leaving at 12:35pm.  With the requirement of being checked in four hours before departure, I was left with the impression that I needed to get up at 6:30am, shower, eat a hurried breakfast, and at the shuttle to the airport.  All of this I did, only to arrive at the the terminal 3 hours ealrier than I had needed to.  There wasn’t even a check in counter open yet!  Truth be told, I was glad to be early rather than late!

The flight was ten hours long.  There was plenty of leg room, and I fell asleep during take-off.  I woke up an hour later for the beverage service, and i never fell back asleep for the entire flight!  I think I was too excited to sleep.  One thing I am thankful for is that I had a window seat, and I was able to see some beautiful things outside.  First, I saw the sunset, and when the sun was completely set, I could see the stars.  They were so bright and glimmering, even through the scratched surface of the airplane window.  It is hard to believe that after years of flying I would never have seen this, but for the first time in my life, I saw shooting stars from the window.  It was mesmerizing; I watched for at least an hour and a half.  Then I made the man sitting to my leftg switch seats.  We hadn’t really talked until then, but I was determined that someone else must see this amazing site.  He didn’t speak a whole lot of Enlish, and I spoke aboslutely zero of his language, but we chatted a bit and he made me undersand that he was Ghanaian.  He too saw the stars and stared out the window for a good hour.

There was applause after the landing in Accra.  I have noticed tha applause afer landing is a more common phenomenon in foreign countries than in the states.  It makes me wonder…are they just more appreciative of the skill of landing a craft that large, or are there more landings that go wrong?

The de-boarding was down some stairs out on the tarmac, then passengers boarded a bus to take us to the airport.  When I came outside the plane, I was met by a hot and moist breeze that smelled…different.  Not a bad different, but a smell that made me think of the description that Emily gives in The Little Princess when talking about the smell of India.  The air was almost spicy, but not like food is spicy.

When I had read descriptions of the airport in Accra by american travelers, I was actually nervous about my arrival there.  I was expeting to be immersed in a frenzy of people trying to take my bags, or get money for helping to move things.  No such thing happened.  Perhaps I looked more confident that those who had experienced such harassment.  I got through customs without any problems, but waiting for the luggage to come out was a practice in patience.  When I had collected my bags I went through immigration, which for me consisted of a woman sitting in a chair who asked me what was in my bags.  I started naming things…cameras, film, clothes, toiletries…she cut me off, “Okay, you can go.”  I was glad she cut me off before I had to start naming things like catheters, sutures, IV tubing, and surgical tape.  Then there might have been some more questions!

There was a man standing at the bottome of the ramp to the airport exit holding a sign that said “Leah Chapin”.  The man was Jimmy Huey, the director of the Guest House in Accra.  Also with Jimmy was a Ghanaian named Fusheni, who I would later get to know better.  They were also holding other signs for a couple of people who would be taking a bus to a place further from Accra, and for a group of high school students who were coming to work with the Peace Corp at an orphanage.

Upon arrival at the Guest House, we were given a delicious breakfast.  I was also able to use the internet to send my parents a uick emial saying I was safely in Accra.  Jimmy gave me 50,000 cedis (10,000 cedis = $1) so I could have some pocket money.  I said my goodbyes to the people at the Guest House, and Fusheni and I headed back to the airport for my flight up to Tamale.  Fusheni waited with me all the way up to the departure.  He purchased my ticket for me and handled all of my luggage.  He even checked in for me!  He also kept me company on the long wait for the departure.  It was nice to have a friendly person willing to help me out while I was in a strange place.

By the time I was on the plane it was about 1:00pm, and I had been awake for 18 hours (staring from after my one hour nap on the plane to Accra) so I was very tired.  Little did I know that I was destined to be awake for many more hours to come.

The plane going north to Tamale was a small passenger plane, with only twelve rows.  As I was boarding, the flight attendant asked me if I was a volunteer, and when I said yes he acted very excited.  I was having trouble getting my carry on to fit anyewhere and he kindly took it to the back of the plane and stored it for me.  George and I talked for most of the flight, and mostly about food!  He got me excited about all the wonderful Ghanaian foods there are, including foofoo, which is like a fluffy, sweet, “bread” made from African yams that is commonly used to eat with soup.  They did serve a small meal on the plane which consisted of a spicy chicken sandwich and a peice of sweet bread.  The bread from the sandwich was AMAZING!  I couldn’t believe how good it was.  I asked Geroge about the bread and he said all the bread in Ghana is very good, and it is made fresh every day.  He have me an extra box lunch, and he made sure I had plenty of pre-packaged water so that I could take the extra with me on my drive to Nalerigu, which he told me would take about 2 hours.

