Maadwo!
I just wanted to say hello! I just finished packing for the weekend! I am leaving tomorrow for Cape Coast and I can hardly wait! I have heard so much about how beautiful it is there and I am anxious to explore! I will have tons of stories to share with you all when I come back on Sunday!
I have caught up on my diaries! I'm uploading a bunch but I promise they are worth the read! :)
Thank you all for following my blog! Can you believe my trip is half over? I was so nervous that three months in Ghana would be hard and that I wouldn't be able to be away from home for that long but time seems to be flying by! I do miss my friends and family but I know we will be together soon!
I hope you all have a great & relaxing weekend!
Much love,
Sara :)
July 4th,
I had a hard time waking up this morning to go to the office after such a fun & busy weekend! Today I went to a primary school and to a junior high school with the other interns from Friends of the Nation to discuss scheduling activities at the school for education. I am going to be doing a health talk for the students in 2 weeks time.
Today I had to do course selection for the fall. Luckily in nursing all of our mandatory courses are scheduled for us. All I had to do was put in my elective which I wanted to be intermediate Spanish but solus wouldn’t let me add it in because it conflicts with my clinical. I’m sad it won’t work because that conflict was never a problem in the past years. Now I have to go back to the drawing board and try to find an elective. If I am unsuccessful I may just stay here in Ghana and enjoy the sunshine and fresh mangos!
Well Caro & I are going to have our nightly tea party!
Goodnight!
July 5th,
I went to the office this morning where I began working on my health presentation. I also fought with solus for a little while and ended up in a research class. I still hope to find a way to sneak into Spanish!
One of the co-ordinators at my work, Kyei had me edit some documents for him. Since English is both mine & Caro’s first language they often ask us to read over reports and newsletters before they send them out.
Later on in the day I went out with Kyei, Aly, & Caro to 3 different fishing communities. The chief fishermen were taking oaths to not engage in harmful fishing practices such as the use of light, chemicals, and/or dynamite. They would say their oath and then dig a small hold in the sand along the beach and pour schnapps into it. Then they would all scoop it up and drink it. Seeing all of the fishermen do this was actually really interesting! Also judging by the looks on their faces I don’t think schnapps & saltwater mix well together! I really enjoyed spending the day in the communities and seeing the fishing canoes as well as all of the people and houses.
After work I went to see Georgina to see if my nursing dress that she is making me is ready but it wasn’t quite done yet! I got a sneak peak of it though!
Anyway I should go get some rest before the clinic tomorrow!
Da Yie (sleep well)!
July 6th,
I went to the clinic today. The tro-tro was almost empty heading there this morning which was really strange. Normally they are jam-packed! They are almost like a minivan but they sit 12-16 people, depending how many they can squeeze in!
At the clinic I went to the general health site. I sat out in the waiting room and took the vitals of all of the patients that came in that way when the nurse called them in to be seen she would already have the vitals written down and could carry on with the rest of her assessment. When I was taking blood pressures it took all of my concentration because the stethoscope didn’t work very well. Also I was in a waiting room filled with people and children which made it even harder to focus.
I gave a needle to a man who had malaria. It was an IM. I have been very nervous about giving needles here because I don’t want to hurt anyone since I can’t communicate well with them and I also don’t want them to dislike the white girl. I did one today and it went really well. I’ll give some here and there slowly until I get more comfortable with it.
I tro-troed part of the way back but then when I got to Sekondi where I would normally have to switch to another tro-tro I decided to walk back to the office. It was a long walk, but it was such a beautiful day and I was in a great mood after having such a great day at the clinic! Being in Ghana just makes me smile! As I was walking children would come up and say hello. There was a man walking in front of me singing away and the sun was out. It was the perfect day to be out walking!
Then to make the day even better I got ice cream and my nursing dress! I am anxious to wear it to the clinic tomorrow! I know the nurses there will get a kick out of it!
July 7th-
I felt like a real nurse today at the clinic with my dress. I went to the general health site again. Today I saw mostly children at the clinic. The majority that I saw were diagnosed with malaria and had to get 2 IM needles in the buttocks to treat it. I didn’t give any of these needles because the site is a risky area with the sciatic nerve and the children were so young and quite resistant to the point that they would jump and tense up. I did give one to an adult today though. One of the children had severe malaria and was barely able to keep focused. We started an IV for her to help get her electrolytes up.
