week 5

Wow! I cannot believe that we are coming to the end of week 5! 7 of us are leaving tomorrow morning for our weekend getaway. Emily is staying here. She will spend Saturday in a local village and then go to church on Sunday. I am a little jealous because I would love to see what church is like here, but I cannot complain, we have a great weekend in store for us. We are going to a place called Cape Maclear tomorrow morning and staying at Gecko Lodge tomorrow night. Supposedly there is a big party going on at Gecko Lodge this weekend with lots of local bands playing. We have been hearing about this party for the past 4 weeks, so it should be fun. On Saturday we are taking a boat across Lake Malawi to Mumbo Island where we will go snorkeling and kayaking! I have never been snorkeling or kayaking so I am sooo excited!

Week 5 was a good week. I spent my week with the girls on OB. One of the most notable things about the patients in general, regardless of if they are on the OB ward or the IM ward, is how passive they are. Doctors do not round everyday so sometimes patients are waiting for days to be evaluated by the doctor. Patients just lay in their bed, very quiet, waiting to be seen. If they need labs or an ultrasound and they cannot get the tests done that day, they wait. There may be nothing really wrong with them anymore and we are just waiting for a repeat chest x-ray to make sure they are ok, but the x-ray machine is broken, so they wait. I have never seen a patient complain, ask questions or demand attention. The patients can be throwing up, writhing in pain or nauseated, but they never complain. If the doctor notices that they are in pain they will ask the nurse to give them pain medication, but if the doctor does not see the patient nothing gets done. What is also amazing is that some of these patients have been sick at home for a long time. One woman is 25 years old and has been short of breath since she gave birth...6 years ago. Now it has gotten to the point that she cannot lay flat without feeling like she cannot breathe so she decided that she needed to go to the hospital. She looks so sad and painful, and she has been waiting all week to be seen by the doctor, but she has never gotten loud, demanding or simply asked for help.
Sammie is on pediatrics and she said that the babies here are also a lot quieter than they are back in the US. In terms of the babies she thinks it is because most of the time their mothers are right by their sides. Anytime a baby cries the mothers start breast feeding them and they stop crying. Women breast feed their babies all the time. On the medicine ward often the women that are sick have small babies with them. Literally, with them. One time a mom was asleep in a bed and her guardian was holding her baby and the baby started crying. The guardian walked over to the mom, reached in to her shirt while she slept and took out her breast and laid the baby next to the mom and attached the baby to the breast. The baby fell asleep and the mom continued to sleep! I was amazed! Often the sick women have small toddlers sleeping in the bed with them. Everywhere I go in the hospital there are women with children on their backs. In general babies are everywhere, and breasts are everywhere! Walking down the street a lady may have a basket on her head, be having a conversation with a friend and have a baby on her breast, all with perfect posture. The women are so calm, and quite resourceful. We have heard from several people that in most families the man is the decision maker and the head of the family. If a woman is counseled about birth control options she has to talk to her husband first before she makes any decision. The problem is that if her husband is not at the hospital with her, then she has to go home to talk to her husband, and if they live several miles from the hospital it may be days, possibly weeks before she makes it back to the hospital, and by then the need for birth control may be obsolete. It is all so different from what we are used to in the US.

I have one more week here, and I still have so much more to learn about the culture! I guess I'll have to come back! :)

Have a good weekend!