The flight was about one and a half hours long, and when I wasn’t talking to George, I was looking out the window, down on miles of farmland.  It looked a lot like the patchwork scenes I have seen flying over Missouri, except here there was a stippling of trees.  It was kind of strange looking, as if someone had stuck some railroad miniature trees all over an otherwise familiar landscape of fields.  the one-runway airport in Tamale usually has only one flight per day arriving and departing.  The building for the airport was open-air, and there was a bar-style restaurant that was serving chips and cookies.  I had been  told that upon arriving at the airport in Tamale I would be met by a driver from Baptist Medical Center who would take me to Nalerigu with them.  No one was holding a sign.

I wasn’t really nervous at that point.  It seemed very probable to me that they would be a bit late to greet me since the drive was so long.  No one seemed threatening and a few people tried to talk to me, but the English there was sparse.  One older man conbtinued to talk to me for quite a while, despite the fact that I obviously wasn’t understanding him.  But he was being friendly, and I could smile back.  I had been waiting for quite a while and some of the people who worked at the airport started asking me questions.  I was able to make them understand that there was someone coming to get me and I continued to wait…

…and wait.  Now is was about 4:00pm, the airport was closed, and I was getting nervous.  I wasn’t upset or even scared; I just knew I would have to start thinking of a game plan.  But I didn’t have the number to BMC, and I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t know any of the language.  And the old man pointed at the telephone repeating “broke, broke, is broke”.  I thought to myself “well…this isn’t what I planned, but it is still what God planned, so I’ll go with it.  In fact I should rerer to my plan in lower case, and to God’s plan as “The Plan”.  At this point I was convinced that no one was coming for me, and that I would have to find a way to Nalerigu on my own.

To top it off–I had been trying to avoid this, but I finally HAD to use the restroom.  When I got in there, I thought maybe it would have been cleaner to just go right in my skirt.  I was filthy, and I thought about how horrifiec anyone I know and love would have been to just be in there.  But…I don’t know.  Somehow, despite the filth, it didn’t bother me too much.  Being slightly delerious with fatigue probably didn’t hurt.

I finally approached some of the workers who were sitting tother chatting.  It turned out that that they knew considerably more English than the others I had spoken with.  I explained my predicament, and how I was now in need of a way to get to Nalerigu.  Some of them had cell phones (with are ridiculously cheap in Ghana for in-country service) but no one knew the number to BMC.  In fact some of them did not even know of the village Nalerigu.  But I had thankfully looked at a map in the Guest House and knew that Nalerigu was just East of a bigger village called Gambaga, which they were all familiar with.  A woman behind the counter had a large book of business cards,  and afer a few minutes of searching she turned up with a dingy old card for…BMC!!  It would have been great, all my problems solved..but that wasn’t in The Plan.   When we were unsuccessful in reaching anyone at the number we had, which was apparently out-dated, the next idea I had was for someone to take me into Tamale where I could get to an internet cafe or perhaps take a bus to Naerigu.  So, they called me a taxi, and I and the taxi headed into the town of Tamale.

It was market day in Tamale, which they have every three days, so the  streets were croweded with woman who had baskets blanaced on their heads, children, goats, motorcycles, busees, and carts being drawn by donkeys. On the drive there, the driver had convinced me that it would be better to see if there was a bus leaving for Nalerigu than trying to get a phone number, so i took his advice.  There was a ‘bus’ going to Nalerigu.  I describe it as a ‘bus’ because it was more like a van, amazingly modified to accommodate (really, it was mind-boggling as to how they accomplished this) eight bench seats, and in the space on the side that could be used to crawl back to the seats, there were fold down chairs that completed the benches.  I reserved my spot on that ‘bus’, but it would be a while before it left, because the driver would wait for it to be FULL until he would leave.  They took my bags and placed them on the roof of the roof of the ‘bus’, and I was at liberty to wait.  I waited for a couple of hours, and during my wait I got to observe the marketplace around me.  There were many children and women going around with huge baskets on their heads, selling items.  They would call out what they were selling, and some approached me to offer their goods, but they weren’t overly pushy.  I saw a lot of young girls with pouches of amber fluid, with a sediment in the bottom.  I saw lots of ghanaians buying the pouches, and I figured it must be some kind of beverage or food, but not one of the pleasant foods that George was talking to me about.  A boy named Moses befriended me.  I later found out that he was actually 20 years old.  he was going home to Nalerigu because he had just finished up with taking final exams with his school.  he nswered all the questions I had about the sites around us.  The packets were food, made of some feremented millet and water.  The closest thing I could use to describe it would be porridge.  At a point I was approached by a woman who was selling head wraps.  Almost all of the women in Tamale were wearing a colorful cloth on their head.  I declined at first, but she was so inseistent that i try one on, that I gave in and let her tie it to me; she seemed to have some trouble deciding how to deal with my weird hair, but she managed.  At this point I became an attraction.  I can imagine the word spreading around the market amongst the children, “Hey, come see this white lady trying to dress like us!”.  And so a crowd of children and mothers was gathered around me, and they all wanted me to buy the scarf.  I was really insistent on NOT buying the scarf, because I was now alone in a foreign country, not knowing the language, and with less than $50 in cedis to my name.  But…the scarf was so pretty, and it had sequins…and embroidery.  So I haggled the price (down to a brutal $2.50 I later calculated) and I wore that scarf through the rest of my journey.  The scarf kind of felt like a protection to me.  I know God was protecting me, but the scarf made me feel like…well, like maybe I would just look like I belonged there and knew wshat I was doing.  “I know I’m white, and can’t speak a word of your language, but look.  I have a scarf on my head!”