I got to do two dressings today. The first one was for an elderly man with an infected right foot. For the sakes of grossing people out I won’t describe it but it was interesting because I love doing dressings! The second dressing I did was on a little boy. He had four open wounds on his feet that were infected. I got one clean but with a lot of force and then he finally escaped me and the other nurse and ran away! His dad came back to get him and we had to explain that he ran off. The father never brought his son back to the clinic but I hope he will as the infection was bad and I fear he will end up losing both of his feet if it is left untreated or end up with sepsis.
I like being at the general health site because I get to practice a lot of different nursing skills as well as work with many different age groups. All of the nurses at the clinic today loved my dress and hope that I will wear it when I nurse back in Canada.
After the clinic I went back to Friends of the Nation for a few hours. From where I get off the tro-tro I have to walk down a long road to get back to the office but that road is one of my favourite places in Ghana. The people all greet me and I am starting to know a lot of them by name so I love walking by in the morning and wishing them a good day and then coming back from the clinic at night and wishing them a good evening. I also love the afternoon because the children are all heading home from school and they all look adorable in their school uniforms!
After work I went home. The same taxi driver comes for Caro & I every morning and every night. His name is James and he loves music so our half hour car rides are always fun and you never know what cd he will have playing! Today he had hits from the 80’s just blasting!
I tried red-red for supper tonight. It is another Ghanaian dish. It is fried plantain with beans and fish. It was pretty good. I definitely loved the plantain part!
After supper I talked with my host family and had tea. Now I am just working on some things for QNSC- Queen’s Student Nursing Conference. I am the fundraising co-ordinator so I am trying to get organized because I know September will sneak up quickly!
July 8th-
I spent the day working on my health presentation about sexually transmitted infections and malaria. I was supposed to go to the junior high school to watch one of the interns, Joel, do his presentation on coastal issues but I was in a meeting with Kyei and missed it. Hopefully I will make it to the one next week so that I have a better idea of what I should do for mine.
After work Caro & I did a few errands. We walked home from one of the stores nearby. I did some of my laundry and hung it out on the line. I also got into my Spanish class! Yay!!!
Today is Friday which means Fufu! Our family prepared the fufu with crab today, which I have never tried before but I really liked the taste of it!
Tonight we are going out to the karaoke bar “Champs” with our host brother George and his friends Josafe and Aminu. My friend Jerry who I work with at the clinic is also going to be there so it should be a fun night!
July 9th,
I woke up bright & early for breakfast. I had fun last night but they never played mine & Caro’s song - Tiny Dancer by Elton John. Oh well, it’s probably for the best that I didn’t sing! Haha!
Caro & I just wanted to explore Takoradi today. We walked and found a tro-tro station near our house. Then we took a tro-tro downtown to market circle. We walked around market circle and observed all of the people and shops. Then we met up with our friend from work, Juliet. Caro & I bought some fabric that we are going to bring to Georgina to make into dresses.
Then we found a hair salon and decided to braid our hair. We have seen so many women here with their hair braided nicely or styled with extensions that we thought why not! It took 5 ½ hours to complete my braids. I was very antsy during the last three hours of it haha! After our braids were complete we went home on a tro-tro. Once we got off the tro-tro we walked back to our house. We stopped and bought a soccer ball from our friend Cecilia so we are hoping we can get the children to play “football” with us! Supper was delicious tonight! We were very hungry as we missed lunch to get our hair braided!
While I was getting my hair done I did a lot of sight-seeing because I was sitting on a chair outside. I got to watch all of the people walking up and down the road. I also got to see children playing and running around. Another thing that caught my interest was the lizards scaling the walls of a nearby building. I think my favourite sight of all was out of nowhere when a lady walked by with a huge stainless steel bowl on her head filled with dead chickens. The chickens that were roaming around the street at the time were not too impressed!
After supper I spent the rest of the night whipping my hair! It is soooo long with the extensions they put in it! We will be going to church with our host family in the morning!
Bye for now!
July 10th,
This morning we woke up early to go to church. I had a hard time sleeping on my braids last night. They are a bit sore but it will get better over time! The best part is to protect them you have to sleep with a hairnet. I feel like a cute old lady! Hehe!
Today we went to “Our Lady of the Sea church”. It is the big open concept one that we went to a few weeks ago. We saw a white man at church and Caro & I got excited. We almost wanted to shout “obronni” like the Ghanaians do when they get excited about seeing us!
