Easter and sickness
on Rachael's VSO experience (Malawi), 30/Apr/2011 08:18, 34 days ago
Well it's been a while since I've had a chance to get near an internet café but I've finally made it.So what have I been up to, well the week before Easter we had a nurses meeting on the ward to discuss some issues we have, although we didn't find many solutions but it gave the nurse in charge the chance to let her nurses and support workers know that she is aware that they slack off a lot and don't do their job. I had hoped it would make a difference but it didn't. Work has been really busy, Malaria is still rife. We have also had a lot of children in with burns, many of whom have uncontrolled epilepsy (we only have a 'choice' of two drugs in Malawi to control epilepsy) sadly most families have open fires and well I'm sure you can all imagine. Unfortunately most of the time the children end up with horrendous facial burns, sadly these children tend not to survive for a combination of reasons, infection control being the main one I suspect. I don't really have much more to say about work my days tend to have a very mundane routine slowly the nurses are getting more used to having me around but they aren't interested in practice development so I normally spend one afternoon a week writing policies and such like and the rest of the time I just work on the ward. My boss from VSO will be coming in May at some point to set our initial goals, we've already met once to start thinking about it but this will be a formal sit down then I have to write a report every three months to show how I'm meeting these goals.So we had Friday and Monday off for Easter so four of us went away. One of the other VSO volunteers Elaine has a brother who owns a lodge by the lake at a resort called Kande, it's about a 2 hour drive from Mzuzu. We arrived on Friday lunchtime and left Monday lunchtime and I did absolutely nothing for the whole weekend. I met lots of nice people and spent the whole time relaxing and it was amazing, although sadly I appeared to leave my voice in Kande which is not helpful!! We spent most evenings relaxing or watching films as Anita brought her laptop with her. We decided we ought to go for a walk on Saturday as we'd done nothing and so we took a little walk along the side of the lake. As I am possibly the most accident prone person in the world of course I managed to stumble into some quicksand and sank down to the top of my (luckily only one) leg!! It wasn't much drama as I was able to get myself out but tragically lost my flip flop in the process. Some lovely locals spent ages poking around in the quicksand for my flip flop but obviously we had no success. After this traumatic experience I decided I should take part in no more activities so spent the rest of the time under an umbrella on the beach!! The weather was beautiful and so was the resort, I was tempted to do some horse riding as we met up with the girl who runs it, I was trying to persuade her to come and stay with me for a while as she is midwife but before that was a paediatric burns nurse so I wanted to pick her brains and thought the offer of a bed and 'exciting' Mzuzu might tempt her obviously my powers of persuasion are amazing so when she has some time off shes gonna come and stay, anyway we wanted to do horse riding but its US$60 and it's just a bit too much for me and after the quicksand I just wanted to stay out of trouble!! Well having said that stupidly we went to the bar on Sunday night and ended up out till about 3am, well I came back at 3 the girls stayed out till 4 but my throat was killing me. One of the guys staying at Kande was buying everyone shots and all kinds of drinks, the barman told me when we left that his bar bill had been 79,000MK which is about£350 some people have more money than sense. Anyway so we all spent Monday feeling very delicate especially me as it's the first time I've really drunk alcohol since I left England!! Needless to say that shots beer and wine did not mix well and I felt like hell... Too old for that kind of drinking.It was kind of an expensive weekend but I probably only spent about £60 for the four days so it's not really bad and as I said I don't tend to go out in the evenings or at weekends so I felt I deserved it. Sadly having got over the hangover on Monday I felt like hell on Monday night and when I woke up Tuesday morning I had no voice and a chest infection. Unfortunately I then had to have some blood taken by another volunteer to make sure that I didn't have malaria just to be on the safe side! Thankfully there were no malaria parasites in the blood film and my full blood count was fine and dandy. Felt rubbish but I'd had enough of being alone so went back to work on Thursday, I felt a bit better by Wednesday but people here struggle to understand me anyway and with no voice work would be even harder, I did a lot of work at home on Wednesday. I have definitely settled into work now as 4 of the nurses and 1 support worker came to visit me on Tuesday after work. Reassuring to know that if I was really sick someone would be there! The nurse in charge said if I felt any worse not to take any chances and phone the hospital switchboard and they'd send an ambulance for me! Very sweet but kind of embarrassing when your sick to have so many people in your house. Everybody decided to come and pray for me, a bit weird but atheism doesn't exist here so it makes it difficult. The guard's son came round to pray although the guard wants me to pay his sons school fees so they are always trying to be very nice to me!! Annoying when you think someone is just being genuinely nice and then realise they have some ulterior motive.Friday was a really busy day at work, one of the nurses children was unwell so she'd asked for the day off which left 4 nurses and me. So we knew it was going to be busy and then one of the nurses decides to go to the bank for 4 hours!! So annoying. I was helping with admissions in the afternoon, I still struggle cannulating but mainly because I hate using kids to practice!! So the nurse in charge was cannulating everyone and I was giving all the drugs and stuff. We were talking about the royal wedding for some reason people were shocked that if I were at home I would not have been invited, more shocked that I have never met any of the royal family! So we were just chatting and she turned to me and said we are really going to miss you when you leave I really enjoy working with you. I suspect this is because I actually work, it's rewarding though to realise that these children are getting better because of the work we are doing. Team work doesn't really exist here they are allocated to tasks and if you've got no work you sit down and relax no matter how busy everyone else is! Some of the nurses are very dedicated and committed to their job and others have become nurses because during their training they get free accommodation and free food! Ultimately I just do my best and if I can inspire one nurse to work harder and try to fight for these kids then I'll come home totally happy.I think May is going to be a bit of a weird month. We went out on Thursday night to say goodbye to Marianne a VSO doctor who was working in Rumphi (a town about 60km away from here) she is leaving Malawi on Sunday so sadly she leaves Ling (another VSO doctor) up in Rumphi all alone. Czar is hoping to spend all of May in Blantyre, Sanni is going to Tanzania for 2 weeks, Elaine is on holiday for the month and Anita is going away too. At the hospital another VSO volunteer Gen finishes her placement the 13th May and I believe she leave the country not long after that and Anita and Sanni are both finishing work at some point in May so are both going home too so I think it's going to be a very quiet month. I'm hoping to take some time off work in May and go down to Lilongwe (the capital of Malawi) and see a friend and book my holiday to Zambia. I'm really worried as when I last spoke to Rosy she said that the tour company we are going with will only run the tour if there is a car full which basically means there must be four of you. We are hoping that if we can't find anyone else who wants to come that they might find some tourists who are interested in going! Rosy thinks her neighbour might want to come so we are hopeful but I need to go down to Lilongwe to pay the deposit. I am hoping that I'll be able to speak to one of the guys in human resources here at some point and find out exactly how much holiday I am entitled to. My contract says 33 days including all public holidays and I'm not sure if that means the public holidays are included in those 33 days or not. Some of our volunteers save their holiday up so they can go home early but I'm in Africa so I feel that I ought to spend my holiday seeing some of this beautiful country and its surroundings. I'm hoping to do a bit of a safari and obviously I'm going with Rosy to Victoria falls and there are a few other places in Malawi that I would like to see.Other exciting news (it is Malawi it doesn't take much to excite me!) a woman approached me in the street the other day who owns a hair salon near where I live and said she cuts Caucasian hair (exciting to be called Caucasian not a mzungu!) so I might get my hair cut. However I might not, I've heard bad things about Malawian hair dressers so not really sure, to be fair I spend most of the time with my hair up anyway so I guess it doesn't matter how scruffy the ends are getting it'll give my hairdresser at home something to do when I come back if I haven't had it cut for my whole time out here!!