The day the bike made us laugh.

Thursday

Last days are always bittersweet.  That word always makes me think of the song Strawberry Wine.  Which actually sounds pretty fabulous right now.

It’s just the sunsets that are so pretty that make me want to enjoy a sweet glass of wine with them. 

………………………………………………………………………………..

Our Marlinso (lizard) was on the wrong couch.  He gets one couch.  The whole thing.  But he chose a chair.  Frances’ chair.  Like he owned it or something.  Not ok.

Even if he was here first.

[other]

Today was a short day at clinic.  We don’t start until 10 on Thursdays or Fridays, which is pretty sweet.  The internet was on for about an hour before work this morning, so I posted a few hundred blogs and I sent a few emails.  I have about a thousand more to send.

We arrived at clinic and walked around looking for Rose.  We usually try to work with her since she’s our favorite.  (She treats us like equals and explains things really well.  We also think she’s very smart!)  Mr. Musonda (Lamb) was in the dispensary this morning.  We like him too, especially when he’s running children’s clinic.  The old nurse, Lorna, was in the screening room.  Gift was in the lab, and Maureen was running Ante-natal clinic.

After scoping out clinic, we decided we’d work with Mr. Musonda because he’s the nicest and he genuinely appreciates our help.  But Maureen spotted us first and asked for our help.

We had no choice but to join ante-natal clinic with her.

We know how the show works now.  Thursdays are “booking days” where new mothers get their “safe motherhood numbers” and booklets.  Then they get a physical exam.  We’ve made hundreds of booklets.  We’ve taken hundreds of blood pressures.  We’ve weighed hundreds of mothers.

And the nurse has SEEN us do it all.  But that didn’t make a difference.  We still got the explanations all over again. 

Just for the record, we’re not idiots.

The blood pressure machine has been broken for about a week now, which I told the nurse.  She didn’t believe me, so I showed her.  She started explaining how to take a manual blood pressure, which we’ve done a million times and we would take it manually over using a machine, but they don’t have a manual cuff.  Which she was surprised to hear.  Especially because she works there.

My favorite part of the morning: the nurse asked when we would be leaving for America.  We said “tomorrow we leave, today is our last day.” And she said, “oh, I will miss you so much, I really like you guys.”

Really?  You could have fooled us!

Then she asked us to send her a flower from America.  Somehow, I don’t know if a flower would make it in the mail.  Maybe though.

We worked in the dispensary after antenatal clinic.  Mr. Musonda took over for the Nurse Midwife in the screening room.  We love it when he screens because we can actually read his handwriting and he shows us anything that he thinks we don’t see much of in America.

He knows what we see and what we don’t see in America because we talk with him at lunch and after lunch and we ask him questions and he asks us questions.  We really appreciate him!

He filled out our evaluations because he has the best English of anyone there today.  Elija Pule also has good English, but he was at a conference in Kitwe.  I love how in Lamba they don’t put silent letters onto words.  You don’t pronounce the h in Elijah, so he doesn’t have an h in his name.  Finally, something that makes sense.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

We footed home.  Or part of the way home.  On the way home we saw the craziest thing ever.  You remember how I’ve talked about people put crazy things on the back of their bikes like six 80 lb bags of coal or mattresses and they ride their bikes like that.  Well today takes the cake.

[bike]

I know it’s hard to see, but yes.

That’s 2 live pigs on the back of his bike.

Flapping around, waving and oinking.

Frances and I almost died. 

Then we turned our attention to the lady carrying a suitcase on her head.  For real.  We’ve decided to learn how to carry things on our heads.  I tried today and failed miserably.  All I did was mess my hair up.  The ladies here are way more legit than we are!

[suitcase]

………………………………………………………………….

So, we were invited to watch a movie with the missionary family that lives here.  Frances and I were decently excited because we’ve only watched one other movie here and it was pretty good.  But it wasn’t a missionary movie.

We were offered caramel popcorn and leche juice.  These people know the (African) way to my heart!!

