Taking a walk

Sometimes doing very little is the most fun.  Once again, I have found myself wandering the market of Freetown.  Walking the cracked streets and dodging trucks, taxi's, and motorcycles.  However, not so successful on the last one.  My elbow met some handlebars on Saturday but seems to be fine now.  My friend Sarah told me that I obey no traffic laws, but I think I have turned into a local while walking down the street.  The rules are easy.  Go fast.  Swerve anyway you need to to get through congested areas and squeeze into tight places you would never imagine you could get through.  All the while watch where you are walking so you don't fall into the ditch of sewage off to the side.  Oh yeah, smile at all the children who call out "hello how are you".  If the crazy does happen and you walk into a mud puddle and your flip flop decided to stay in the mud while your foot travels on, that is ok.  Just stand there and look like an idiot until some nice lady reaches into the mud and puts your shoe back on your foot.  It seems to help if you look very surprised and just keep saying "my shoe, my shoe". 
It is rainy season here.  When it rains it really rains.  If you are at a bakery with friends and just ate a lot of pizza (really, really good pizza) and it is pouring outside, the walk home seems very far.  Therefore you should all pile into a taxi and don't try to negotiate a price.  There is a rain price and a sunny price. 

The market street is by far my favorite here.  There is so much stuff to see and every time many new things.  Today a lady tried to sell me some fish.  When I told her that I don't cook, she said "how do you eat?" a very good question.  It would have been hard to explain that if I cooked I'd only ever eat grilled cheese so I just said that other people cook on the ship and she laughed at me.  How different our lives are.  I'll include pictures of some of the things we saw on our walk through the market.  The walk ended taking a short cut through a churches property.  There is a burned building that I've wanted to take pictures but i didn't expect to meet lots of children and moms down that road.  We had a lot of fun, just talking and taking snaps (pictures).  It was a very relaxing weekend spent with friends. 

The Urine Experiment

Ok.  I'll explain.  Yesterday during morning coffee break one of the surgeons on board asked me about doing an experiment involving boiling urine.  By afternoon coffee break (yes, we take two a day) Sarah the Lab Tech and I  were sold on the idea and ran around trying to get all the things we'd need.  My supervisor decided to take the morning off so she wouldn't be involved in what was going to happen.  Claudia is by far the best supervisor to have around!  Sarah and I decided to start at 8am so as not to interfere with the rest of our work, and had the beaker, hotplate, thermometer, eye goggles, and face masks (just in case it smelled) ready to go right on time.  The patients bladder had other plans and there was a small wait time.  This is the experiment...
It is a heat test for Bence-Jones protein.  It is an abnormal protein associated wiht multiple myelome (cancer of the plasma) and is not a good thing to have.  I could say more, but google it if you really care.  We were doing the test to see if a patient has this problem.  This is an old test, and since our lab doesn't have the machines available for this paticular test we needed the old school version.  Basically you heat urine to 60 degrees.  At 60 you may see crystals form on the bottom of the beaker of urine or you may not.  Then you continue to heat to 100 degrees and the crystals (if they had formed) should disappear.  Then allow the urine to cool back to 60 degrees and watch for the crystals to reform.  If there are crystals at 60, then no crystals at 100, and crystals again at 60, that is a positive test for Bence-Jones protein.  If none of the things happen it is a negative test.  Our test was negative.  Yeah for the patient!

Now that i have bored everyone to sleep with that explaination, I'll close by saying that it was a lot of fun and I learned quite a bit that I never expected to learn here in Africa.  Thanks to Sharon and Alex for moral support and humor, and to Liz for taking our pictures! 

Two weeks

In the last two weeks I have......
1) slapped my roommate while having a bad dream
2)had a lab tech pass out cold while drawing my blood
3)said goodbye to many very good friends
4) been hit by a day volunteer while drawing her blood
5)had crazy dreams almost every night
6)given up drinking starbucks hot chocolate due to the bad dreams every night. 
7)decided that I really don't want to leave the ship in 33 days.
8)boiled urine to perform an old school experiment to help a patient
9)actually kind of helped cook food.
10)sat in the middle of the hospital hallway and raced trucks with some little kids from Ward A. 