After church we went back to our house. We had fish and chips for lunch today! We got a whole fish- head, eyes the whole deal with fresh potatoes that our host mom cut and deep-fried with oil. It was really delicious! This is the first time our family serves us a whole fish so I guess they figure we can handle it now!
Later in the afternoon Caro & I went for a walk and bought ice cream for our family. The children were very excited! Caro & I were excited too! We love ice cream!
We had a very lazy day today. It poured rain most of the day so we sat with our family and watched a movie on tv. I also got to talk to a few of my friends on face book chat. It was so exciting to hear from them!
Well that’s all I have to report!
Bye for now!
July 11th,
I went to the office today where I worked on my health talk all day. There is a lady who comes to the office everyday with a bucket full of rice and chicken that she sells but she didn’t come today so Caro & I went out for a walk to find food. We ended up finding a “fast food place“ as the sign said but they serve fried rice, chicken, and macaroni (which is actually spaghetti noodles). We also got alvero as a treat! Alvero is a non-alcoholic malt and it is sweetened with fruit flavours. Its really good! Then we returned to work. I finished writing out my presentation. Tomorrow and Wednesday I will go to the clinic and then Thursday I will put my presentation onto big flipchart paper using markers and diagrams to make it exciting and more interactive for the children.
After work Caro & I went to market circle. We walked around and bought more fabric. We went to see Georgina to give her our fabric because she makes beautiful dresses but she was closed. After roaming around for awhile we went home for supper.
I’m off to bed! Nighty-night!
July 12th,
I went to the maternity site at the clinic today. One of the nurses was seeing patients and then after they would go see her they would come see me for malaria pills. At this clinic they give all of the pregnant women 3 tablets of sulfaxdoxine mixed with pyremethamine three times throughout their pregnancy. They are anti- malarial tablets, so they are given to protect the mother and the fetus. They receive their first dose at anytime after 16 weeks, then 1 month after the first dose , then again after another month. To give the tablets today I had to learn a little dialogue in Fante in order to ask them questions and be able to communicate with the patients. They all got a kick out of seeing a white girl speaking their language and would smile or sometimes even break out into laughter. I would say good morning which is “maakye” and then say their name. Then I would ask the woman if she had eaten which is pronounced “ way - dee- dee?” If she said “aane” I could give her the pills and “nsu” which is water and ensure that she took all three in front of me. If they answered “daabi” which means no, I had to send them to eat something and to come back which is “wo co di”. The pills would make them very nauscious if they were taken on an empty stomach. I was reading about this pill and apparently it is contradicted during pregnancy but I suppose the risks outweigh the benefits. There are other anti-malarials available in the area but one of them has been known to have developed some resistance now so they don’t use it as much.
There were 38 women at the clinic when I arrived there this morning. The midwife was telling me that they run this same antenatal clinic every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and that each day it is a different group of women that come in. It is definitely a busy clinic since they have to do vitals, HIV screening, tetanus shots, palpation, and give malaria pills to each of these women.
A young girl was admitted to the clinic this afternoon. She had been throwing up and was going into labour. She reported that she had been throwing up all day so the nurse initiated an IV of Ringer’s Lactate to try to replenish her electrolytes. I did not insert the IV but I helped hold her arm still for the nurse and put a dressing on it to keep it secure.
Later on that afternoon she had her baby. It was a girl! Here a baby receives two names. One will be their everyday name, for example Mary. Then there second name will be their Ghanaian name which is given according to the day they were born. This little baby’s name will be “Abina” meaning Tuesday born. Nurses at the clinic often refer to me as “Sister Aba” which is Thursday born (I believe that is the day I was born anyway haha). The baby was 2.4 kg (5.3lbs) . After me and one of the nursing assistants cleaned her up I took her for awhile and held her while the midwife delivered the placenta for the mother.
The midwife that came in this afternoon spoke English very well which was exciting because I had a few questions I wanted to ask her about the deliveries that I have seen here. She told me about how it is a cultural custom here for the woman to keep her placenta after it is delivered and take it home with her to bury it. Apparently they have a small ceremony and celebrate the new life. She also told me that they don’t practice putting the baby to the mom’s chest right away after birth like we do in Canada as they believe it will induce shock in the woman. She said that they take the baby and clean it and keep it separate from the mother until the mother is all cleaned and is in a ward bed comfortably resting. They also don’t tell the mother if it is a boy or a girl when it is born because they feel that too may induce shock. I found that very interesting since at school I was taught how putting the baby to the mom’s chest right after birth was important for attachment and for regulating the baby’s temperature to the new environment. She asked me if we gave the mom the baby right away in Canada and I told her that from what I have seen they do and that I was taught in school that it was beneficial. She just could not get over that so it was fun to compare our cultural practices!
