Africa

Dave and his brother Dan went to Africa for a week in March to work in hospitals. It was a great experience for them. Dave felt awkward taking pictures of some of the poorer areas and things he describes in his emails but did get a few of the nicer areas.

This is the taxi boat they had to take from the airport to the city they were staying at. It was supposed to be a 30 minute ride but turned into over an hour because it broke down twice in the ocean as they were traveling.

Some of the beaches off of the coast.

Freetown, the first city they stayed in.



For work, many of the people just have these little stands they sell stuff out of.



Dave would write me emails almost every night so I've cut out a few of things from some of those letters and posted them here:

The first place we worked in was a government owned hospital. All the poor people go there when they need treatment and it was pretty bad. You walk in and its really dark, there's no lights on just whatever sunlight comes in through the few windows. There's a rickety desk just inside the door which goes right into a large room with a bunch of dirty beds and patients laying there. The hospital was very different than anything you'd see in the states. There was hardly any running water in a lot of it and the rooms were very tiny and dirty. The delivery room was smaller than our bedroom. it consisted of about 2 beds and a small end table and that was it. there was an operating room that was a little bigger and had a few lights and instruments. then there were a couple other patient rooms with just dirty beds all in a row and that's about it. So anyway, we went back and got our scrubs on and grabbed gloves and everything like that and went back to the hospital to start. They asked us what we wanted to do and we were like whatever you need us for the most. so they sent dan to help with the 5 and under (which was pretty much that front room) and the people who came in complaining of minor things. They sent me to the labor room though. that was where it got crazy. so there was this woman in there that was several hours away from giving birth and another woman that they were prepping for a procedure. Turns out she had an incomplete abortion that they were going to complete. so we all had to put on caps and masks and stuff and go into the OR and watch this procedure. Needless to say, it was very graphic and much more than anything I had any desire to see. i don't know if she had actually miscarried and that's what they call it or if she did the abortion herself and then had to go to the hospital to fix things, but it took a very strong stomach. anyway, after that there was pelvic exams and then more pregnant women with girl problems. i don't know how i got stuck with all the girl stuff today. dan's stuff wasn't nearly as crazy, the craziest thing they did was give a baby a spinal tap.

(This is a picture of the hospital)

anyway, after all that at the hospital, while we were waiting to get picked up, all these little kids would come up to us smiling and laughing but very timid, probably their first time seeing white people in person. they would get really close until we'd start talking to them and then they'd scream and laugh and run away and hide, and then come back a few minutes later and do the same thing. Sometimes a couple of them would get brave and sit on the bench we were waiting on next to us and then run away again. Dan and I were debating walking home so I went to a pay phone to call the driver to tell him if he hadn't already left to not worry about us. I went in the booth and all the kids crowded around and watched me. I was trying to put money into the slots but I guess it was for cards only so it didn't fit and I couldn't get it to work and they all just laughed hysterically at this dumb white guy trying to figure out a pay phone. It was pretty funny. we met up with the rest of the group at the hotel and then drove to some of the outskirts. then we went to eat at this cool place on the beach. the food was interesting. I thought i'd play it safe so I ordered a cheeseburger with fries. they brought out a mayo and swiss sandwich with about 5 fries between the meat and bun ha ha. not very yummy. So now I'm home and am eating pop tarts.

Today was another interesting day. We left in the morning to go to a village near Bo. It was pretty far away and we drove along these rugged dirt paths pretty much the whole way. It was super dusty and bumpy and the air conditioner would stop working randomly, but it was really interesting to pass through all the little villages. I thought Freetown was bad, but some of the places we passed were even worse. Many of the houses are just mud huts with straw for roofs that are falling apart. There’s just holes for windows and doors and they don’t have electricity or plumbing. The people carry buckets and jugs of water on their heads. In the more populated villages sometimes they’d have electricity in a couple of the shacks but that was about it. Sometimes we’d stop to stretch for a minute or to try and find a place that had cold drinks for sale, and again, everyone was just fascinated to see white people. They all rush up to the cars too and try to sell bananas or coconuts or whatever they have. Its really sad too because some people will also just beg you for money. Even when we were driving down the road, some kids would yell out to the car and the escorts would throw their unfinished bottles of water out the window onto the side of the road and the kids would run like crazy to them and snatch them up.

When we got to the village, Dan and I were taken to the local hospital. I was very surprised that it was so much nicer than the one in Freetown. Still very much third world and not good by any means, but better than the last at least. It was also much bigger and wasn’t as dark and dreary and the people seemed to be in better spirits. They also had bigger rooms, even though they were still just rooms lined up with dirty beds with sick people in them. There was even a maternity ward rather than just a two-bed delivery room. There was quite a few new-born babies in there and several sets of twins. Anyway, we met with a bunch of doctors and staff members and met with a few of the patients briefly, but didn’t get to do much there because by that time the place was shutting down. Its weird, and it was kind of the same at Freetown, but the hospitals are open from about 7-4 usually and after that they just close everything and if there’s a problem it has to wait until the next day. I’m sure they probably keep a nurse or 2 there with the patients but not much happens there at all after 4. So Danny and I are actually gonna go back tomorrow at 7 and just work there all day. It should be pretty good, they have an appendectomy and a hernia surgery scheduled for tomorrow so hopefully we can assist with that.

After the hospital we started heading to the village that we’re staying in tonight and grabbed some African food on the way there. I had goat meat soup and rice. I pretty much just ate the rice, the goat meat was disgusting. People sell monkey meat here too, I just might have to try that while I’m here. We went to the other village a bit away but a little closer to Bo. It is very very small with this big lodge in the middle that is like condos. It was actually kind of nice (by comparison), like the one we were in in Freetown. This one even has a little water heater in each room so that there are hot showers which was very nice for a change. There’s also a little restaurant area at the lodge where we ate at. They killed a bunch of chickens and grilled them up and made us french fries. We ate and now its about 10:15 so I’m having to go to bed now because we’re getting up at 5 tomorrow to go to the hospital. Everyone is going back to Freetown tomorrow evening but Dan and I may stay another day up here if the work at the hospital is good. I guess we could go back to Freetown but I don’t really want to go back to that other hospital and finding a new one would be kind of a pain. So we’ll see.

Today was pretty cool. we got up at 5 this morning and had some breakfast and left Tyama (not sure how its spelled) and headed to the village I told you about yesterday (myomba). We got to the hospital and they put Dan in the pediatric ward and me in the male ward. We mostly spent the morning taking patients' vitals (blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, etc.) looking over their charts and treatment plans. Its really weird, if a patient has a temperature or cough, they immediately assume malaria and are usually correct. Same for if a patient comes in with trouble breathing or chest pains, its usually pneumonia. It was fun working there but with the accent and the different dialect it is super hard to understand what the patients and other doctors or nurses are saying. Everybody is very friendly though. After that they had us both go work with the babies. They basically just had a flow chart of questions for us to ask the mothers and things to check on the baby and it narrowed it down to a couple different things but mostly malaria and pneumonia again. Then we'd have to write everything in their charts and prescribe a certain medication based on what they had and their age and stuff. After that we got to watch 3 surgeries in a row. They let us stand right there at the operating table and watch the entire things, it was really cool. The first one was a girl that needed an appendectomy and the next 2 were guys with inguinal hernias. It was sweet. After the surgeries we headed back to Freetown.On the way home we made a few stops in some of the really rural villages cuz the driver had few things he needed to buy. Whenever we'd stop the people would see white people in the car and run up to the windows and just stare at us, not even trying to hide it and not really saying anything, just surrounding the car with their fruit baskets on their heads and just standing as close to the car as they could and staring ha ha.