So there I sat with my protective scarf on a bench with Moses and some other children.  I was getting hungry, but I wasn’t about to try one of the porridge bags, and soon all I could think about was those Oreos (thank you John and Andrea) that I had stashed away in my suitcase.  I decided I would get enough out for everyone who was sitting on the bench to have one.  I also tried to do it discretely so I wouldn’t create a chaotic secene of cookie begging.  I was surprised when I gave each of them the cookie that they just held it, staring.  Kind of like I would have stared at a bag of porridge if they had given it to me.  The look of “Oh, no.  It is a gift, and she is watching so I will have to eat this strange food or else” filled their faces.  To encourage them, I took bites of mine, and one by one they began to do the same, kind of looking at each other for negative reactions.  After finishing his, Moses said to me, “They are different from the wafers we have here.  They are sweet…they are…very GOOD!”  So, they liked their exotic Oreo treat.

My bladder betrayed me again, and so I had to ask for a bathroom, so another man who had befriended me took me acrosss the market and even paid the man in front of the restroom for me to go.  I was starting to make my way to the women’s side when he called me back.  “No, no.  You must take.  I buy.”  I looked where he was pointing and it was a stack of newspaper sheets, held from blowing away by a rock paperweight.  He didn’t buy me the right to use the restroom…he bought me toilet paper.  So I went in, armed with my square of newspaper.  This bathroom made the airport bathroom seem like the Ritz.  It was a glorified hole in the ground with special places to put your feet.  I couldn’t decide whether I was more horrified by the thousands of flies or the fact that I was about to put newspaper, which had been who knowns where, on you know where.  That was a low point.

At 6:00pm the ‘bus’ left the market place with myself and 30+ passengers.  I was squeezed between the window (thank you, God, for giving me this luxury) and Moses.  I was glad to have Moses, he was so friendly and non-threatening.  I could tell he was looking out for me.  When you have a ‘bus’ crowded with 30+ passengers  and all of their boxes and odds and ins pilled high on the roof, a two hour drive turns into a three hour drive.  It was bumpy, and it was dusty, and it was long.  But I remained happy through the whole thing.  I was really at peace with the fact that I was still on my way to Nalerigu even if it was The Plan instead of the plan.  We made stops in many small villages along the way, so the crowdedness thinned the further we went.  At 9:15pm we we were finally in Nalerigu, and everyone was unloading, as this was the last stop.  I got nervous again.  Where was Baptist Medical Center?  Was I going to have to ask directions and wheel my three suticases for a few miles to get there?  I decided I needed to ask the driver for a favor.  Unfortunately his English could not translate my request, so someone was found who was more fluent and he translated my situation.  He was very kind and made the extra stop for me at no additional charge.

So there I was, with my three suticases, at the gates of Baptist Medical Center.  It was the most beautiful thing I had seen all day.  There was a guard there and and several men sitting around.  There was some confusion explaining who I was and why I was there.  Then I heard to words”get Dr. Faile” and I agreed with this.  It was actually Dr. Faile’s wife, Elizabeth who came driving a truck across the compound…a very confused, embarrassed, and apologetic, and wonderful Elizabeth.  Apparently, there had abeen a mix-up in communication and they did not know I was coming, and therefore had not sent someone to Tamale to meet me.  She was very amazed that I had made it from Tamale on my own, and she would not stop apologizing.  She took me to one of the houses on the compound where a dietician and a nurse (a married couple) and another medical student were staying.  They were still awake, and she told my story to them.  The dietician’s name is Emily, and Peter, her husband, is a nurse.  Another Peter, the Faile’s son was also there, as was David, a second year medical student.  Everyone was very kind and helped me to get some water and some food.  Elizabeth showed me to a room and a shower.  Everything seemed so wonderful, and everyone was so nice, I found it difficult to really be upset about The Plan.

