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July 06, 2006
Round III - Chez Clinique
I haven’t posted for a long time as it has been a very busy week. La Main de l’Espoir has been coming together really nicely. I spent most of this week revising the curriculum and identifying our first ten peer educators (five men and five women). Tomorrow we are meeting with the chief of Sikoro and the ten peer educators before we begin the program next week. I am so excited to finally get started after planning for so many months.
Besides working on La Main de l’Espoir, I have been spending a lot of time working at the Sikoro clinic. All of the staff are very compassionate and professional, so I really enjoy working there. I'm especially excited because my friend Victoria (a BU grad student) and I are going to spend a few nights there during the next few weeks to help out with childbirths. However, while I really enjoy working at Sikoro, it gets frustrating at times. First of all, people are RARELY on time, and they are not just 15 minutes late, they are sometimes up to two hours late. Secondly, there are very few complete medical records for any of the patients at Sikoro, which makes it incredibly difficult for doctors to follow up after prescribing a course of treatment. For example, even though GAIA buys formula and clean water for the HIV-positive women, the majority of the women I saw at the clinic were breastfeeding their babies, which puts their babies at a very high risk for catching the disease. Lastly, I just don’t agree with some of the medical practices I have seen thus far. For instance, when nurses perform HIV blood tests here the nurse ties the tourniquet on the patient’s arm, injects the needle and then LEAVES THE TOURNIQUET ON WHEN SHE DRAWS BLOOD!!!! Each woman looked like she was in an incredible amount of pain, and understandably so, because it took forever for their blood to flow out of their arm into the test tube. The cases at the clinic are definitely unlike anything I have ever seen before – on Monday, a five-year-old child came in - born HIV+ with malaria and “saggy pants” (loose skin around the abdomen and legs that actually resembles saggy pants). The child looked like it was only one and a half or two years old because it was so malnourished and it was just writhing around crying. It was pretty devastating to watch - I don't really think there is anyhing they can do for it. What was even worse was I was standing there with Ramatoulaye and she said to me, "Thats what my baby looked like" (all of her kids died from HIV complications).
Life outside work has been really great. On Sunday, we went to Dr. Kone’s niece's wedding reception which wsa wonderful. At Malian weddings, they serve all the food for the table in a big bowl, and everyone grabs it and eats with their right hand (in Malian culture, one reads, writes, eats and greets people with their right hand. Supposedly, one touches his wife with his left hand – and it is considered incredibly rude or vulgar to eat or wave with your left hand!). It was a Christian ceremony (surprising given that 90% of the country is Muslim) and there was a live band so we got to dance a lot which was fun.
My first Fourth of July outside of the U.S. proved to be quite the adventure. Our friend Jacob, who works for CARE, told us that the U.S. Embassy in Mali sponsors a free Fourth of July BBQ for Americans at the Marine House, so some of my friends and I got directions from the Embassy and headed over around 4:30. However, we ended up driving around lost for an hour and a half only to finally arrive at the Marine House at 6pm to discover that the had BBQ ended at 3pm (you think they would have told us this on the phone??!!). The Marines felt bad so they let us in anyway and we played volleyball while running away from this massive tortoise (random, I know) they had on the grounds. Of course, on the way back, one of the cabs got a flat tire, but we finally made it to Broadway, an American diner where we had hamburgers and French fries – it was the first time I had had meat since I came to Mali and it was so good!
Posted by Madeline DiLorenzo at July 6, 2006 07:00 PM
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