My First day in Abomosu

Me, Reika, Joana the nurse, and Leah at the Health Center

My first day in the house we will be staying at until next Friday was spent in a health clinic a few villages away.  We woke up early and our driver dropped groups of us off at different health clinics.  The one in Abomosu was the biggest one in the area, and there were many people waiting to be helped when we got there.  It was very interesting because a lot of the health center is outside.  It is so different from American clinics, I can't even describe it.  We took a tour of the center, and we even got to go into the room where babies are delivered, and we actually got to see a baby that had just been delivered.  There is one nurse that delivers all the babies, and she told us she would love to have us help.  It would be crazy to say that I helped deliver a baby!  We will see what happens though.

Me, Leah, and Reika went to a very very small health clinic a few villages away.  One of our tasks was to go to homes of the villagers with the a nurse and to ask questions about the bore holes, which are wells that they pump to get clean water from.  The nurse asked them questions that Professor Mackleprang created, like if having the bore hole gives them more free time, how often it breaks down, etc.  We visited 4 homes and talked to villagers and the nurses translated from Twi to English.  It was interesting and a good experience to actually go to the homes and see how the water wells affected their day to day life.  Before the bore holes, children would have to walk extremely far to get water, and it would affect their schooling and education.  Now that they have the bore holes, we discovered that the water is better and they do have more free time, but there were some complaints that they broke down too often.  No research has been done to see how the locals like the bore holes, so it was interesting to be a part of that.

Leah, our nurse, and I with a bunch of kids in the village.  They all gather around to see the "Obruni's" (White people)

After we conducted a few interviews, the nurse, named Joana, took us to meet another nurse before her shift at the clinic started.  Both women were extremely nice, fun, and hilarious.  It was a great experience interacting with them and talking about their culture vs our culture.  We walked back to the health clinic, where we watched shots being administered. We were even asked if we wanted to administer the shots ourselves, and we of course said no.  There wasn't a whole lot to do at the clinic because it was so small, but we did help with copying down medications from patients records to the insurance information.  The nurses handwriting were extremely hard to read, though, which made it difficult. 

Behind the health clinic was one of the bore holes, where we got to pump the water.  I can see how it would be a lot of work for a kid to fill up multiple buckets at a time. 

One fun thing I did was take a test for Malaria.  We heard a baby crying in one of the rooms, and we asked why, and the nurse told us the baby was getting a test for Malaria.  I asked what they do to test for Malaria, & she said she would tell me if she could do it on me.  It was basically just a finger prick for blood, and then they put it on a thingy and wait for 20 minutes and read the results.  But it wasn't really a finger prick, it was more of a finger stab. And the kit came in a closed package, so it was sterile. Our van came to pick us up when there were still, like 13 minutes left until the test could be read, so I didn't get to see the results :( I'm assuming it was negative though!

After Joana pricked my finger

The rest of the day was spent, for me, just relaxing until dinner.  Me, Paige, and Reika cooked dinner, which consisted of carrots, cabbage, and top ramen, so it was basically a soup.  There are bugs EVERYWHERE and one of our "jobs" was to use a spoon and keep getting the bugs out of the water we were boiling.  It was seriously nasty.  Cooking the food was pretty sketchy because we kind of just put spices in and made it up, but it turned out pretty tasty, besides all the bugs around.

It seems like we will spend a few days doing the same things - interviewing and working in the clinics.  It's been a great experience!

I am having a hard time uploading pictures to the blog, but I am doing my best!  For some reason, a lot of the pictures either look like crap or just won't upload, so I have a lot more pictures to show you than this! Most of them should be on my facebook, so just bear with me.  Miss you!