So I have had a rather uneventful or eventful week depending on how you look at it. This will be just a short post as an update and hopefully I will have a more interesting post in the next week.
I have moved to the general office in the hospital where I have mostly been going over insurance claims, which is rather boring. However it gives me a chance to see all of the ailments of the people coming to the clinic. The most prominent ones are hypertension (high blood pressure), malaria, and gastroenteritis (virus or bacterial infection from water). There are also a ton of pregnancies. The variety of diseases is not all that great and malaria seems to be the biggest problem of all.
Last weekend I had my first bout with food poisoning and a bit of gastroenteritis myself. I have been eating rice and noodles with beef that my coworkers at the hospital enjoy for lunch. However on Friday I got a bad batch that my first world stomach couldn't handle. To spare you the gruesome details I spent 3 hours Friday night expelling the contents of my stomach. It is the sickest I have ever felt and dehydrated me so much that I thought I would have to go to the hospital for IV fluids. I felt pretty bad the whole weekend, severe dehydration feels a bit like you've been run over by a truck. Anyway I recover over the weekend, but the following Monday I woke up with the feeling that something was biting my feet. I knew my mosquito net was closed and when I shone a flashlight I couldn't see anything. It kept me up most of the night anyway, and when I got home from work the next day my feet were covered in small swollen red bites. I searched my bed and finally came to the conclusion that I had bedbugs or fleas or some other bloodsucking parasite. I was pretty eager to get rid of them and so I spent 2 days sleeping in another bed while mine was being treated with some insecticides. My bites have since subsided and the I haven't had any problems since but it just goes to show that there are problems you will have that you just can't foresee.
Speaking of problems that can't be predicted we were headed to Cape Coast this weekend. We left at 5 am and had made it out of Accra and about halfway to Cape Coast when I heard a loud bang. I thought a tire had blown but it turned out that a cap in the engine had overheated and blown off. We stopped on the side of the road and our program director, Paul, took the part to the local mechanic to get fixed. He came back an hour later but the car would still not start with the fixed part. So we called a mechanic to come look, and we tried putting in a new battery from a taxi that stopped to help. We ended up sitting in a broken down car for 8 hours (broke down at 8 am and left to return home at 4 pm) while we tried to get it restarted. So we were not able to make it to Cape Coast and will hopefully go another weekend. This took up our entire Saturday however, and now I must sleep all of Sunday to recover. Recapping these stories I realize I have a had a tough week. I will tell you all about Cape Coast when we finally make it there (fingers crossed).
Hopefully a much more exciting and cheerful update soon. Here is your Twi word of the week.
Twi word: Yefre wo sen? (Yayfray whoa say?) What is your name?
Yefre me Austin. My name is Austin
