25% of placement done already

Where did the time go?  When will I adapt to the heat?  When is the South Sudan diet meant to start working?  How can I get the students to understand drug calculations?  Too many questions and not enough answers.  I think you could be here a lifetime and still not have the answers.  So I’ll just continue doing what I can and take life here with a big pinch of salt.  Every week there are more challenges which just makes life a little more interesting and unpredictable.

I’ve called my bike Herbie. I’m still getting used to it.  It doesn’t have a padded saddle, the gears don’t work, my bum hurts and I’ve not worked out who has priority on the roads.  There are pedestrians, goats, dogs, donkeys and horses, bicycles, motorbikes, cars, 4x4s, trucks and lorries.  There is only one tarred road, called the tarred road. All the other roads are dirt roads strewn with rubbish, stones, rubble and animals feeding on the rubbish.  The edges of the tarred road are eroded making the side of the road even more unsafe so I’m a bit reluctant to use it.  At least the other roads are so bad everyone has to go slowly and be more careful.  I really want it to go to Amarula on Sundays and it’s on one of the best dirt roads around so it should be ok.

Have a look at Dolly. I borrowed her from Wau hospital and had to write a letter accepting responsibility for her and promising to return her in good condition.  She has more orifices than a nurse tutor could ever hope for, but no arms or legs.  The students will now be able to practise insertion of all sorts of catheters and tubes.  I’m just not sure what has been breeding inside Dolly.  She has scrubbed up ok but I don’t want to be the first to insert a catheter and disturb anything lurking inside.

I also visited the dental department, which confirmed I made the right decision in bringing my own dental anesthetic, needles and temporary fillings.  The chairs look more like execution chairs than nice, comfortable dental chairs.  They are so proud of their equipment, which makes me feel quite sad.  I remember the burning feeling, the smell and pain I felt at the dentist as a child and that was with local anesthetic.  I hate to think what if feels like here to have a filling or an extraction here.

I went on a trip to a feeding station not far from Wau.  Food and supplements were handed out to the villagers, and I worked with a local nurse assessing emergency cases, giving out drugs and referring the most urgent cases to hospital or clinics.  At first the children were wary of me but their curiosity soon took over and they all wanted to touch me to see if I was real.  They kept calling me kawaga (white person) and I told them my name was Carol but the just called me kawaga Carol.  I got some brilliant photos of them.  By the end of the day they were crawling all over me and lifting my clothes to see if I was white all over.  I spent ages scrubbing myself afterwards.  They only have 1 bore-hole for 500 households.  They have no water for washing, no sanitation, and typhoid is endemic as are any number of infestations that can think about.  The kids appeared to be so happy and bright and have the same potential as western kids but their future will be very different.  Very few of them will attend school, let alone make it to secondary school or college.  The beautiful little girls will have babies in their teens, the boys will be held down and have their front teeth pulled by other villagers to prove their manhood, and both the boys and girls will be cut by knives and spears in symmetrical patterns on their faces and bodies to decorate themselves.  Give me a tattoo any day.  Some of the girls will be subjected to female genital mutilation and suffer for the rest of their lives.

I attended a meeting with international funders; they like a few volunteers to attend these meetings so they can tell us what good work we are doing and say they have met the volunteers.  We get good grub and a couple of drinks and meet some interesting people.  I’m sure my VSO colleagues working in the ministries think I’m thick, which may be true, because I think there is too much money being spent on administration and there are too many complex structures being put in place, and none of this actually filters down and makes life any better for local people.  It sounds a bit like “Yes Minister” in the ministries while the patients are denied their basic human rights of clean water and sanitation.  At the dinner I sat beside someone from DfID, a really practical, plain speaking woman who made a whole lot of sense and listened to what I said.  The next morning she phoned me and asked if Liz and I could have a meeting with the funders before they departed and tell them what it was really like on the ground.  Although there were no promises they said that they would do what they could to try to improve the situation.  I’m maybe not as daft as my colleagues think; I’m sure Liz and I were the only ones to get a private meeting.  However, everything takes time and I don’t think I’ll be here to see the outcome of these discussions.

I’ve been working a bit more than usual.  The students are working night shift and I’ve been going to the hospital to see if they are OK.  A student phoned me after midnight last night because a patient was bleeding after surgery.   He had to waken the night staff and ask for help.  They told him just to leave the patient until morning and told the students to go to sleep.  The staff refused to get out of bed, give any help or give the doctor’s phone number.  We try to teach to a high standard then everything falls apart in the wards.  Thankfully the students coped ok and everything turned out well for the patient.  I’m going in tonight to see that the students are ok.

I’ve just had two firsts.  One was lunch at the UN compound and the other was attending mass before the lunch.  Like all church services in Africa it was very upbeat.  They had the religious “Pan’s People” who danced up and down the aisle.  It was hot and stuffy and Pan’s People clearly didn’t use deodorant.  Get the picture?  It wasn’t helped by the copious amounts of crap wine I drank the evening before or all the aerobics in the heat, up and down all the time or standing for long periods in the heat in the crowded, stuffy chapel.  A little relief came in the form of holy water that was chucked on us by one of the priests.  Lunch was good.  I was invited by a lovely Kenyan doctor who has been teaching in the college and it was an enjoyable experience.

The rainy season is coming to an end.  The number of mosquitoes is reducing and the number of flies is increasing.  The flies surround you if you are eating outside.  Breakfast is the worst, they even copulate in the jam.  It’s strange what you begin to accept as normal.  I’m off to Juba next week to a conference.  I think it will be quite good to leave the confines of Wau for a few days and hit the big city lights of Juba.  Figuratively speaking of course because Juba doesn’t have any power either.  I’ve not quite started count down to my holidays because I don’t want to get too excited too early but I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone.