Vanessa's Blog (It actually happened!)

Well, we are passed the halfway mark and I am officially writing my own first blog. I have been contributing ideas for the previous blogs but unfortunately my writing skills just aren’t on par with Dougs! (that is why I am a nurse and not an English major!) So I will attempt to write a blog, but I feel as though Doug has set some high standards, so as soon as you are prepared to lower the bar a little (or a lot!) you can continue reading on.

Our time here has been flying by and we are both now into somewhat of a regular routine. I am working alongside Mary Jane who is a nurse midwife, she is a great person and I have really been enjoying working with her. On Mondays and Fridays we go up to the clinic to do baby/child health clinics. We weigh the children, chart their growth, talk to the moms about how the child is feeling and if they are well, and give immunizations. These clinic days are always busy due to the fact that there are ALOT of children living in Kahunda and also due to the fact that Mary Jane’s clinics are free. We had one clinic day where we saw 169 children!
Unfortunately my Swahili isn’t the greatest so that makes communication difficult, I can understand a few simple nursing words (which gets me farther than I thought it would) but when they start speaking long fast sentences I’m usually looking very lost. So Mary Jane does the talking with the moms and then I get the medications that are needed, check the children for anaemia and enlarged spleens and give the immunizations. The children are very cute and seem to like me until I give them their immunizations. Many of the children that we see are treated for malaria and many are malnourished. Mary Jane gives health education to the moms about how to feed their children properly with the resources that are available in Kahunda.

There are a lot of strange beliefs here regarding health and wellness. Many of the moms bring their children to the clinic and expect to get LOTS of medication and they believe that the only way their child will get better is if they are given a needle (doesn’t seem to matter what the needle is for) and if you treat the child with oral medications the moms will either not give it to the child or will take the child to the witch doctor. The witch doctors are a huge problem here, especially on the islands. This has been a widely accepted practice for many years so most of the local people have very little trust in the clinic’s treatment. Many people who see the witch doctor end up coming to the clinic, but by then no one knows what has been done to the person at the witch doctor and it is usually too late to do anything to help so they usually end up dying. Another strange belief here is the idea of children being born with plastic teeth. Many parents believe that if you can see the white under a child’s gums then it means that the child has plastic teeth, so they pull them all out......this makes perfect sense.

On Tuesdays we do an antenatal clinic for the pregnant women. This is also a very busy day. Again because of the language barrier Mary Jane does the talking and I do the practical part of the assessment. So after Mary Jane is finished with her questions then I feel for the baby’s position and based on the size of the baby and position of the uterus I estimate how far along the mother is and then we find the heart beat. This is a very different area of nursing then what I am used to, but I am learning a lot a really enjoying it. A problem here with the pregnant moms is anaemia. Many of the women are very anaemic which puts them at risk during their delivery. We check them for anaemia and treat them, but if they are a big risk they will be told to come to the clinic to have their baby. Most of the women have their baby’s at home, but if they have had any previous bleeding complications, or the baby is not in a good position then they are told to come to the clinic. Unfortunately many don’t listen to the advice and have their baby’s at home and then when they realize that things are going well they rush to the clinic, but by then they have lost too much blood and the baby and/or mom end up dying on the way to the clinic or at the clinic. This is frustrating for Mary Jane to experience because this is exactly what she is trying to prevent, but what can you do when people choose to ignore what we view as common sense advice? It is very difficult to educate people on the whole idea of prevention and planning ahead. Most women don’t come to the clinic because either they don’t have the money to pay the clinic or their husbands won’t give them the money. What they don’t understand is that it would cost them 5000 tshs (which is about $4 CND) to come to the clinic or take a bus to the closest hospital to have their baby, but if they come when there are complications it will then cost them 50 000 tshs (about $45 CND – which is about their whole weeks wages) to transport them to the hospital. It is at times very frustrating for Mary Jane, she does so much educating for these moms and really cares about them, but unfortunately she just isn’t able to convince them all.

On Wednesday and Thursdays we go up to the clinic to do HIV/AIDS testing. These days are very limiting due to the communication barrier, but Mary Jane is very good at utilizing volunteers and she keeps me interested and busy. These clinic days are optional for anyone in the village to come and voluntarily be tested for free. Mary Jane provides a lot of education during these clinics. She starts off by asking the patient about HIV/AIDS to see what they already know. She then goes on to explain how you contract the disease and what it does in your body when you have it. Many of the people have very little education of HIV/AIDS and a common response to what it does in your body is “it eats away at your stomach”.

