Grace Chew’s Blog

17/2/2009: Day 6, Kapuna Hospital

We’ve sort of settled into a makeshift routine,
with Ruth taking the adult ward and me taking the
children’s ward, and everything else taken by at
least someone. It gives us some days where we can
take our time to wake up in the morning. I don’t
know if it’s the heat, or if we’re actually
expending so much energy, but for the last few
days we’ve been in bed around the time the
generator goes off (about 11 pm) and some days I
haven’t been awake to see the lights suddenly blink off!

The children are quite fun to be around,
especially if one takes out a camera and starts
taking pictures of them. They’re all fascinated
by cameras, especially digital ones. The adults
are too, but are more restrained in their
fascination. The kids stand shyly grinning,
waiting for their pictures to be taken, and then
rush around to be shown it on the screen. And
then they call their friends to sit around and
get their pictures taken too. They are quite
photogenic – most have big round eyes framed by
the long graceful lashes that I also want, and
often their curly hair stands up or is tamed down
in interesting ways, or is a short crop that is
surprisingly soft to touch. And their smiles are
wide and open, so typical of innocent children’s smiles.

Ruth and my antics (somewhat like clowns) get
them laughing too, and we “perform” for them
sometimes while waiting for rounds to start –
pulling faces, “disturbing” each other, etc. Some
have lost their initial shyness, and run towards
us and hang on our legs. The language barrier is
not really a problem, as long as there’re games
to play. A ball can be kicked (or preferably
thrown in my case), and a wheelbarrow can be used
in mock charges at a group of children sitting on
the grass, scattering them in shrieks of delight.

Examining them can be a pain though. They have
the usual doctor phobia – fear of a stethoscope
put on them, or a tongue depressor in their
mouth, or the otoscope in the ear (though I must
say they’re better bearing this than some Western
kids!). Some are scared of being put on the
weighing scale (!) though that sometimes
disappears when they get better and are more used
to standing on that odd piece of metal. The
white-man fear gets some of them, and though
sometimes one is okay, two or three of us aren’t
and it takes them a while to get settled again.
When they start crying Ruth and I hurriedly move
away and make like we’ve not been looking at him/her at all!

Having quite rarely worked with children (the
last time was probably paediatrics rotation early
last year!) I’m still finding it challenging to
make them not cry, and better yet, work through
their crying and struggling! But yet, this week
in children’s ward continues to confirm my dream
of working with children, one way or another, no
matter how rudimentary my children-dealing skills
may be. I may not have the gift, but I sure can try and develop it.