Day 62

This morning I made some oatmeal and went to the clinic. I don’t normally go to the clinic on Saturday but since I missed 3 days this week already I needed to get some hours in. I was in a surprisingly great mood and stopped to talk to a lot of people on my way. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to the clinic when I do stop and talk but it’s totally worth it. I got to work at the dispensary again all day with Gideon and I stayed till 4 with him even though it was such a slow day. Today he taught me how to give out receipts, the difference between some of the similar drugs, and what drugs patients need to pay for. I got to help him organize the shelves and dispense out the drugs. I began to feel a lot more confident dealing with the patients than yesterday. I started to think about how my program at BYU has me dealing with people all day long and how nervous I used to get thinking about it. This experience has given me so much time to talk to people I don’t find it an issue anymore. I’m sure I will be a little timid at first like I was yesterday but once I get the hang of it I’ll have the best time helping out with the athletes. Even though it had been about 2 hours since the last patient I had a lot of work still to do recording the drugs prescribed and filling out receipts for the in-patients. Gideon and I had a nice discussion about family and religion. I told him all about Mormons and he told me all about Pentecosts. When I did leave, I was in such a great mood that I stopped and had the best conversations with a couple of people. The first was with a man Kwaku. At first I didn’t really want to talk to him but I decided to actually stop and we ended up talking about everything from Hunting to Washington D.C. He told me his dream was to go to America but he not once asked me to take him there or give him an invitation. We talked for about half an hour before I told him I had to go home. Then I met Adjuba who taught the other girls some Twi and wants to teach Cassie and I some Twi also. I explained to her what my research was when she asked but she wanted to know why I was doing it. I told her I wanted to become a Physician Assistant which must be a cue for people to give you their medical history so you can fix their health issues. Her friend too started showing me all the bumps on her body, flashing me a couple of times in the process. I told them I’m not a doctor yet but they can call me in 7 years when I do have my license and I can help them out then. They insisted I help them out now so I told one that couldn’t sleep to drink something hot before bed and the one with all the bumps to put a cream on it. They seemed to be satisfied with those answers and let me continue walking home. I was almost home before these little kids stopped me to get pictures of me on their camera phone. Times like these I think it would be nice to be a celebrity with random people wanting your photo no matter how you look. Once I was home we cooked the tomato stew into the rice and added our avocados to make such a delicious meal. For dessert we had Obama crackers and nutella. Then we had one of the longest talks ever. We talked about our first impressions of each other and how we adjusted to each other in the first couple of weeks here. Although we are a group of girls that wouldn’t normally be friends in normal situations, we have been split up in the best way possible. I have learnt so much from Cassie and continue to everyday. After our super long discussion it was only 10 so I read my scriptures for a long time still trying to catch up and then went to bed.