Jessica’s Blog

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Two stories from yesterday that I forgot to include: While we were at the market, the vaccinators walked through with their vests that said, “Saving children’s lives by vaccination.”  Any child they came across they would check for their mark, a colored in pinky fingernail indicating that they had already been vaccinated.  If there was no Sharpie on the nail, they would vaccinate them on the spot - no tylenol and no parental consent.  They were incredibly efficient.  Our young friend, who had attached himself to Jill first and later to me, had already received his vaccines, so the vaccinators hurried on.

After the first market, we went with Lisa’s friend to see her home.  She lives in one of the mud hut homes with many small rooms surrounding an inner courtyard.  The middle area had a concrete floor and was empty except for a dried grass shelter in one corner with a number of long wooden benches.  Three women were sitting there, drinking a cloudy liquid out of bowls made from dried gourds.  We sat down with them and our friend introduced one woman as her mother and a second as her sister.  She brought her children to show us and we talked for a while.  A dog wandered in and sat under one bench and a mango lady with a large plate of fruit on her head joined us off the street for a moment, then moved on.  Each room in the home had its own door into the court yard.  Lisa told us that last time her friend showed her the home, she took Lisa into her room.  There was a sleeping mat on the floor, a small stack of clothing, and a short dresser, which totaled all of her earthly belongings.  The men in the family were all living elsewhere and only came for occasional visits.  Lisa’s friend works at the hospital, so is not able to travel.

Today I slept in a little and the nurses teased us for coming to round late.  They said five minutes or one minute doesn’t matter, both are late.  Two of the children I discharge the other day were still there waiting for family to bring money to pay their hospital bill so they could go home.  It reminded me to be conscious of the cost of test, medications, and length of stay while still treating the kids. 

Only one child died over night – the five year old boy with an admission weight of 7.4kg.  He looked like death since his arrival, and I was not surprised, but I was sad.  Children anywhere should not have to diet just because there is no nutritious food for them when there is so much excess elsewhere in the world.  The rest of my kids showed slow by steady improvement.

In the procedure room, a man was wheeled in with a swollen, painful left knee.  He had been in a bus accident and had a number of scrapes.  Drew showed me where to stick the needle and I aspirated about 150mL of blood from the knee.  The swelling visibly decreased the longer I pulled off fluid.  He pain was slightly better afterwards.  If it reaccumulates, we’ll have to do it again.

We changed clothes and met at the Nyhaus’ to ride to church together.  We drove to the Fulani church and piled into the tiny building.  The pastor is a sweet man with a spark in his eyes.  Sallifu sat next to me and helped find the right songs in the hymnal.  He was the same boy who came up to me in the market yesterday and said, “Hi Jessie, do you remember my name?”  I didn’t, of course, although he looked familiar.  The pastor quizzed the congregation by asking for someone to summarize the sermon from last week for everyone.  Eventually, someone came up with it and he was satisfied enough to move on.  He talked about Jesus’ resurrection, switching back and forth from English to Fulani.  Partway through, a group of children came to the door to watch.  The pastor asked for a rug which was unrolled in front and he told the children to come in and sit or to go home.  They all came in and he handed an older girl a stick to poke anyone who spoke during the service.  The last song was “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine” in Fulani.  We did our best to sing their words from the hymnal along with the familiar melody.  They did not have piano or drums, only beautiful voices that carry their song to the heavens.

We drove home in the back of the truck and had lunch as a group.  Our volunteer cohort is now small enough to all fit around one table and pray and eat together.

After lunch a few of us drove to town to stop at the tailor’s shop.  I came along to buy a ball of soap to scrub the red dirt out of my skirt.  It turns out that local soap works great to remove local dirt for local cloth. 

I spent the afternoon looking back through everyone’s pictures that we shared the other night, and Jill and I outlined our presentation for the residency program.  Since I’ll be in Des Moines next month and Jill will be on nights, we are going to try our best to finish the presentation before returning to the States.  Hopefully we’ll be able to rearrange seats on the plane and sit together on the trip home so we can continue to work on it.

A baseball game started and we went out to watch and catch fly balls.  Sukanya, the Nyhaus’ youngest daughter is six years old and a fireball.  She works hard and keeps pace with all the action, including climbing trees in a dress after church, playing baseball with all the guys, bouncing all over the back of the pickup while driving and parked, and begging her dad to toss her in the air.  She’s my kind of girl.

We ate supper together, then met at the Wichita house for a jam session in the evening.  Drew played piano, John played guitar, and the rest of us drummed and sang.  They brought binders of praise music and we all picked out favorites.  Many of the songs reminded me of Knollbrook and the ULC.  It was a great Sunday!