Monday 25 July 2011

Haven't I met you before?

hey all! its been a bit of an emotional couple of days, but i'm hoping things will start to turn around.

yesterday it was emilys birthday so we went for an evening out in ntungamo, at a pub called the Kama inn. it was fun but drinking there was somewhat difficult, as here you can't just buy a spirit and mixer, you ahve to buy the bottle of spirits!! this was fine until they started to run out of the things we wanted to drink!

thismorning i was invidulating exams in baby 1, (which is bloody hard, you have to stop the teacher from helping them, and stop the kids from copying eachother)and at break time i noticed this poor child with these horribkle black crusted sores all around his mouth and chin, which were ooznig fluid and just looking totally horrible for him. i wasn't sure what it was, (at first i thought he had black paint or something on his face!) so i took him to jameel, who said it was 'a disease' that his parents had attempted to treat using tradition healing methods and herbs. it was pretty clear to me that the herbs were doing more harm than good. jameel suggested i take him to hospital, so off i went again.

at the hospital i saw the same doctor as last time, but he was much nicer to me this time, and i made sure i didnt go alone. the experience of taking steven to hospital though, was thouroghly distressing. i was told that it had to come off, which i was prepared for, but i wasnt prepared for how they were going to take it off. this huge nurse wrapped a rubber apron around him, soaked some gauze in alcohol, and just started ripping the scabs and crusted herb paste off his face. it was horrendous. he screamed the place down. he was so scared he wet his pants all over nouf's (the volunteer who came with me) lap. he was completely inconsolable, i was crying, he was crying, all the africans were crying laughing at me.

eventually when it was all cleaned up, it did look a lot better, but we had one miserable kid on our hands, who we then had to take for a blood test to check for HIV and malaria. he wasn't a fan of that one either. when we eventually got him back top the lodge though, he seemed much brighter and was eager to play. his mother came to pick him up so i was able to explain to her about his medicines and tell her how important it was not to put herbs on it. she was very grateful and gave me a loaf of bread to say thankyou :)

this afternoon i'm not really doing anything,. just trying to recover and be positive. its so hard to stay positive when there are terrible things happening all around me, and sometimes there's nothing i can do to help.

sorry to leave it on a miserable note, but there have been good things going on as well, like an epic boda boda race the other day, that have really been making me happy.

love, lucy xx

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