Name: Becky
Occupation: Student/Occassional Auxiliary Nurse/ABA Therapist/Serial traveller/owner of itchy feet
Home Towm: Bangor, North Wales
Current Location: Bangor
Links
Amy
Ben
Carl
Harriet
Helen
Lou
| Monday, April 14, 2008 |
|
An update and apology
The apology first, variations of plantain are not the only good food here, groundnuts (bit like peanuts) are very nice and so is popcorn. On to the update. I've had a pretty busy weekend, went to Kakum on Saturday(got delayed a week due to an AWOL driver), Cape Coast Castle yesterday and had alot of family in the house as there was a funeral happening. Kakum was cool, a nice wander through the rainforest 40 meters up is quite pleasant when you get over the wobbling and just how far down the ground is, dad and Luke you would have loved it! After that did an additional nature walk and saw lots of big trees and learnt about their various medicinal properties; the bark of one when mixed with black pepper heals bones apparently! Did very little except plan trips around various parts of Africa in the afternoon and eat pineapple. Sunday I had a lie-in to recover from my stressful afternoon the previous day then went to the castle which was interesting. For those that don't know the castle was originally just a fort for various european countries (it kept changing hands, danes, dutch, portugese and swedes were all there at some point before the brits took over), but was later where captured Africans were kept before being shipped off round the world as slaves. A tour is offered which I joined and was the only white person and got lots of dirty looks when we were shown around the dungeons and told that up to 1000 men might be kept in a space not big enough to hold half that number and comments along the lines of what my people had done to them. I decided to point out that actually a lot of them were not captured by the british but by rival tribes who traded them for guns and alcohols, I didn't get any negativity after that. The museum housed there was very interesting, had lots of background on Ghana as well as the slave trade. My week at work has been good, last week did female surgery, delivery, and neonatal intensive care, and today went to paediatrics. All of it has been very interesting, and there seem to be some constantly reoccurng problems, mainly education (or lack of), funding (again, lack of) and the use of traditional medicines. There was a lady last week which who had put some traditional used herbs on a cut on her toe which turned gangrenous but she continued to use alternatives and by the time she got to hospital it was too late and the toes (her first two and quite a lot of her foot) now need to be amputated. Read a similar case today about a three year old who was given a 'native enema' to relieve constipation which didn't work, just lead to an infection. There are lots of people who seem to use these instead of going to a doctor as you have to pay for health care, it costs $2 just for a consolation and another dollar for admin costs. There is an insurance scheme but lots of people (mainly the poorest who would benefit most) don't use it. A two year old girl we had today burnt her hands when she put them in boiling water (she appears to have some kind of autistic spectrum thing) but was not taken to hospital, because her mother (only 17) couldn't afford it, until 17 days later when a 'good samaratin' took her. By this point the burns were infected so she had the tops of her fingers amputated today. The majority of cases on the paeds ward were malaria (having looked though the report book this seems normal) which again could be prevented with more education, although a lot seems to be happening already- there are billboard up in town telling people to sleep under nets and use repellent, and apparently nets are given out free (not sure of the conditions of this). I've booked a day in theatres tomorrow so that should provide lots of interesting stories so will report on them later in the week. In other exciting news- Ghana has cucumbers (or Ka-kum-bers as they say here), this has made me very happy. 5:28 PM Comment (4) ... PermaLink |