These are in no specific order.  It's fun to realize how much has happened.  My mind is still on the friends that left the ship in the last two weeks and still hoping to see them in midships or the dining room.  Last Saturday I attempted to help cook lunch for a family leaving the ship tomorrow.  The Peet family is going back home to England and we will have one last coffee break together tomorrow morning, just as we have the last two Thursdays when friends left. 
Blood has been an entirely difficult issue on its own.  The new lab tech was learning how to draw blood and passed out cold.  Thankfully she had removed the needle from my arm before.  Yes, I was the victim for her.  Today we had a blood transfusion that should have been simple but the blood really didn't want to come out of the crew member.
On a lighter note.... my roommate that missed me while I was home really wishes that I'd go back now :)  Francis has been the victim of many nights of my bad dreams.  The first night I stood up (bunk beds) and slapped her arm before realizing where I was.  After that there were nights of getting trapped in the curtain and talking in my sleep.  It's never dull around here. 
Today, I discovered a new fun thing.  There are several little boys in A Ward right now who are healthy enough to wander around the halls even though they aren't really allowed to go without a nurse.  So I sit in the middle of the hallway and we race trucks and toys up and down the hall.  Of course we try and make as much noise as possible and there is much laughing along the way.  It is the perfect reminder to me of what I'm doing here.  Since June is just about finished my time is almost up.  I have a feeling that I'm going to want to stay and they are going to have to throw me overboard to get me to leave!

Catching up.....

It has been a month since I posted last.  A month full of sad news, leaving Africa, one crazy adventure home to Virginia, time with family, saying goodbye to one, and then returning to Africa.  Without a bunch of details I'll say that I felt like I needed to go home to be with family and help.  When the time came that I wasn't really helping anymore and didn't feel needed, I came back to the ship to finish out my time here.  With 7 weeks remaining on my original agreement, I wasn't sure it was worth it.  It just didn't seem like enough time to be on the ship.  Then I realized that usually I come for only 8 weeks and have done ok so it was worth it. 
Some day I'll write down the story of my return home and the unbelievable adventure that it was but it was an uneventful trip back and nothing was better than coming back to the ship.  Going around the corner and seeing friends in midships and laughing with them and then going to my room to see loving notes and pictures and one sweet carved turtle on my door and bed waiting for me.  It felt like coming home.  Even the chaos, sounds, and smells of Freetown felt familiar.  
Not everything is all roses though.  I found out some disturbing things about having my facebook examined by others that have no real buisness doing that and have deleted it for now.  My parents are also mad at me since I left my room a mess at home when I left.  Although atleast one of my roommates missed me being messy so maybe in a few weeks my parents will miss that and not be mad anymore.  Today was the day that many of my favorite people left the ship.  We did have a great going away dinner last night :)  Some are going on vacation and won't be back before I leave, and others are done with their time here and are moving on with life.  The problem for me is that some are the first people I ever met with mercy ships and I can't imagine life without them here.  It was a very hard day watching them all drive away to the airport (probably nervous after hearing about my airport adventures) Most of them I will see again since we are all famous for Mercy Ship reunions, but the ship isn't the same and it is hard to invest time to get to know new people. 
This has been a big jumble of catching up and getting a few thoughts out of my head so maybe I can go to sleep.  I'll be in a better mood tomorrow!

Work experience

Usually school and work are separate things.  Children and teens of crew members attend school here on the ship.  There is an academy with grades from pre-school through high school.  During the sail, Claudia (my boss in the lab) and I taught a science class about blood and the students were intelligent and able to use the things they learned in the lab during the hospital open house.  They remembered things that we talked about in class weeks before and helped educate the crew on blood types.  Tonight was an open house and creative arts demonstration and I was amazed by the talent of all the students.  One of the reasons that I've always been impressed is with student work experience.  Each of the high school and middle school students applies for a job on the ship that they are interested in.  Nursing, dental, lab, engineering, photographer, media, or sales.  For a week the student works beside crew members to get an idea of what the job is and to see if they would be interested in that career.  I was able to have Lara as my student for the week.  My goal for the week was for Lara to draw blood from a crew member.  By the end of the first day we had to start an entire new set of goals. It was amazing.  By the end of the week she was drawing blood from crew, patients and also drew a pint of blood for a patient in the O.R needing a blood transfusion.  It isn't easy to focus on your work when you are drawing blood from a child (or a grown up that acts like a child) but Lara was professional and compassionate to everyone.  When she wasn't being the student vampire she was working in the lab running tests on the blood. During the week Lara joined me on the Emergency Medical Team for a fire drill and visited the O.R to observe a surgery.  I was impressed with the skill that Lara was able to show after only a few days training.  It was also a hilarious week of fun but hopefully noone will ever see the hour long video of us laughing while Linda tried to interview us.  I had a great time growing up and was able to experience many different things but never anything like work experience week.  One of the best things is that after her week Lara decided to pursue a career in medicine and is applying to University.  Whatever she decides to do, Lara will do great.  