The movie turned out to be hilarious.

Not as funny as the pigs on the bike, but it was pretty good.  It was a documentary/ reenactment of missionaries.  Except that it was filmed in the late 80s and their shorts were too short.  But it was a good message calling for more missionaries. 

It made me excited to see the power and strength of our God.

Even the late 80s couldn’t stop God’s power.

………………………………………………………………….

By the end of the night our Marlinso made it back to his couch.

Thankfully.

[Marlinso]

Frances still decided to read on a new couch.

[Frances]

The day we finally won solitaire at lunch.

Wednesday

Rain on a tin roof.

Peaceful.

You have to think that, otherwise it’s just annoying.

All the thunder and lightning is making me miss daddy.  I remember when he would take me out on the porch and watch the lightning from across the field behind our house.

We haven’t had the internet for 3 days now, so we decided that rainy season has officially started.

Children’s Clinic was great this morning.  We got to see 4 one-week-old babies.  We got to see a 30 minute old baby.  I got to put lots of kids in the scale.  We gave lots of vaccines.

Frances got to write out “under-5 cards” for the new kids.  Mr. Musonda (Lamb) told her how to write all the names.  When one mom wanted to name her kid Joyceline, Mr. Musonda had no idea how to spell it.

Frances looked panicked.

But I knew how to spell it because a girl at Harvest Children’s Home was named Joyceline.  So I take credit for naming the girl. 

Or at least saving the girl from spelling her name the Frances way, which often includes a lot more vowels and letters than necessary, her whole life.

We played solitaire at lunch.  Again.  We can't seam to come up with anything better to play.  We opted to play one card at a time because that seems to be the way to play if you ever want to win.

We won twice.

[won]

We also watched the chickens line up on the board.

We’re not sure what the board is for except maybe to hold chickens.

[chickens]

Mr. Pule thanked us for doing such a great job since he won’t be there tomorrow for our first day.  He told us how hard working we were and how we made a big impact. The clinic was able to see a lot more people because we were there.  People heard that new, young masungu “doctors” were in town and came to the clinic.

[Alam Musonda, Elija Pule, and Me]

Just to see us.

We looked at malaria under the microscope (instead of just using a RDT).  You can do that to monitor how effective treatment is.  You still have to prick the kid and make them cry. …

When we got home we made more guacamole and put it on our spiced veggie burgers.  It almost tasted like Texas.  It was fabulous.  And quite filling.

After dinner we sorted clothes with Joseph again.  We filled the 80 bags with 4 more pairs of shoes. 

Now there are 6 pairs of kids shoes in each bag so no one has to fight over shoes.

We also made 20 more bags, full of 6 pairs of kids shoes and more clothes.  Now there are 100 bags ready to be given to people in the community.  Joseph thanked us profusely, saying there was no way the bags would have gotten done without our help. 

I think he really just liked our music.

We listened to Mae’s Everglow.

“I can not say that I was ready for this.

                                                              But, when worlds collide,

And all that I have is all that I want.

                                                            So when you say forever,

Can't you see you've already captured me.”

The Sun and the Moon by Mae

And like it was planned, we finished sorting just as the CD finished.

Good timing.

After sorting, we took a walk before it got dark.  We only had time to go down to the river and back.  The river was lower than it was 2 weeks ago, which is surprising with all the rain.  We watched as the clouds rolled in and the thunder got louder. 

Brother Bob started off on a run just before we got home.  We cheered him on since he cheers us on.

We started to feel the raindrops as we entered the mission compound.

Again, good timing.  

We decided to play in the rain until Brother Bob came home.  We didn't want to have to worry about him.  Then the thunder started getting closer so we went inside.

[post-rain: notice the zebras on our couch.]

At this point, Frances and I feed decently assimilated in the culture.

We made it home before the rains started.  Someone called us “sister” today.  We have started responding “fine” when people ask “how are you,” since that is the only acceptable response.  We foot places.  We use storm sticks and storm coats. 

