Friday, September 12th

Another busy day! I was going to spend the day with Diane but they were short-staffed this morning and I got the slightest taste of the stress of the hospital work. Diane had to help on the wards, so she sent me off to watch in the part of the clinic where they change dressings on wounds. It was good to see how the patient flow works and their process for changing dressings, but there comes a point where a wound is a wound is a wound.

I ended up going back to the wards to help Diane with some of the paperwork after a while. She felt bad because "it wasn't what [I] came out here to do," but I felt good because it finally felt like I was contributing something!

After lunch we saw some patients, mostly pediatric. We were sharing a room with another MD who was seeing patients at the same time and it was very crowded! So much for HIPPA!!

After clinic we spent the entire afternoon/evening visiting. Visiting is a HUGE thing here. Relationships are of the utmost importance. First we went and saw Sarah (she is Sarah the mid-termer's language helper) who just had a baby on Monday. Ezekiel. He was pretty cute. We stayed there a long time.



Another hospital worker lives next door, so we went there next. I'm still not entirely sure who's courtyard we were in. He wasn't there, so we visited with his wife for a while she was picking rocks out of the rice.

Next we went to see Basson. I like him. He has the nicest disposition. Very friendly and...well....likable. Diane said that he recently became a deacon in his church. He is one of the nurses who went through the hospital's training. Diane said a lot of the nurses that go through their program they know beforehand. They sort of hand-pick people that are well respected, responsible, have good families, etc. He showed us his garden and spoke quite a bit of English with us which was nice. His wife had already left for the village where we are going for a wedding tomorrow. She is singing in the wedding so she went over tonight. So I will meet her tomorrow. We met his kids and they were adorable.

Finally, we went to Diane's friend Yana's house. She is head of housekeeping at the hospital. They have a monkey. A MONKEY. Fun.


Yana has basically adopted Diane into her family. They are very close. We didn't get to visit long because these other ladies came to discuss something with Yana and by the time they were done we had been there a while and we were hungry and tired, so we left. We're going back tomorrow. Yana is going to make us sweet potato fries. Yum!!