Rambles of today

Today some pretty amazing things happened.  Yesterday and today I was asked to help in Admissions as an admissions nurse.  This is an interesting job that has many good things and some challenging things with it.  The patients arrive in the morning.  One by one they come to the 3 nurses in the tent (think MASH T.V show kind of tent) and we go through the paperwork, vitals, history, and draw labs.   Usually I just appear for the last step in the process to draw blood for lab work.  Hearing the stories of travel to the ship, life, and what happened to bring them to us is my favorite part.  Today the translator kept asking me to keep writing but I was distracted listening to the stories.  I could write a book about the people I met today.  One little boy was 8 years old and loves to study English in school.  However, after much proding he admitted that he likes football (soccer) more than school.  Of course I pulled out my football stickers and told him that I did too and that made him laugh. There was also a little girl named Naomi.  Her story made me cry and soon I will share it will you, but not in this happy blog.  Naomi is an energetic happy 4 year old.  She reminds me of my neice Peyton and is very very smart.    It has to be scary to come to the ship.  It is a giant white ship full of crazy people.  People here spend quite a bit of time out of doors and the hospital is on Deck 3 with no windows.  It feels closed in.  Tonight I went into the hospital to see Naomi and draw labs from a few new patients and enjoyed looking around and seeing familiar faces.  Usually people don't want to see me coming since it is mostly for blood draws.
Ok on to the rest of the day.  A patient was in surgery and needed a lot of blood today.  While trying to help admissions I was paged back on to the ship several times to draw pints of blood from donors to give to the patient in surgery.  We gave 3 units and when she needed one more I donated my blood to her.  All of us have been screened and cross matched to the patient, but needing 4 is pretty rare.  There is something about giving your own blood to save someone that connects you to that person.
At the end of my day I went to one of the hospital wards and played with balloons and laughed with some of the kids.  It was a good end to a very long and exhausting work day.  Thanks for letting me ramble on and on, and I hope that you all are well.

Pizza delivery and live chickens

We have several translators that work in admissions.  Helga, Blessing, Joel, and Florence have kept me laughing over the last 10 weeks.  Last week I walked in the admission tent and Florence asked me how I like to make my pizza.  Do  you mean what toppings I like?  No, she wanted to know step by step how I make it.  So of course I explained.  I pick up the phone, dial a number, and 30 minutes later pizza shows up at the door.  It made perfect sense to me, but judging from the looks they all gave me, it is not a familiar concept here.  You can walk up to someone on the street selling food.  Usually it's a stew with different ingredients that they serve over rice in a bowl.  Pizza Hut delivery is still a strange concept.
Today was a normal day traveling out to the eye screening site to assist the eye team.  I'm not sure how many people we saw today, but near the end of the line the nurse walked past a lady, turned back and told me that she had a chicken.  Actually, she explained by saying that she either has a chicken with her or just clucked.  As I walked up I hoped that she had a chicken with her, because even though that is strange it would be worse if SHE was clucking!  She did have a chicken.  A live chicken with its head sticking out of the bag.  Of course we had to tell everyone and after calling on the radio (don't tell the captain we used the official radios for a chicken) our entire team came over. The women was getting very upset and a man near her called out that "she didn't want to sell the chicken" that was fine since we didn't want to buy the chicken.  We all laughed for awhile and tried to explain that we wouldn't know what to do with it if we did buy it.  Isaac, one of the translators tried to explain to me how to prepare the chicken, but it was gross so I won't share it.   I can almost picture this woman leaving her house to go to the eye clinic and her husband calling out to her to pick up some chicken on her way home.   TIA.  This is Africa.