After I finished up at the maternity clinic I went over to the general health site to say hello to the nurses before I left to go back to the office. They all loved my braided hair! One nurse told me that I looked like a Ghanaian woman with my hair and dress and asked me to sing a Ghanaian song. I started singing a rap song called “that thing” which I hear often here and they all died of laughter! I don’t think they knew a little white girl could rap such sick beats haha! On my way back to the office I stopped at a seamstress and gave her one of the fabrics I bought the other day. She is making a dress for me with it and she said it will be ready by Thursday night which means I will be able to wear it this weekend when I go away to Cape Coast! Woohoo!
Today after work I played soccer or “football” with the kids! It was so intense! They all have such fancy footwork! Right now after playing for over an hour I think I will be lucky if I can get out of bed in the morning! Haha.
We had fish and macaroni for supper. The macaroni is spaghetti noodles with vegetables and spices. I keep telling my host uncle that I want cooking lessons from him because everything he makes is so delicious!
I had to scrub my nursing dress tonight and I am hoping it will be dry for the morning! It is impossible to keep a white dress clean here! I am going back to the clinic tomorrow. I will be going to the maternity site again but they will be running a postnatal clinic. I have not been there when they run that one yet so I am super-duper excited right now! It will be mothers and their newborn babies! Yay!!
Until tomorrow!
July 13th,
I had an excellent day at the postnatal clinic! Many women were there to get injections for their babies. They are given a combination vaccine at 6 weeks to prevent diptheria, typhoid, pertussis, and Hep. B. They receive yellow fever at 9 months. I had a lot of fun holding babies. Mothers loved giving them to me so that they could say an “obronni” held their baby. I wish I could have taken one because they were all so cute! One of the nurses, Eunice, started the clinic this morning by doing a talk on breastfeeding exclusively for 6 months. She was saying that it used to be practiced in older generations where they would give the baby water sometimes but they want to discourage that now and teach them the benefits of the new guidelines.
The postnatal clinic finished early and there were no admissions on the ward so it made for a quieter day. A woman came in reporting that she had fallen a month ago but never sought treatment at the time. At this time she was 28 weeks along in her pregnancy. I did palpation on her to locate the fetal head and back. I then had to listen for the fetal heart beats. To listen to the fetal heartbeat here they use a “peena” stethoscope. It is a small piece of steal that looks like a wine glass. You put the big bell part to the woman’s belly and then put your ear against the other end. I could not hear any fetal heartbeats but I thought maybe it was just because I wasn’t used to using this stethoscope so I had the midwife doublecheck and she couldn’t hear any either. We decided to send the woman to the hospital to have a scan to followup with the baby. She told me it still kicks sometimes but not as often.
I worked with the same midwife today as I did yesterday, her name is Kate. She is really good for explaining things to me. She was telling me about a policy that they have in Ghana where pregnant women receive free healthcare from government hospitals. She was also talking to me about private hospitals vs. government hospitals and clinics. It was good for me to get a better understanding about how the healthcare system is arranged here.
I promised one of the nurses, Rita, that I would take her baby for awhile today and hold it the way I have seen many Ghanaian women do. She laughed yesterday when I said it but I was serious. Once the clinic got quiet I went over to the general health site to get her daughter, Abrefie. The nurses had to help me with this but I put her on my back and then tied a piece of fabric around my self to hold her there. I see women all the time going up and down the road with their babies on their back and I wanted to try it to see how it felt. I actually think it is a good idea because the baby is right up against the mom and can feel her breathing and also feels her hips moving when she walks. I was nervous though because I was afraid my knot on the fabric wasn’t tight enough and that Abrefie would fall. Rita always brings Abrefie to work so I am hoping to take her again sometime. It will build up my back muscles! Haha.
A nurse named Catherine gave me “besab“. It is a drink that looks like fruit punch. It is made with pineapple, lemon/lime juice, ginger, hibiscus flower, and sugar. It was delicious!
I played football with my little host brothers and one of their cousins tonight. We had fun! I am excited for tomorrow because Davina is coming from Accra so with all of the children plus me and Caro we should be able to get a good football game going!
Well I must go scrub my nursing dress!
Bye!
Stay tuned for more diaries next week after my weekend of adventures in Cape Coast! :) Wahoo!
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