I have been meaning to write this for a couple of months now
but it is becoming much harder to know where to start. The trouble is life here is
tragic and cruel, and to write about it is to trivialise it in some ways. But
at the same time life here is also very colourful, rich and incredibly fun. The more
friendships I make and the more politics I discover I realise both how fabulous
it is to have the privilege to live here, if only for a while, yet also how
hard it is to know how some things will ever improve.
As I am constantly being
told by the wise staff, small small is how it will happen.
So a few things that have happened:
Our wonderful Dr Small left but only after making us
pancakes and being given many gifts of Africana outfits and a delicious
chicken called KFC .
The beautiful new malnutrition ward opened which is the culmination
of many people’s hard work. This is both a victory and a sad reminder of the fact that this kind of ward is needed in the first place.
It puts my chocolate and roast dinner cravings into
perspective. (Also makes our cupboards stocked with UK goodies seem ever so slightly selfish...)
.
We had a party fuelled Christmas and New Year including a
riverside rave, a botched but fairly successful attempt at mulled wine (while
pretending it was cold), countless Christmas films and cocktails and surfing on
the beach. Not quite the sacrificial Christmas I had perhaps been envisaging
pre departure, but we did end up welcoming a special Christmas Eve baby into
the world. Never just pop in to say hi...
Then it was all change. With the departure of Hannah and
Martin we then got to welcome several new faces. With them came copious amounts of
angel delight - the closest thing to ice cream here and heaven on a spoon. My
standards have slipped but I have no shame in saying that when I return home
butterscotch angel delight will always be on my shopping list.
So as for the hospital, what do I say?
There have been clear steps
forward which are incredibly exciting. I really enjoy (and find very frustrating)
the never ending hilarity of the work ethic here: I have recently discovered
that it is much easier to persuade people to do work with you if you sing when
you ask... “Let’s do this blooood presssureeeeeeee, what could beeeeeeee more
fuuuuunnnn!!”. Also the community feel of the team, particularly in the evening
when all staff members seem to congregate on the ward in their satin pyjamas.
This can’t deflect from the terrible reality of caring for a
young women overnight, who has several children already, watching her uterus
rupture, knowing there is nothing you can do about it until morning (by which
time it may be too late).
Or take away the frustration of suddenly not being
able to hear yet another baby inside its mother due to the lack of effective
monitoring allowing us to spot the moment of decline. And is it even right to take
someone into life threatening surgery (because that is what it is here) to save
a baby? However precious that little person is, how can you weigh up the perhaps
small chance of preserving life when the mother may die leaving her family
behind to fend for themselves?
Not enough blood, not enough skills, not enough motivation, incentive or morale, never enough money and certainly not enough resources or equipment.
And yet so much can be done with words, kindness and skilled
hands. This is why it is never worth giving up. And one day, all this will change. I hope that I will come back in the future to Kambia, perhaps on a
family holiday, to go to a thriving beach packed with tourists, drive through a
fantastic infrastructure with ethical and growing local business, brilliant
sanitation and agriculture, not having to worry because if I get sick I
can go the hospital with full faith in
their care and facilities.
This will happen, but how many have to die first?
I will
never forget the women and babies who would be alive if only they had been born
a couple of decades later, or somewhere else not so far from here.
