I like the girl babies the best, but when I take care of them, I always think about the challenges many of them will face growing up as women in this country and world.
For a country so close to such a violent past, I find the number of children who play with plastic guns pretty disturbing. I know, I know, boys will be boys and all that jazz. It still really bothers me.
UN vehicles are generally jerks on the road. Just 'cause your radio antenna's bigger doesn't make you better.
Why, WHY do they wait until people are unconscious before bringing them for health care? I may have mentioned this before. It really bugs me.
I was out on an errand today and we stopped somewhere to pick up a key. While the other nurse ran in to get it, the driver and I waited in the car. Two little boys were hanging around and started looking at me. I waved, and one ran away. After a minute, the other one took a deep breath, ran up near the car window, shouted something, and high-tailed it out of there. The driver laughed, and told me that the little boy had shouted to the one who ran away, "See, I'm not afraid of white people!" Because I'm SO intimidating!
Edna gets upset because the non-governmental organizations here (PSI, WorldVision, Caritas, etc.) hire all her best graduates away from her, luring them with higher salaries than Edna could ever pay (or should need to). It's not the hiring away that she minds, she couldn't employ every graduate at the hospital anyway. It's that the NGOs don't contribute anything to training but reap the rewards. She thinks that they should be more active partners in this hospital if they're going to benefit. I agree. This is exacerbated by the NGOs willingness to make promises that they do a vary poor job following up on. Shame on them. Edna's is the kind of institution that international NGOs should dream of partnering with and supporting, because it's the rare thing that will continue on when they inevitably leave.
This country has the nicest weather of anywhere I've ever lived. Warm, breezy, dry except for a few afternoon rainstorms a week. I'll take it. It also has the best sunsets of anywhere but Cape Town (and that's hardly a fair comparison).
I won't be eating goat for a looooooong time after I leave here. I've had a lifetime's supply and then some.
Camel, too.
I will miss the pancakes they serve for breakfast here (loxox, prounounced lo-cho-ch, a bit like the Ethiopian injera), especially how I eat them--liberally spread with imitation Nutella. Here, the evolution of my breakfast each morning.
And the amazing fresh guava and watermelon and cantaloupe juices they make. I don't even like two of those fruits and I still think the juice is delicious.
I think somebody named a baby after me today :)
I don't know that you can ever get tired of seeing babies born. However, you can be insanely tired while watching a baby be born. Why do they all wait until the middle of the night to come out?
I feel fairly confident that in 20 years, when we have totally changed our minds about the best way to deliver and care for babies, I will come back to this country and find that they have finally totally embraced the current (circa 2010) standard practice that Lauren and I have been pushing on them, which at that point will be hopelessly outdated (I would currently place their practice in the late eighties/early nineties). The new 2030 volunteers will be shaking their heads, asking where they ever got these crazy ideas. Well, me. And it wasn't crazy at the time. That's how it works when you don't have people constantly tuned-in to changing best evidence-based practices and access to the latest studies. You get behind, then get set in your ways, and it takes forever to catch up. Change this by teaching midwives, at least some of them, how to understand evidence and giving them access to studies in a way they can understand. This seems hard, but I believe it is doable. The B.Sc. in Midwifery here will be the first program in Somaliland to do this. Rock on, Edna.
I'm glad that infection control isn't my primary interest because my head would have blown up by now.
I think that you should be required to have a prescription for formula. I'm not saying that that prescription couldn't be given without real medical reason following a long and serious discussion of reasons for formula use. But right now, it's too easy to buy and use formula without really understanding the consequences of that decision.
Can using sticks as scaffolding really be safe? Must be, I see it lots of places. Still makes me vaguely uneasy.
I will miss many members of the staff here, these two especially. Dr. Said and Nura, a staff midwife.
I am pleased to note that not all babies, even the ones that come out blue and not breathing with no heartbeat, automatically receive 8-9 as their 1- and 5-minute Apgar scores anymore. Lauren and I's constant drilling of Apgar scores seems to have worked, based on perusing the entries in the birth book. I like to think the sign, right above where the newborns are set to be cleaned off and resuscitated if necessary, helped, too.
When you are weighing a baby, you have to bend down to the level of the scale to accurately read it. YOU HAVE TO BEND DOWN TO THE LEVEL OF THE SCALE TO ACCURATELY READ IT.
Love the plants and flowers here.
:)
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