There are some very strange and scary beliefs about HIV/AIDS here. For example some believe that a woman can get it from a man, but a man cannot get it from a woman. Another belief is that if you get tested three times and everytime you are negative then you will never get it. The scariest belief is that is you sleep with a virgin you will be cured from the disease. The witch doctor is also believed to be able to cure people with the disease; unfortunately what the witch doctor does to treat HIV/AIDS involves cutting. So after they are finished with the HIV positive patient the next patient comes is and is also treated using a cutting procedure using the same knife, so while the doctor has “cured” the HIV patient they have now passed the disease onto this patient. Polygamy is another practise that contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, along with the fact that many of the men are fishermen and go off to fishing camps where they may live during the week and only come home on the weekend. In many of the fishing camps HIV/AIDS is running rampant. The fishermen are not faithful to their marriages and I was told by one of the other missionary nurses that does HIV/AIDS testing on the islands that in the fishing camps the percentage of HIV positive people is as high as 80%! There are many people who choose not to be tested for fear of being positive. Mary Jane does the HIV/AIDS clinics very well and she has made it possible to allow herself to witness to the people coming to be tested, she has a very interesting way of witnessing to the people. After she has done all of her educating and we are waiting for the test results she asks the patient “Do you know Jesus?” Here are some of the responses:

1) No, but I might recognize him if I see him.
2) Patient: No, but I heard that he is coming
Mary Jane: He has come, and is coming again
Patient: I guess I missed him the first time, hopefully I will see him next time
3) No, should I?
4) Yes.
Mary Jane: Where will you go when you die?
Patient: Heaven
Mary Jane: And why will you go to heaven
Patient: Because I’m a good person and don’t do bad things

These are some of the humorous (and sad) responses, but have given Mary Jane a great opportunity to witness to these people. She then spends time talking with each individual , invites them to church and gives them some reading material and tells them that if they have any questions to come and talk to her or to the local pastor or evangelist. Mary Jane feels that the Lord has really opened up doors for her and is very excited about these opportunities.

Another part of the job here is going to the local islands once a month to do these same clinics but for only three days a month. So on Wednesday we will boat the island Nyamongo. Mary Jane tells me that these will be a very busy three days, she said we will work sun up to sun down...I am really looking forward to this experience.

So, that is what I am doing for work during the week. The rest of my time I feel like have spend trying to figure out how to do things here. The cooking has been quite the experience. We have market here once a week where we can get some produce and the meat. They do slaughter a cow once a week (they pick the oldest, skinniest cow in town, which makes for some tough meat!). I have learned that there is no such thing as “whipping up a meal” here. Like for example at home when I feel like making an easy dinner I may choose to make hamburgers (you would think this would be easy!) but then I realized that when you have to ground the beef yourself and make homemade hamburger buns, this may not be the meal to choose if you feel like ”whipping up a meal! I will say though that my loaves of bread are looking better all the time! (my first loaf didn’t rise at all because I killed the yeast with boiling water!) I also realized that I can get quite a work out kneading the bread!

Our power situation has been quite an experience here. I think Doug may have mentioned this, but I feel the need to address it again. It seems to be a pattern, it starts raining and then the solar powered batteries run out so the lights die. Then the generator gets hooked up to charge up the batteries which causes the generator to break, then we run out of water because the generator broke while trying charge up the battery, so now we can’t pump the water. Then we call over our neighbour or a local fundi to fix the generator, the generator gets fixed a couple days (or a week) later, we charge up the batteries and pump the water with the fixed generator, the sun comes out and charges the solar panels, a few days later it clouds over and the cycle repeats. I guess this is what they meant by being flexible!

The other thing that has been causing me some grief is the washing machine. At first I was thankful that we actually had a washing machine, but I think I may have changed my mind. When we first got here, the machine wasn’t working because the generator was broken (surprise, surprise), so Emma (our house help) said he would just do the laundry by hand. Now I feel the need to comment on house help........ it is a different feeling. I am not used to having someone in the house doing things for me and being around all day. I feel bad if I leave dishes and ask him to do something, I mean if I’m not doing anything I could just do it myself. I also feel weird having a man that I don’t really know do my laundry for me. So the first time I gave him some of Doug’s white shirts to wash by hand, let’s just say that when the laundry was done they didn’t really look like clean white shirts! With some bleach and an overnight soak they were back to new, but I still had to figure out how to do the rest of the laundry. After we had run out of clean clothes I decided that I would just do the laundry by hand myself (how hard could it be), so after three baskets of laundry done by hand I realized that it was a lot more work than I thought and I also realized that I had scrubbed the skin right off my knuckles! A few days later the machine was up and running and I was soo excited so I washed our sheets and towels only to discover that the machine while washing spits out oil/grease, so our sheets and towels now have some new designs on them! (I also would like to add that the machine runs a little differently, you have to add buckets of water to the machine before and during the rinse cycle). So I’m still stuck with what to do with the laundry.

So I think that this brings me to the end of my blog. I feel as though I have written alot, maybe even too much! The time here is going very fast, and I am sure that June 3 will be here before we know it. My blog writing routine seems to be to write a blog every 72days so I guess this will be my last blog until we get home!