And tonight, Frances used recycled aluminum foil to keep our guacamole fresh.

We’re probably going to return home waving to all children and calling the AC “air con” and using serviettes instead of napkins.

And we fully intend on carrying our children around in cloth instead of fancy baby-harnesses.  Not only does it save money, but it saves us from making another trip into babies-r-us, where we both practically hyperventilate.

……………………………………………………………………………

Frances just tried to turn on the water. 

It doesn’t work.

She turned to me and asked “what do you think that means.”

I laughed, “I guess you have a blog title for today.”

But seriously, we’re not sure.  We know when the power goes off the water gets choppy. (air in the tubes or something) It’s never gone OFF before.

I guess I’m not washing dishes after my computer dies.

And I guess we’re not showering before bed. 

Or flushing the toilet more than once.

Awesome.

The day we didn’t eat PB & J for lunch.

Tuesday 

Joseph drove us to clinic this morning.  Henry came with us, on a trip to town.  We’re still not sure if he can actually drive, but he says he can.  I’ll let you know if we ever find out.

We spent the morning in the dispensary.  Sometimes I feel like an idiot when we’re there.  I can’t figure out what medication they’re asking for.

[the dispensary]

I’m not fluent in chicken scratch.

Also, sometimes they use generic names, which are on all the pill bottles and sometimes they use the brand name.  And sometimes they use a brand name, and you have to figure out what brand name is equivalent to that.  It’s not that hard if they write panadol when the brand we have is paracetamol. (both are acetaminophen)  But when you write Septra and we have to figure out that co-trimoxazole is the brand we have, then we start having problems.

I did learn a new skill today.  I learned how to break tiney pills in half.  And I got pretty good at it. 

[my new skill sitting next to the chicken scratch]

But by far, the most painful part of the morning came when we had to dispense “coated gauze.”   A little girl had a baseball size burn on her elbow.  One of the nurses showed us how to clean a burn wound and dress it with coated gauze that wouldn’t stick to it. 

I had a really hard time.

Watching the nurse scrub the burn while the little girl struggled to hold back huge tears made my heart hurt.  I wish I could have given her a teddy bear to hold.  Why did I not keep a teddy bear in my pocket for this?  There’s a bag with a teddy bear in it sitting next to my bed at home, donated for the trip.  It didn’t fit in my bag, instead I brought medical supplies thinking they were what was needed most.

I wish we could have given her a dose of pain medicine first.

I wish the nurse had showed a little more compassion, at least appearing like she was being gentle instead of grabbing and yanking the arm.

For the second time since we arrived, I felt nauseous at the clinic. 

The nurse put on dressing and asked me to help hold it.  The only relief I felt was being able to hold it on gently and holding the girl’s hand at the same time.  She was doing such a great job at being brave.

And I wish I could have told her that.

Told her something. 

I hope she could read my eyes, full of compassion and concern.

Sweet, baby girl. 

Frances and I were so concerned for the little girl that we didn’t even notice that the nurse was insulting us.  Talking down to us, mumbling under her breath in Lamba, not sure why we didn’t know how to wrap a burn.

Mr. Musonda yelled at her to stop treating us like idiots, that we’re doctors in America, things are just very different here and in America the nurses typically wrap burns.

Good thing he was looking out for us, because we weren’t able to.

…………………………………………………………………………………

We ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch.  I barely ever eat peanut butter in America.  I have a half a jar of peanut butter that’s still in my cupboard because I hate PB & J.   I would much rather make a salad for lunch, bring leftovers, eat cheese and veggies on bread, eat snack food, than eat PB & J.

I think we got made fun of during lunch.  It wasn’t in English but people were definitely laughing.

So we moved up to the porch of the clinic to escape the heckleing.

But I’m pretty sure we got made fun of worse on the porch by our favorite nurse.

