Painful burns, painted finernails, and playing with streetkids

Today we returned to Dr. F’s clinic!  The staff was so happy to see us back and it was really fun to catch up with Julia.  Kirsten and I spent the most of the morning observing the midwife.  In Burkina, midwifes are essentially pediatricians—they see kids until age 5.  We saw a few expectant mothers and some babies.  A set of twins visited us today—about 6 months old.  They were precious!  As one was being weighed, he peed all over the scale…trying to help out, I went to go pick up the other twin to weigh him without realizing how in sync these twins—the other one had just peed all over his mother.  So I had just committed to picking up this child…and he was all wet…so I made sure to support him correctly but that baby did not get near my white shirt.

A young girl visited us who was about 5 months pregnant. She was in complaining of feeling sick—she had malaria.  This young girl weighed less than I did (as did one other pregnant mother) and had lost 10 pounds in the last month.   When the girl left the office to go get her tests and prescriptions ordered, she fainted.  It turned out that she had very severe malaria—but she wasn’t able to pay for the test—Dr. F paid for the blood work to be done—I’m not sure if the clinic was able to get a hold of some family to help pay for the necessary medication.

A 3 year old boy came in to get some wounds rebandaged.  He fell into a fire on Saturday and had terrible burns on his back and in between his legs.  Kirsten and I went in to watch—and I ended up assisting a little bit.  The kid was so brave as the nurse ripped the old bandages off—tearing away some of his skin—and lanced the blisters that had formed.  He didn’t start crying until the second round of cleaning.  Both of his parents were there—the dad kept having to leave the room to buy more gauze compresses to put on his son’s burns. The mother seemed to ache for her small boy—I could hear her inhale sharply with each wipe of the stinging cleaning solution.  She had to hold her boy down as he cried so that the nurse could do her job.  The parents were actively involved in the procedure—they held some things for the nurse…but mostly restrained their boy and picked up gauze compresses from the floor as the fan blew them off the table.  I helped by holding onto the little boy’s arm, and holding the gauze while the nurse wrapped bandages/tape around it.  The burn was so big—and when she clean it—small chunks of his black skin came peeling off.  It was so strange to see because the kid looked as if he were white skinned underneath his black skin.  I don’t think that I will ever forget this little boy—his big beautiful eyes were so full of pain and his small body was so badly burned.

The Faithful Granddaughter

The old lady with the big ankle sore came back for her cleaning.  Her granddaughter always accompanies her.  She is such a pleasant old lady to be around…I don’t know if I could be if I had been dealing with the pain that she is.

Old Lady with the ankle sore

The 10 year old foot sore...cleaned frequently at the clinic

I also got to change out and IV bag—but that was not very exciting.

Alice picked us up from the clinic and we went to her house for lunch.  It was a big group for lunch today—Pete, Alice, Charity, Sammy, Sarah, Kirsten, and me.  We had spaghetti.  It rained really hard during dinner and the temperature outside got very chilly!  After lunch, Sammy wanted to give everyone massages.  He and Charity took each of the girls individually back into his room.  I got a nice arm massage—complete with raspberry lotion—and a manicure.

All dolled up!

They painted my fingernails bright blue with white polka dots on one hand and green with white polka dots on the other hand.  While we were at the “spa” Charity asked me a lot about my sister—she wanted to know all about her.  They were surprised to find out that I was the youngest in my family.  Charity was very excited that it is Erica’s birthday on Thursday.  Charity and Sammy thought that the perfect birthday would be the following….

-go swimming in the pool

-have mom make sandwiches for lunch

-go get a pedicure and manicure

-go out to dinner

-eat icecream

-go to a movie at the movie theater

After lunch, Pete took Jess, Kirsten, Charity, and me out to Pan Bila.  It is a street kid ministry.  Young girls who are at risk for becoming prostitutes or are already prostitutes are brought in—they attempt to reconcile the women to their families—they also educate them and help them learn a vocation.  They are given free food, water, and shelter.  The site also takes in young boys who drop out of Islam school. They teach them and help them reconcile with their families.  We got to tour the place and then hangout with the people living there.  I watched the babies of the young women for a while…but then I went and passed around the soccer ball with the young boys.   The mothers were so young—and some of their babies were so tiny!  They seemed very happy and well connected within that community.  This site also has on site housing for interns that can come in to work with the project.  Over 120 young women have been through the site since it opened (it has 18 right now) and 15 street boys (this program is only 1 year old).

Back at the Hub—I helped Sarah embroider the edges on some bookmarks that she is making for the women that attend her bible class on Ester at the Tabitha Center.  Kirsten and I attempted to make Chinese fried rice—but we had to walk down to Alice’s to borrow some soy sauce.  When we told her about what we were making, she asked if we were putting carrots in it…and we told her that we were going to add a can of mixed peas and carrots to it…she immediately said No no no and gave us some fresh carrots to take home—so we walked back to the Hub with carrots and soy sauce.  The rice turned out kinda like dog food again—Kirsten mixed the rice together so much that it no longer really looked like rice.  We didn’t have onions to put into it…so I added a bunch of random spices…the taste that showed up the most ended up being Italian seasoning…There are some left overs in the fridge for tomorrow….yummm.

I just found the site for the movie about Wake Forest’s Jon Abbate—the 5^th Quarter.  I saw lots of people that I recognized in the trailer! http://www.the5thquartermovie.com/index.html

-JK

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