the planned day v. the actual day

i am slowly but surely running out of creative ways to begin my blog-posts – not that how i have been starting them has been particularly creative. how many times have i started my posts with ‘it’s been a busy day’ or ‘it’s raining’? :)

i think i’m finally caught up on rest, though. i went to bed early last night, and woke up on my own accord at five thirty, so i guess i had gotten enough sleep at that point. you know, i just have to say, i love weekends. i love weekdays as well, but i love that on a weekend, i can get up, pad around – make a whole pot of tea instead of just a cup, and spend the whole morning drinking it. i love that i can choose not to take a shower and wear my most comfortable clothes.

i’m leaving in about half an hour to head down to lumley beach to see the sierra leonean amputee sports club (football team) practice. they usually scrimmage for a bit, and then maybe play a short game if the weather is nice. it looks as though the rain may hold off, which would be so wonderful. the past few days have been much less wet than before, but you never know. stefani is coming with me, and after we’re going to walk up to bliss patisserie – a little lebanese-owned restaurant where they sell coffee, pastries, and food. it’s a heavenly little oasis – one of the only places out that i’ve found that serves proper coffee – everywhere else is hot water and instant nescafe. not bad, but somehow fails to hit the spot when you want a good cup of coffee. :) then this afternoon, we have our long-awaited cooking lesson with abdul. a full day, but i’m looking forward to it all! it’s crazy that it’s my last weekend. at dinner last night, someone asked me what i particularly wanted to do on my last weekend, and i nearly fell out of my seat – i hadn’t even realized that i won’t have another saturday or sunday in sierra leone. not for a long time, at least. so weird....

i just wanted to jot a quick note about my day on thursday. stefani and went out with to new steps at waterloo. they send out mobile health teams every day to a few different sites on a kind of rotating schedule. as it was thursday, we headed out to rokupa – a village in between the outskirts of freetown and waterloo. after picking up vaccines from a local clinic, we headed out and set up shop outside a blacksmith’s shop. it’s operated by a man named pa mustafa, and it’s operated entirely by polio victims. pa mustafa is a victim of polio himself. so incredible to see – this extremely muscular man whose body suddenly shrivels up below the waist. a super friendly man, though. i wished that i could stay and chat with him a while, but we had plenty of patients waiting. i was afraid that i would end up spending the day just observing – so i spoke to the nurse, helen, telling her that i was a nursing student and more than happy to help. ‘nor worry, laurence,’ she said. ‘we get plenty work for you to do,’ and she was right! i ended up being in charge of all the well-baby checks. i weighed all the under-fives in our little hanging scale, charted their growth, and immunized the ones who were due for an opv and pentavalin.

it was absolute madness. i hunkered down to my task around ten am, and the next time i looked up, it was three. there was a seemingly endless stream of mothers with babies of various ages – the majority of which receiving their vaccines out of order or at a time other than the recommended age specified on their vaccination record.

every child should receive at birth bcg (against tuberculosis) and their first opv (against polio). then at six weeks it’s the first dpt/hep – a combined vaccine against diptheria and hepatitis – and the second opv. these two are to be repeated twice more at ten and fourteen weeks. then at nine months, the vaccines are completed with one yellow fever and one measles vaccine. out of the fifteen children i saw, i think one was on schedule. two were over the age of two. the vaccines themselves were out of date, and we didn’t have alcohol swabs to cleanse the injection site. the sharps container was nearly full when i began, making proper disposal of the syringes difficult. the cotton, when i retrieved it from the container, was swarming with ants. all in a day’s work, i suppose. it was a really eye-opening experience to the realities of a community clinic in a developing country. at the fistula centre and the opc, we are extremely spoiled in our accessibility to materials and medicines, and even they are not as nearly well stocked as almost any clinic in america. i was becoming extremely frustrated with it all, but then i saw the mothers standing in line, clutching their infants with a look of mixed anxiety and awe. i realized that to them i – childless, husband-less, younger, and less life-worn – was an authority figure. the weight of their expectation and trust was overwhelming. and so i did my very best possible by all of my tiny patients. i laughed with the mothers and with the crowd of little kids who gasped every time i uncapped a needle. it was an amazing experience – but absolutely exhausting. it has taken me until today to really overcome the aching tired which set in thursday afternoon.

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that was what i wrote this morning, intending to post from bliss, but they apparently do not have internet, so i've had to wait until now.

as always, the day ended up a bit differently than planned. in fact stefani and i were just commenting on how our time in sierra leone has definitely taught us both to hold all plans loosely - with the expectation that something will change or end up differently.

we made it to the beach right on time, only to find no football players. thinking we may be a bit early, stefani, christa, and myself spent some time just walking on the beach. we happened to pass one of the football players - the team's striker, and he told us that the coach had just phoned him to say that practice will be cancelled for the month of august - rain, elections, lack of funds, all combined to make meeting on a weekly basis too much of a hassle. so, fortunately, stefani has some pictures from when we went last time (when i had forgotten my camera), and i'll hopefully get those uploaded soon.

our time at bliss was good - but also different than we had expected. they did not have wireless internet, and i had packed everything up this morning, but not my adapter to plug my computer in. i totally didn't even think of it, completely forgetting that the restaurant would obviously have the different plugs. so i managed to get a fair bit of work done before my battery died, which was great.

the cooking lesson went really well - but again a bit different. abdul had done so much prep work that everything came together within forty-five minutes. :) i determined that i really liked eating with my hands, that fufu is good if a bit bland, and that okra soup is relatively easy to make if you have all of the right ingredients. i also determined that i do not particularly like palm oil, and i was reminded that africans generally have a much higher tolerance for the tiny hot peppers that you put in.

and this afternoon/evening has been a quiet one. it was a beautiful, clear day, and the rain has just begun to fall again. tomorrow's agenda: church one last time at st. luke's, a quick trip over to the clinic, and the beach (if the weather allows!)

more later...