She asked “how was lunch.”  Frances and I both said “lunch was good” followed by laughter and some Lamba.  Then the Lamba broke and we heard “lunch was good” out of her mouth, followed by more laughter and Lamba.

If you’re going to make fun of us in earshot, it would probably be best to translate ALL of it into Lamba so we don’t know.

After that, we were approached by a guy who stopped just to watch us play a game of cards.  He was mildly fascinated, and when we finished speed, he told us so.  Then he moved on.  I guess that’s what you get when you’re a musungu.

After he left, we moved on to a new game.  Old maid. 

I remember playing this a million times as a child with just a deck of cards, but it’s not the easiest game to make up the rules for.  We started playing with just pairs of numbers or faces, any color.  We had too many matches.  Then we decided our pairs had to match: red and red, black and black.  But again, too many matches.  The game was over to fast.   So we decided to try getting 4 of a kind.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold that many cards in your hand??

The game got pretty intense.  We were way into it.  We still had problems with cards left over.  We gave up and went back to work in the dispensary for the afternoon.

…………………………………………………………………………………

Here’s a summary of the rest of our day.  Nothing too exciting:   

Walked to Joseph’s shop.

Got a lollipop.

I had to pee but couldn’t, because a bug crawled across my shoe.

I think Mufutu (whose name means trouble) thinks he’s funny when he calls us weak in sign language: saying we walk too much and won’t be able to make it.  

 We don’t agree.

The well where everyone gets water from was busy.  So we weren’t able to get pictures with it.

No internet again.  Bummer

I worked on my project.

Then played solitaire till I won.  (Only 5 times)  I picked up some skills to help us play solitaire at lunch tomorrow.

The day that a lollipop made everything better.

Saturday

Waking up, it was chilly.

Like that first day in fall when you notice, “wow, it’s not going to be swelteringly hot today” and you can feel a calm peace in the air. 

I thanked God for letting me experience one of my favorite things about fall, when actually, I think it’s Spring here.   But I was so upset about “missing” my favorite things about fall, so I think this was God’s way of saying, “See, just because I called you to the other side of the world during one of your favorite seasons doesn’t mean that you won’t get to experience some of your favorite things.”

I appreciate that.

It could have been a better day.  We got dropped off to clinic earlier than normal, only to find out that we were running the clinic today with just Festina.  Who’s great, but doesn’t speak much English.  Which is also ok, but not when our patients don’t either.

[Frances in the lab writing in the Patient Registry Book]

Festina gave out patient booklets as Frances and I “screened” patients and did all the labs.  Who was supposed to come in today?  Who is supposed to be supervising us?  Who are we supposed to ask when we don’t know?

Festina didn’t understand we were students and not comfortable seeing patients with no supervisor.

She kept sending people to us.  They have no other option.

If you don’t help them, no one else will.

Just bad.

Mixed with our inability to communicate,

Felt like an inability to help.

Really really bad.

The 1 moth old who we had no idea what was wrong with because neither the mother, nor Festina, spoke enough English to help us figure it out.

Multiple children with positive and negative malaria tests.

The man who had a chest pain, the second time in 2 weeks.  The first time he came to the clinic and got 5 shots of ??? (we had no past record book.)  We had no access to the store room with the Aspirin.  We had no access to new batteries for the blood pressure cuff.  We had no access to our transport.  You can’t tell someone with chest pain to walk to the nearest hospital.

No access to language, to supplies, to a cell phone to call for help.

Uncomfortable.

Not helpful.

When we finished seeing patients, we started the walk home because we had no way to contact our supervisor.  Don’t get me wrong, we love walking home, but we walked home yesterday, and it was hot outside.  And we really weren’t in the mood to walk again.  It was already a long, hard day.

The day needed to be redeemed.  Big time.  So we did what we do when we have a bit of time and we want to start the day over.

Nap.

We didn’t feel that much better when we woke up.  We were out of regular cookies, so we decided to walk to get some.  Cookies are a great way to cope with things.  We didn’t find just cookies.  Frances decided to be brave.  She bought 2 and we each stuck one in our mouth.

