Two Weeks in Freetown
on Shona in Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone), 03/Oct/2010 11:17, 34 days ago
The Exciting NewsSo the exciting news of this week is that I now have the internet at home. At least I’m paying for the internet at home. It jumps between being fairly reliable and quick to completely dropping out when I am mid-trying to do something. A bit frustrating.The other news of this week is that we started in the hospital. I’d say we started working in the hospital but as I still don’t have my medical registration I can’t really do any proper work…The Ministry of Health and SanitationSo on Monday we (me and various other VSO health volunteers) were taken to meet the Chief Medical Officer (of the country) along with various other high hidyins (?spelling). After the meeting I was interviewed on tape by the press officer who asked what was my background, what was I going to do and wasn’t it wonderful that there is now free health care for under 5’s and pregnant and lactating women.Ola During Children’s HospitalWe were driven over to the hospital in a Ministry of Health and Sanitation jeep and were shown around by Nadine, a German nurse working with an NGO called Cap Anamur. Within about half an hour of arriving I had witnessed the deaths of a set of preterm twins in SCBU. Very sad.I have spent the rest of the week attached to various medical officers on their ward rounds. The wards are: the ER and“ICU” (for those of you with any sort of medical background, this bears no resemblance whatsoever to any PICU I have ever been in), Ward 1 (supposedly for more stable children), Ward 3 (with a TB unit), an isolation ward, a separate measles ward, a therapeutic feeding ward (actually although this is full of emaciated children it is the happiest place in the hospital), and a SCBU (which they call S-C-B-U which I find terribly confusing!). This also bears almost no resemblance to any SCBU/NICU I have ever been in apart from the fact that there are some incubators!I have spent most time in ER and ICU this week but actually its difficult to spend much time there. I’ll go into more details in another blog but its fairly upsetting. Its frustrating not being able to do anything without my registration.So I am now a Lecturer…What I HAVE achieved this week in work is meeting Professor Tamra. She is an amazing woman, she is a Nigerian Prof of Paediatrics and is working for the UNFPA and helping to set up a Sierra Leone postgraduate paediatric course. She is in charge of the medical student teaching and has asked me to become involved in this. So I have now become a cardiology, respiratory and genetics lecturer…. My first lecture is tomorrow morning and is scheduled to be a TWO HOUR lecture on cardiology. Followed by a further TWO hours on Tuesday (also cardiology). Not sure I can actually talk for that long. Not really sure I even know that much about cardiology… but I have scraped together 129 slides for the two lectures…. Wish me luck!The WeekendIt’s now the weekend. Cat and I had a most productive day yesterday. We went out with a list of things to do and achieved them all! We changed some money in the supermarket (the rate is Le 6200 to the pound – not bad at all). We got a taxi to take us into town. We got slightly lost while looking for the Zain shop. We found it. Wer registered our mobile phones so that we don’t get cut off. We found the Sierratel shop after a bit of searching around. We spent 45 minutes in there and came out with dongles and two months supply of dodgy internet connection. We found Crown Bakery. We had a COFFEE and a CROISSANT! It was lovely. And there is a HAND DRYER in the toilet! My new favourite place in Freetown (apart from our balcony). We got a poda poda back home. We bought some onions at the market and some bread from the bread man. We then couldn’t connect to the internet so one phonecall toBeth (our resident IT VSO person) and we were invited to dinner. Theo had cooked all sorts of lovely Sierra Leonean food which we washed down with some boxed Spanish wine. And I managed to speak (very briefly mind you) to my father-in-law on Skype!Its now Sunday and I’m sorting out my genetics lectures for later in the week. This evening I’m off to the Mercy Ships to meet with some friends of friends of friends from Shetland to an evening service.PSThe internet is so slow and unreliable I am sorry I can’t reply to all emails but thank you for all your messages and thoughts. Love and miss you all! Andy has my phone number if you want to text me (its very nice getting texts from home and apparently it only costs you lot 17p per text – hint!)