Leah Chapin

Sa

July 5, 2007

When I had been here for only about a week, I was asking one of the Ghanaian staff at the hospital how to say “How do you say?” in Mampruli.  I was understandably having trouble getting an answer to the question “how do you say how do you say?”.  It was raining that morning, and I used the rain as an example.  “How do you say rain in Mampruli?”  “Sa”, he replied.  “So, how would you ask, in Mampruli, what is that called?”  Turns out there are many multiple and complicated phrases to enquire the name of something, but the simplest was “Ka yuri?”.

Later that same day I noticed a bar of soap in the maternity ward with it’s wrapper still on.  “Sa”, it said.  Sa, underneath a picture of a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman, who I really doubt ever knew that “Sa” means rain in Mampruli.

Rain here is something that is prayed for.  It is the beginning of the rainy season, and farmers have planted their crops:  ground nuts (peanuts), maize, and millet.  With the first few rains, plants spring up quickly, but they suffer in the sun with the big gaps between rain.  The rain turns the red dirt here into red mud.  But it isn’t like the unpleasant, sticky mud found next to the Platte River, but more of a sandy mud that drys quickly, and is easy to sweep away.

Another thing the rain brings is an increase in the number of mosquitoes, and with that a flood of children in the wards ill with malaria.  And the worst thing that could have happened happened.  I got malaria.  I woke up Sunday morning, and felt like I had been hit by and/or sat on by a very large and angry animal.  Everything hurt and the headache that had started the night before had only increased.  I had a 10 minute conversation with David that I do not remember, after which I fell asleep again under a pile of blankets.  I didn’t get up until about 2pm, and was back in bed shortly after.  News traveled quickly to the Failes that I was ill, and they checked on me, and Elisabeth, always faithful in attending to my every need, brought me antimalarial medication.  I started it the next morning, and I have felt progressively better.  The best way I can describe it is like having the flu.  A no appetite, no energy, weakness, sore everywhere, lethargic, vomiting kind of flu.  I have been well-taken care of, and thank you to those of you who were praying for me back home, I know it must have helped.  Malaria kind of comes in cycles.  I will wake up some mornings feeling like I can take on a full day’s work at the hospital, then I will crash.  The other day, I fell asleep on the floor of the doctor’s office waiting for a surgery to be over.  I was there for 3 hours asleep!  Everyone had wondered where I went.  I was busy having malaria.

I have continued to get closer and closer to the twins.  They even reach for me sometimes now!  I visit them at least twice a day.  One day I took one of them to the work with me at the hospital, tied to my back the way the African women do.  Everyone in the wards thought it was hilarious, this salminga (white person) with an African baby on her back.

Asena slept most of the time, and so she wasn’t disturbed when I was part of a very traumatic experience in the adolescent ward.  Rounds were continuing through the wards as usual, and Dr. Faile, David, and I were visiting a patient who had had surgery on her arm to remove some infected bone.  The girl was doing well, and I was gazing around the room.  I noticed that a girl a couple of beds down seemed to be having trouble breathing.  I payed closer attention.  She was only breathing short gasps every once in a while.  Moving to her bedside, I repositioned her head, hoping to create an easier path for air to get into her lungs.  This did not seem to be improving her breathing.  Her eyes were open, but she was not reactive, not even when I dug my knuckles into her small sternum.  Dr. Faile had joined me, and he was looking on silently.  “There’s not much we can do”, he said.  I asked what she had, what was making her so sick.  “Malaria”.  The mother picked up on the tone and became very distressed, crying quietly.  At some point in the next few minutes someone moved her out into the hallway.  Dr. Faile had gone, and this girl was still making desperate little gasps for air, only every once in a while.

Pinching her nose closed with my fingers, I closed my mouth around hers.  If she couldn’t breath, I was going to breath for her.  Memories came back of the multiple times I had been tested on those CPR dummies, giving small breaths to fill their plastic lungs.  It was oddly similar, the way it felt, only there was a resistance to my air.  It felt as if I was blowing bubbles through a straw into a thick milk shake.  Dr. Faile was back.  I heard him say “pulmonary edema”.  Someone brought a manual ventilator.  Someone else brought a manual suction device.  I watched in silence as they tried to make her broken body move air and pump blood as if it hadn’t been fatally damaged by her infection.  I felt her pulse, and then I didn’t.  She died.

Going into the medical field, I knew that I would eventually see someone die, I just didn’t know it would be right then.  I didn’t know it would be that little girl.  I sat on her bed, feeling her warm arm, fighting back tears I felt were inappropriate.  Not that death doesn’t bring tears, but my tears weren’t from missing her.  They were from what felt like a selfish sort of sadness at her situation, and how it contrasted with my own.  We both had the same disease, but I lived and she died.

They wrapped her body in a sheet, and carried her away to be buried by her family.

I couldn’t hold it in much longer, so I found a quiet hallway in the back of the hospital, and I cried.  I untied the still sleeping Asena, held her sweet, living body against me, and sobbed.  I was glad the rain was falling hard on the tin roof, and I found myself thinking of it as Sa.  The word Sa is said softly in Mampruli, a blessing from the sky kind of sound.  I was comforted by the idea of this small child being in the presence of God, away from the short suffering of this world.