And that’s how the lollipops fixed everything.

Much better.

[lollipops]

Ok, so it didn’t fix everything, there’s still so much more that’s wrong with the world.  So much that’s wrong with our lives.  So much that’s wrong with my heart.

[another sunset]

But God and I are working on that, slowly.

Frances and I watched a movie, Something Borrowed; since we couldn’t watch our Aggies play football.

We ate caramel popcorn with the movie, which was fabulous. 

Then we returned to sleep.

The day it got cold.

Friday

I answered the door to a cool blast of air and the housekeeper in a jacket and ski cap.  It’s cold?  Yes, she said as she gave me a look (which I probably just imagined) that said “do you think I would be in a ski cap if it wasn’t cold?”

Frances didn’t believe me.

Fine.

We arrived at clinic for ART (anti-retroviral therapy) day.  It never fails, that a baby is born on ART day.  So there’s no one to see patients because the Nurse Midwife is in the maternity wing of clinic.

Which means Frances and I are in charge of outpatient clinic.

The morning was bad.  Frances was in charge of actually seeing the patients, which is the worst job as you have to sit with a translator who treats you like an idiot because it’s been 3 weeks and you’re not fluent in Lamba and Bimba yet.

 I was in charge of passing out pills, which was great when it was actually pills, but not great when I had to make eye drops out of penicillin.  Thanks for writing for that Frances.  And thanks for laughing as I asked Maureen for instructions and she went on a 10 minute explanation, which I lost half of because your face was turning red and your eyes started watering. 

So I got Festina to help me with it, which worked out wonderfully. 

{Frances is cracking up, face turning red and eyes watering, as she writes the blog paragraph about her evil, self-centered version of the story… maybe you should check it out: www.francesinafrica.blogspot.com }

I found the ORS (Oral Rehydration Salts) produced by the WHO (World Health Organization).  I thought it was worthy of a picture because I think it’s brilliantly designed to rehydrate children without having to stick an IV in them.

[ORS]

The doctor for ART clinic never showed up, so the nurse midwife had to see those patients.  We were really looking forward to working with the ART doctor.  We helped the nurse midwife by putting 60 pills of bactrim in each of 50 baggies.  I got really good at counting to 60 by 3s.  Only they call it co-trimoxazole or septra here.  Same thing.

We took a walk at lunch to the King’s Highway guest house.  It was a very fancy place to stay with a fun gift shop.  I liked some of the necklaces to give as gifts, but they only had one of each kind, which isn’t fun.  The only thing they had more than one of was small wooden spoons.  Which might make an interesting gift, but I’m not sure if it would have been useful.  Or maybe more useful.

Either way, Frances and I have been told that the hostel we found to stay in (for only $22/ night!) has a great market right next door that sells all kinds of fun stuff.  AND they support the orphanage next door on the other side.  Could we have found a cooler place to stay??

I think not.

Especially since we’ve already been invited to watch a football (soccer) game at the orphanage on Sunday.  Futball?  Orphans?  Coolest part of Zambia. 

It beats out the pink toilet paper. 

 ……………………………………………………………………………………..

After our walk and tour of the Kings Guesthouse we still had time to kill so we lost at solitaire about 15 times.

How does that happen?

……………………………………………………………………………………

The baby was still in the process of being born, so Frances and I ran outpatient clinic in the afternoon too.

We ran it together but with no translator.

Frances pulled out her paper with Bimba/Lamba words on it.  We’re getting good at “How old are you?” and “What’s the problem” in Bimba, only I like asking it in English so we get an answer in English.  We had the words for cough, stomach ache, sneeze, fever, and a few others.

We got good at pantomiming vomiting.  With sound effects.

We only got laughed at as much as we normally do, which I would call a success.

