Day 23

Today was amazing. I went to Nana’s shop before going to the clinic to buy donuts for everyone. It’s more like sweet bread and is delicious when hot. I didn’t arrive to the clinic until after prayers so I just tried to find my nurse friends to greet them. I ran into motorbike accident lady with the mangled foot and went into the room with her so she could get her wound re-dressed. It was at least 3 times the size of her other foot and the stitching on it had gaps that allowed for infection. I am so glad that I wasn’t freaked out about it like I was last time. I loved being in the dressing room because that’s where all of the excitement happens. 8 more patients came in within the next 2 hours ranging from scraped knees to nail bed infections. I’ll spare the gory details of each of these cases for the squeamish but I will tell you what I found interesting about the health care here. Pain is not sympathized with. A kid around 8-years-old came in with his knees pretty cut up and needed to get a new dressing on them. First they ripped off the band-aids then started cleaning them with saline water. The nurses kept telling him to stop yelling and then started laughing. When I asked them why they were laughing they said, “Because it says it pains him.” The differences between American and Ghanaian healthcare never cease to surprise me. Afterwards I went to the ward where the injections and weighings were happening for the kids. I watched Nurse Doris do about 80 injections in a couple hours ranging from Polio to Measles. I had to leave early to meet the other girls in Agona for Market day. We first went to the Internet café and sent out emails and blogged. The kid next to me saw me on facebook and I watched him search through pages of Natalie Blakes in order to add me. I normally would have been terrified but that happens all the time here. After we left the café we went to a bar and got pineapple fantas. They are much better than the orange ones I’m used to. We then ventured in the market and I bought avocados, groundnut paste, and some super rad shorts. There’s a guy on the edge of the market that sells shorts straight out of the 80’s and 90’s. He gets ‘new’ shorts every week so I’m excited to see what he’ll have next week. We bought icecream which is actually more like frozen chocolate milk but tasted heavenly because I think icecream is the one thing most of us crave all the time. Our taxi ride home was with a couple of comedians. About 5 minutes into talking to him he asked me to marry him and take him back to America. We said you have to have a lot of cedi to buy a plane ticket to America. He pulled out a HUGE stack of money. It was maybe six inches high. He said I have the money, I just need to marry you so I can go. I said you don’t even know me we’ve only been talking for 1 minute. He said no I do know you, it’s been 3 minutes. Apparently that’s all the time it takes to get to know someone in Ghana. Don’t worry I declined the offer and got a picture instead. I spent the rest of the night writing notes and fell asleep but it wasn’t long before Cassie woke me up in a slight panic. There was a pretty big spider in our room and she couldn’t sleep. After failed attempts to kill it and many screams later, Madam Esther came in to try to kill it but left after she hit it to my side of the room. The spider then had a lizard friend join it turning it into a the beginning of a lovely zoo. We still have no idea what happened to either of them but we’re hoping they both made their way out of room eventually.

XOXO

Natalie