As I was falling asleep, I realized that I had been awake for a total of 29 hours.  That was a long day.

Now in Ghana

 June 4, 2007

Thank you to those of you who were praying for my safe travel.  I am now in the capitol city of Ghana (Accra).  I will be taking an in-country flight up to Nalerigu, Ghana in an hour and a half.  I will write more later, but for those of you who were anxiously checking, I am safe and sound!  The people here are very friendly and accommodating.  I miss you all!

Tomorrow…Africa

June 2, 2007

About six months ago, I started pestering the good people in the International Office at UMKC-SOM, asking about different opportunities to travel to Africa.  Why Africa?  The answer may sound silly, but perhaps you will be able to relate–it was the spin-the-globe game that kids often play when they are supposed to be studying geography.  Spin it, and stop it blindly with one finger, and wherever your finger landed is where you will live in the future!  When my finger landed TWICE on Swaziland, South Africa, I knew my destiny…it was to live and work as a “massager” in Swaziland (my brother informed me that the proper term was masseuse, but I liked massager better).

My dream of massagering continued for quite a while, only to change course in the seventh grade…specifically at the moment my scalpel was slicing its way through this fascinating dead frog.  Mr. Legg was my science teacher, and it was in his class that I upgraded my massager dream to my current doctor dream.  But that didn’t mean I was giving up on the whole Africa thing….

So, with some not-so-subtle orchestration by God, I find myself perched on the verge a two month experience that will more than likely change my life forever.  Specifically, I am right now perched at the Marriot by JFK International Airport in NY, NY.  Side Note–apparently there was some plot to obtund my travels by some foreign dudes up to no good, but they were caught, and there evil mission was aborted.

There has been about 150% more time to think about this trip during the past two days than there has been in the past 6 months.  After boards were completed (phew) last Wednesday, my brain allowed me to resume more desirable musings.  Another side note–some of my board’s study brainwashing is haunting me; I found myself chanting in my head the numbers  2, 7, 9, and 10 repeatedly, and I was like “Why am I chanting those numbers again….something I need to remember…?” then “oh, of course, the Vitamin K-dependent coagulation factors!”  Ughhh, get OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!

One thing that has become clear to me over the past couple days actually has nothing to do with Africa.  My family, and my friends are the best in the world; and honestly, I couldn’t ask for better ones.  I will miss them dearly, and I am sure my appreciation will only grow the longer I am parted from them.

But I am not regretful about this adventure, in fact, I am feeling more and more blessed every moment that I even have this opportunity.  What do I expect to gain from this experience?  Well, truthfully, I am not exactly sure; I want to go in with an open mind and gain what there is to be gained.  Some brainstorming of possibilities have included:  practical experience with surgery and procedures, more patient care, increased awareness of how health care is carried out in the bare setting of 3rd world poverty, and hopefully an increased awareness of the role I might play in the future, and how helping those in need will be integrated with my profession.  Now, I am not going to demand a refund if I can’t check all of those off, but surely there is benefit to going in with at least an idea of what to hope for.

During the month of June I will be working at Baptist Medical Centre in Nalerigu, Ghana, West Africa.  My work there will include inpatient rounds, outpatient clinic, procedure clinic, and surgery.  All in all my days will be adding up to about 12 hour days.  It will be intense, and exhausting, and I can’t wait to be exhausted from something I love so much.

If I pass my boards (I will find out in 3 to 6 weeks) then I will also be spending July on the Coast of Ghana in a suburb of the capital city, Accra.  From what I have been able to read, my work there will be very similar to the work in Nalerigu, just in a different setting.  The northern region is less developed than the coastline, with less education and more agriculture.

Thank you to all of you who are praying for me…it means a lot to me personally, but also…they WORK!  Feel free to send me a message with questions/encouragement/news.  My ideal goal will be to keep postings coming every 2-3 days, but we’ll see how that works; I am not entirely sure what the Internet situation will be yet; all I know is that there IS Internet.

If I go to sleep at all tonight, I will go to sleep thinking…”Tomorrow….Africa.”

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