Tuesday 17 July 2012

Matron? She just deals with the shit....

hey, sorry to have left that post in such an abysmal state yesterday!

steven's foot has been looking much better though his shoes have not reappeared, i'd love to know where they have gone, but im afraid i know already. i get that people here are desperate and some will do anything for money, but how could someone take shoes off a child that obviously desperately needs them?

the following day, i think it must have been friday, i saw another child with a foot injury. there are so many foot problems here, it really is frustrating that we cant give shoes to all the kids, and even if we could they wouldnt have them for long because they might be sold or whatever. anyway, this child had been running around the playground barefoot and had kicked a rock that was ebedded in the ground, which had ripped his toenail out. the base of it was completely free of his toe, but there was still a strip of skin accross the middle where the cuticle had been, keeping it attatched to his foot. a few of the female teachers including 'matron' had just been playing with this child and not taking any notice of the serious injury to his foot, and eventually MK brought him to me. when i saw it i was annoyed because im there to teach not to patch kids up all day, and although im happy to help i was still pretty upset by my experience with steven the previous day. MK was advocating cutting the nail off with a razorblade, which i certainly didnt want any part in, so i turned to him and asked 'wheres matron? isnt she meant to deal with these things? isnt she supposed to be the nurse?' he laughed and was like 'no no, she just cleans up when one of the little ones shits themselves' at least that cleared that one up for me, ive been wondering what she was supposed to do for ages... anyway, i refused to cut the child with the filthy razrblade that was offered to me, and cleaned and bandaged the toe as best i could.

ive already written about friday night in my prevoius post and about going clubbing, before we went out we played volleyball at school after the kids had gone home which was fun but even though i wore wrist guards i managed to pop one of my wrists out which wasnt so hot. 

over the weekend i didnt do a huge amount, just hung around the lodge and town. some new people came who were really friendly and we went on a really long sweetie walk up both sides of the valley.

yesterday i had another day of f*cking medical issues which was annoying and concerning in equal measure. I noticed that olivia (the same child who i took t hospital with an eye infection in my first week) had these really wierd hard lumps on her head behind her ears a couple of weeks ago, but she was perfectly happy and said that they weren't painful at all so i didnt do anything about it.yesterday she was sent to me by her teacher and she was crying, which ive never actually known her do before even when shes been ill, s i knew that something was definitely up. she said that they were really painful and she wouldnt let me touch them at all, and she had developed several more on her neck too. i asked Amon who is meant t be the village medical officer as well as volunteer supervisor if he knew what they were but he didnt, so i took her off to the hospital. i was praying that it would be Dr Moses i would see as he is nice and used to Mzungus rather than Dr Edwin, who doesnt like me and thinks im just an annoying woman with too much time on her hands. and as i knew that this was unlikely to be life threatening, i didnt think he'd be too impressed with me bringing her in. thankfully only moses was there, and he was nice about it but he didnt know what was wrong with her, he tested for malaria, syphillis (i was told at school that she was born with it) and HIV, all of which were negative. at the end of all of this he was like 'er.... maybe she's had a chest infection?' so he gave her antibiotics and diclofenac, which i was a bit shocked by, she's only 4! and some stuff for her head fungus, which she can never seem to get rid of.

after we got back from the hosiptal i was jst chilling at the lodge for a bit and went into town, and got back in time for afternoon break. h ids arent really supposed to come over to the lodge during school hours but its right next to the playground and they often wander over. there is a girl who lives basically in the school playground so she is always at the lodge outside of school time as her house is so close, so she knws and trusts me. she came over during break and was like 'shanita is asleep in class' which was a bit of a non statement so i asked her why and she was like 'she is very sick' so i grabbed my first aid bag and made my way back over to school. when i got there shanita wasnt in the classroom anymore as it was ebing cleaned and so was loud and dusty, but we eventually found her balancing on one of the benches, trying to sleep. she really didnt look well and when i checked her temperature it was 39 degrees, which was pretty concerning, and she was coughing absolutely loads. i gave her some paracetamol and waitedwith her until it was time t go home. i asked one f the teachers how far away she lived and the teacher said it was 'far but not far' which was really helpful, but she claimed it would only take half an hour to walk there, which sounded fine. we started walking and after a while Abi passed me on a boda boda, taking another child home. we were still walking when she was heading back, still on the boda, so i shouted for her to send the boda man back for me. thankfully he picked me up soon after when i had been walking for about 35 minutes, and then when we got on the boda it was a seriously bad road, if you can even call it that, and it took us another 20 minutes on the motorbike before we reached her house! when i gt there i explained to her mother what we had done and that if she wasnt better today i would take her to hospital, but typically she wasnt in school today, and neither was olivia, so im quite worried about both of them now :(

today i went into school for porridge which was really fun and then sat in on a maths lesson with P3, which was nice. i dont really have much else to tell you, but ill post again soon!

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