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Sanu! Na kwana?

("Zdravim, dobre rano" v Hausa)

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October 29, 2004 I traveled to Plateau State (going east from Abuja, about halfway to Cameroon) to visit the team there for three days. The drive is about 4-5 hours and we arrange a so-called “kiss” movement where each location sends a car, they meet half-way, exchange people and drugs and both go back to where they came from. No, nobody kisses. The driver taking me was Musa. Musa is a Muslim. It’s Ramadan now. And, it’s 35 Celsius degrees. If that is not enough let me put it together: Musa eats at 4.45am and then again at 6.20pm. He refrains from food AND drink the whole day. Yet, he is supposed to drive me for 5 hours on a road full of potholes. He is sweating buckets. I am sweating buckets. I feel bad drinking, because he is so thirsty I can see he has trouble pulling his lips apart and speaking. After an hour I can’t stand it anymore and try to explain to him that I am truly very sorry to do this but I have to have some "wata". He laughs at my embarrassment and tells me to go ahead. One good thing about the weather, though, is that you don’t have to go to the ladies room. The whole day! (There really are no ladies rooms anyway, that is why it’s so good!)The Plateau State is under emergency rule right now because of the killing of hundreds of people in an ethnic clash between Muslims and Christians in May. Emergency rule means the governor was fired and the military is omnipresent. Every 500 feet, there is a road block with 5-10 soldiers. Some just waive and let you go, some stop the car and make small talk hoping to get money but the fiercest ones have the guts to ask for condoms. We stopped giving condoms out to the soldiers some months ago but they still try, although we explained to their commanders over and over again. It’s quite amusing to see how they ask. One way is to not say anything and raise one hand up, making fist, with the other hand hinting at pulling a condom over the fist. Another way is asking for “Do you have thisthatthing?” but one relentless soldier actually got into a discussion with us and when we said we are out of stock for the whole country he said: “Do you want me to get venereal disease?” Remember, big machine guns hanging on everyone’s arm. My favorite day so far from the entire mission was the day I spent with the Plateau team at the clinic. When we got there early in the morning, there already was a queue of about 200 people – all needed to be “triaged”, registered, seen by a health worker, given drugs/injections. I sat for a couple of hours with Linda, the midwife who was counseling pregnant women. None of the women spoke English, just the local language, Hausa, so Linda was asking for information in Hausa and writing out the patient card in English. Out of about 30 questions, she filled out only Name, Age, Number of pregnancies and Number of Children. Just seeing the information she collected was an eye-opener. We had 17 year-olds with 2 children. We had pregnant 40 year olds with 10 children. There was a lady who said she had 9 pregnancies and has 4 children. I was so naïve as to ask whether some of those were twins!!! Linda looked at me and said: “No, they died…” There is something between normal body temperature and outright fever, it’s called “hotness of the body” (usually means the person has malaria). Contraception is referred to as “child-spacing” – it’s not to prevent children, just to afford some time in between… When you diagnose an STD, just after prescribing antibiotics you instruct the patient to bring her husband and all the other wives for consultation.Just looking at the diseases and conditions – ear infections, tooth abscesses, skin rashes that are treatable very easily, quickly and cheaply but are not attended to I realize these people must be in constant pain their entire lives.Se anjuma! (See you soon!)

Lenka Beňová

Lenka Beňová

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Som človek s nenásytnou chuťou byť a byť tam, kde som ešte nebola. Zoznam autorových rubrík:  SúkromnéNezaradené

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