2nd Week in Mzuzu
on Rachael's VSO experience (Malawi), 26/Feb/2011 09:01, 34 days ago
19th - 21st FebruaryJust a brief updated about the weekend. So Saturday I walked to the local post office just to find it! Then thought as I had nothing better to do I'd walk in to town it's only about 3km from the hospital and I'd already walked 1km to get to the post office. I got about another km before finally relenting and getting in about the 10th taxi that stopped. Apparently people don't walk in Malawi unless they are poor, and obviously in the eyes of Malawians white people can never be poor!! The taxi driver didn't charge me which was very sweet of him. I went to the internet café and then did my weekly shopping then came back home and got on my knees and started scrubbing the floor with a brush. The floor tiles are supposed to be white but are stained brown, mainly because in rainy season the water tends to be a browny colour and the mud is a light brown so it just gets embedded into the tiles. It took me about 2 hours but I feel so much better now as it actually looked clean! Unlike the rest of the flat but while we are both living here it is impossible to keep it as clean as I'd like! Then I sat on my bed to do some reading and realised the bed is covered in fleas, I wondered what was getting through my mosquito cover on the window and my mosquito net and it was fleas!!So Sunday I set about de-fleaing the bed and the whole bedroom, which took ages and I slept so much better last night! Still covered in bites but don't think there are any new ones but it's so hard to tell! I then did my washing, the guard of our complex has offered to do our washing he charges 300-500MK per load depending on how big it is and obviously doesn't do underwear!! In the afternoon we went to visit another volunteer who lives near by to collect a spare water filter.Then back to work on Monday! A much better day there were a few occasions where I felt really abandoned and I'm still struggling to get out of my western world mind set. It is not abnormal to have to wait 6hrs for a bag of blood only to be told the lab have run out of that type of blood!! Children with severe malaria and anaemia often come in completely unresponsive and all you can do is give them quinine, fluids and blood and sometimes you can put an NG down normally they do this if the child is not tolerating oral fluids after 24hrs. Children with malaria can have very frequent seizures and at the moment the hospital has no urinary catheters and no nappies either! If the children fit they are given pr diazepam if that doesn't work we do have phenobarb. I saw salbutamol tablets for the first time in my career today! The hospital have run out of nebulised salbutamol and I haven't seen an inhaler! I had to do the drugs round today and made everyone laugh, you shout the patients name then when the parents come to you you give them the drugs, there is no other checking and there are no name bands!So I'm trying to say names like Queen Knangawirenga or Ethel Ngandajiler and all the mums are killing themselves laughing at me!! All in all I had a much nicer day the nurses just left me in HDU on my own so I just kind of got on with it, think i'm going to need to do a lot of work on preceptorship and mentorship I mean I have a vague idea what I'm doing at the end of the day a sick kid is a sick kid but if I were a newly qualified nurse and they did that I'd quit!!2nd Week in MzuzuDeath hit the ward this week, about 3 children died every single day. Some from malnourishment mainly caused by HIV/AIDS but also caused by poverty. It's scary to see children that thin one child was nearly 3 and only weighed 5.3kgs which is about 10lbs! Children die here from things that should be easily treatable, many have bronchiolitis or pneumonia a lot of children die from shock. The nurses are busy and often struggle to notice that a child hasn't drunk properly for days. It's horrible to think that if these children were born in the UK they'd have survived... Grief is dealt with very differently here too, families like to express their grief which at times makes me glad that I don't understand the language but hearing mothers/aunts/siblings howling and wailing is always heart wrenching, the child is often left on the ward once wrapped for families to pray over them. Then many other mothers accompany the bereaved mother to the mortuary it was actually really nice as it obviously offers the mother a lot of support but the first time it really did feel a bit like a carnival as everyone joins the procession as you walk the childs body to the mortuary and they all wail and pray the whole way. Very moving.So away from death work has been interesting, I've had some good days and some bad days. Some days I really feel like the nurses look at me and think why are you here, what do you think you can do? Sometimes they can be very rude and quite unwelcoming or at least that's how it feels and then other times I'll have a great and feel like I'm really getting to know all the nurses. At the moment the hardest thing is not knowing the language. I really need to start getting lessons but Czar is worried about how much we will have to pay.Away from work completely life is generally very peaceful and quiet just the way I like it. There isn't really very much free time as a nurse working mon-fri 7.30-17.00 by the time I've cooked and eaten there is normally enough time to do a bit of reading or something before I go to bed. I am going to bed ridiculously early but I'm so tired all the time! Really not good at having to be up at 6am every morning!! I'm not really up for going out much at the moment just slowly trying to find my feet and settle in to a new life. It can be incredibly lonely at times but there are a lot of people that I can call or text if it gets really hard and it hasn't it's just been strange getting used to being alone again. Mr Soko the day guard of the complex said the previous volunteer started a garden and he was hoping I'd carry that on which sounds brilliant. Once there is a nice weekend some of us are hoping to go to the lake. Otherwise life in Malawi is very chilled out, I work, I come home normally by 17.30 I cook and eat dinner which can take till 19.00 and then someone might phone or text me or I read my book and listen to music or BBC world service, or I make some notes on the day if I've noticed something that I think ought to be improved or highlighted. Generally I'm in bed by 20.30 and then I watch a bit of telly on my Ipod then go to sleep by about 21.30. I quite like my simple life at the moment, I'm also quite enjoying cooking for myself it's surprised me how edible my food can be!! Not sure anyone else would agree I'm dreading people wanting to come over for dinner!!! Going to look at buying a PO box number tomorrow as I've heard it's expensive to get stuff couriered from the VSO office and the only other option is to wait for someone to come up north or someone from Mzuzu to go down to Lilongwe!I've stuck in a picture of the view from my kitchen!!