My patients are all still alive, praise the Lord! I\u2019m rounding on the adults now, so I don\u2019t feel so much like a fish out of water when it comes to my own knowledge base.\u00a0There was a group here from California today, doing dental and auditory checks on some people.\u00a0 They are spending 2 weeks travelling through Ghana, doing the same in other small villages throughout the country.\u00a0 They are all very nice people, and I was able to have lunch with them at the team house today (which I didn\u2019t even know existed until today!).\u00a0 I came away from the day with them, however, almost ashamed of being an obruni and being associated with them.\u00a0 That sounds harsh, I know, so let me explain myself a little.\u00a0 There is probably (Ok, I KNOW there is) a large portion of my own pride issues in that feeling, thinking that after 2 weeks, I\u2019ve mastered how to interact and fit into the Ghanian culture and they have not.\u00a0 And maybe there\u2019s a little bit of feelings of ownership, like I want to be one of the only obrunis around. How selfish am I?!? But, on the other side of the coin, I definitely had the distinct impression at one point in the day, that we were on this African safari, and the little African children were the animals. We were driving by a couple of the schools, and the children were all crowded around the van screaming \u201cobruni!\u201d like they always do, and here are a group of women, all hanging their cameras out the windows, taking pictures of them. As I type that, I realize that it doesn\u2019t sound like something totally insensitive to do, but at the time, all I wanted to do was to jump out of the van and run from the situation. It just felt so wrong.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maybe another reason for my reaction to the people from CA was the fact that a few of them were pretty stinking dolled up for being in Africa. One of the women had her hair perfectly done, her makeup perfectly applied, her fingernails and toenails perfectly french-tipped, and her bracelets and necklaces and earrings and diamond rings\u00a0all sparkling and matching.\u00a0 Now, there\u2019s nothing wrong with looking nice, but I just think that when you\u2019re coming to work in the midst of a poverty-striken village, wearing all of that is kind of like flaunting what you\u2019ve got in front of them. It just struck me as highly inappropriate.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then I was talking to a couple of them, and saying something about how friendly everyone in Ghana is, and how impressed I\u2019ve been about that overall. She proceeded to say how her experience has been that people are very pushy and rude about getting people into their shops, and force them to buy things, and yell at them when they don\u2019t.\u00a0 It just shocked me, because all of that was such a misinterpretation of intentions! They talk loudly, they even talk loudly to each other; they\u2019re never yelling like we interpret yelling. And yes, they are very excited to see people who are going to buy something, so they to what they can to get you to go in their shops.\u00a0 But if you politely refuse, they won\u2019t get upset.\u00a0 And if you don\u2019t buy something from them, they are almost always still exceedingly nice to you.\u00a0 So, what a sad experience for them if they\u2019re interpreting everything so negatively!! We\u2019ve had the advantage of having Cam and Anne to process through things with, so maybe that\u2019s where we have been blessed to understand motives and intentions a little better these past few weeks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And then, at lunch, a couple of the Ghanians (that I\u2019ve come to know) served us the whole time, while we just sat around.\u00a0 It felt so wrong that I was completely anxious for lunch to be over, so there wouldn\u2019t be this difference of roles anymore. I tried to get up and help them serve at one point, but they had already got everything ready, so there wasn\u2019t anything for me to do. I just feel like we\u2019re supposed to be coming in the name of Christ to these people, and befriending them, and livinng in their culture, and that having them cook,clean, and serve us propagates thsi master\/servant relationship.\u00a0 We\u2019re these rich obrunis that they\u2019re waiting on.\u00a0 Now, I\u2019ll be the first to say that it\u2019s nice to have the woman who cleans clean our apartment, and to have them make us meals sometimes, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019m just curious as to what that does for the relationship or the view of the Obrunis by the Ghanians. Maybe nothing, who knows. I\u2019ve thought similar things when I watch the watchmen at the house open the gate for us to drive in with Cam, or the women at the house doing the ironing and cooking.\u00a0 But maybe it\u2019s never hit me like that before because I\u2019ve never been put in a direct situation of being physically waited on.\u00a0 Again, it just doesn\u2019t feel right.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Went into the surrounding villages again this afternoon to do more of the health survey that the community health program is conducting, and again was just struck with the level of poverty these people live in.\u00a0 Words just can\u2019t do the situation justice, so I won\u2019t even try.\u00a0I now understand how diseases are transmitted fecal-orally, and how people\u00a0get diseases from flies, and how animal to person disease transmission\u00a0happens,\u00a0let\u2019s just leave it at that.\u00a0 I had this thought, though, later in the afternoon, that it would be so awesome to be able to come back and do clinics in some of the more remote villages.\u00a0 Maybe I could be based out of the hospital here, and utilize some of the staff for translation and nursing, but then do week-long clinics in 4 or 5 different villages throughout the region.\u00a0 How totally rewarding would that be!!! Something I\u2019m tucking away, for a time when I have more freedom with my schedule than residency will allow\u2026..!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My patients are all still alive, praise the Lord! I\u2019m rounding on the adults now, so I don\u2019t feel so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}