Nalerigu Day 24

Another wonderful day in Ghana!

Before I begin with today, I need to write a bit about last evening. We were invited over the Dickens’ Home for game night. It was a blast. We had some fun playing cranium and eating tasty treats (notice that I talk often of food because it is SO good). My new favorite drink is homemade limeade. Delicious. I now have a dinner planned for Joe when I return which will include groundnut soup with rice and chicken (not goat), mango cobbler and your choice of iced tea or limeade. Yum! After our evening, we headed back home and I made it to bed before midnight which was kind of a miracle around here.

This morning, we got ready and headed back to the hospital for rounds. Another child died of malnutrition last evening. This is one of the hardest deaths for me since it is SO preventable. The problem we have at the hospital is that they just get to us so late and monitoring for things like refeeding syndrome is not an option. There is enough food in this world that a child should never go without. There’s something very wrong with that picture. Thankfully, the rest of the children were doing very well. Although we had several new admissions, I was able to send a few home.
After rounds, we all got dressed and headed for church. Today the entire group went to the Fulani church. As you may have read previously, the Fulani people are sort of an oppressed group of people in the community. The church is very small, but is the primary church that the Hewitt family attends. The building itself is sort of on the outskirts of town and is extremely small. With all of the families and volunteers, the church was completely packed. The elders made the children sit on a rug in the front of the church which actually was great for us because we could hear their beautiful voices during the songs. I wish I was an eloquent, creative, descriptive writer as I could better describe to you the experience at a church here. First, the buildings are usually made of mud and some have cement floors. There is often a pulpit and a cross up at the front. This church had no musical instruments, but had hymnals that were in the language of the Fulani people. During the service we sang several songs, many of which I knew the tune for but of course not the words. Some of the songs today were “Jesus loves me” and “Blessed Assurance”. I sat beside a window (hole in the wall) during the service today and got to enjoy goats, donkeys and children running by. The pastor’s message today was about giving praise. The faith the people have during even the darkest of circumstances will never cease to amaze me. After the ceremony we talked with the children and the headed back the complex for lunch.

After lunch, I caught a 30minute catnap (Awe) and then was awoken by a worker from the hospital that had some labs for me to review. Soon after, I headed off to the hospital for afternoon rounds. Today, I rounded by myself, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. From the morning to the afternoon, we had only five admissions. There were two snake bites, a child with respiratory distress and two patients with sickle cell crisis. Today, I will make carpet viper bites my diagnosis of the day. I admitted a 10 year old child who got bit by a carpet viper on the cheek yesterday. Thankfully his blood clotted (bleeding is the main problem with this type of snake bite), but he had severe swelling throughout his whole face. I started couple more medications to try to help and will check on him again this evening. We’ve had a few snakes around the complex, so we’re all trying to be very careful about where we place our feet.
At the end of rounds, Dr. Hewitt and his family as well as the Nyhaus family came up to the hospital to hand out goodies to some of the children. It was wonderful. It’s so great to be around people that are so caring and compassionate toward other human beings. I finished rounds in about an hour and headed back to our house. Jessie and I worked on organizing our pictures and then headed outside where a baseball game was in action. Unfortunately for me, I somehow was standing in the catcher’s area and kept having to throw the ball back to the pitcher. Although Joe has worked very hard to help me not throw like a girl, I didn’t live up to his teachings today. Yikes!!! I am much better at foot sports.

As the sun started to set, we finished the baseball game and headed back to the main guest house for dinner. I’m now finishing my blog for the day and plan to head over to the Wichita house to play music and sing songs. I’ll do my pm rounds at 9pm and then will hope for a good evening with some sleep.

Today, I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to see true poverty first-hand, poverty that has and will always change the way I live and see the world. I know that this experience will help me to recognize real wealth and riches, not the material kind. My hope is that there may be just one other person reading this that will feel the same way and be inspired to help those in need around you. These children have not died in vain.

What are you thankful for?

Jill