We ran a lot of malaria tests.  A lot of things here aren’t as frightening as Malaria.  And now that the first rains have come, the mosquitoes are breeding like rabbits.  We had two positive tests in the afternoon.  Malaria is easy.  Coartem comes in convenient pill packages that are already counted out for you.  It’s a lot harder when someone has a fever and bodyaches and the RDT (rapid detection test, which isn’t a specific name, but the test is for malaria) is negative.  What do we do??

In America, we’d assume it was a virus if it had been less than 7 days and tell the person to come back, and just treat it symptomatically.  Here they throw an antibiotic at everyone.  Everything is still resistant to penicillin, so I guess it’s ok.  And when we’re running their clinic I feel like we’re supposed to give antibiotics too.  Only I don’t really like to.

But when in Rome, you should act like the Romans, right??

I'm not here long enough to rebuild Rome.

Our favorite patient was the one who had abdominal pain, slight fever, and spoke no English.  He shook his head “no” to all of our other questions, so we got a RDT on him.  Why not?

It would have been really easy if it was positive. 

Or if we could read chicken scratch.  They keep telling us our handwriting is so good.  And I think it’s just because they’ve only had people write illegibly here.

Turns out, when you have 2 people look really closely at his only other visit to the clinic, you can read that his RPR (I’m not sure what it stands for, but it’s the test for syphilis) was “mildly reactive” and they treated him for it, telling him to come back in 2 weeks for a second shot.

Which was today.

I wish we had figured that out before we pricked his finger for the malaria test.  But honestly, I don’t feel too bad about it.  You can add “unnecessary tests” to the things you get for sleeping around.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

After work, when it was time to “knock off” for the day (at “14 hours”), we asked Pule about the cases we were unsure about, a man with a snake bite and a 2 year old with diarrhea and abdominal pain, but a negative RDT.  Pule gave us advice and told us how we did a good job this afternoon.   Which was the first time since we got here that we heard we were actually doing a good job.

Then we started “footing” ourselves home. 

People think it’s so funny that Masungus (we learned it’s an S in the middle and not a Z) would “foot” home.  All the way to Kafulafuta (10K).  We think it’s funny that that’s abnormal to them.

We got asked if we wanted a lift 4 or 5 times on the way home.  And we didn’t even do the “flapping hand up and down” motion everyone does here that means they want a ride. 

Our favorite was when pastor Lawawa slowed down and offered us a ride in his car.  That already had 3 people in the front seat and 3 people in the back.  Where are we supposed to sit??

But we told him we wanted to “foot” home. 

Thankfully, he let us.

About an hour into our walk, which we figure was half way judging by our pace and the fact that it took us 2 hours last week, Joseph (the politician/ pastor/ small business owner/ wife to Mary) was driving a farm truck home, and told us “silly girls” that we had been African long enough and that we were supposed to climb in the back and ride home. 

We were getting hungry, so we did. 

And we were concerned that our supervisor would be driving up in her truck and not be happy that we were “footing” ourselves home.  She doesn’t like to worry about us.

Frances and I got our photo taken.  It’s blurry, but you get the picture.

[farm truck]

We made veggie burgers, which we’re huge fans of.  We also made vegetables.  We also had peach sweet tea.  Fabulous.

We had a new flavor of Hit cookie for desert: hazelnut.  It might be my favorite.  It’s a hazelnut cookie with hazelnut frosting in the middle.  But it’s not too overwhelmingly hazelnutty.  Really, all Hit cookies are perfection.  They’re one of the best things we’ve eaten here.

Frances wanted to watch a movie, but we’re going to watch it tomorrow since the Aggies don’t play until 7pm US time, which is 2 in the morning here and we’ll need our beauty sleep.

But don’t worry Ags, we’re wearing our maroon chitengues to clinic tomorrow, so we’ll be supporting you in spirit.  I’ll even wear it to sleep if you promise it’ll help us beat Tech!

Which would be a small sacrifice because I tried sleeping in it when it got cold in the middle of the night last night and it severely restricted my leg room. 

But it would be worth it.