Hello again! Its been a few days since I last wrote, and I've had two more days at the health center. I spent one day in the "immunization room" and one day in the "sick child" room. In the immunization room it was quite boring. This is where they vaccinate babies and pregnant mothers. The babies get all kinds of stuff like vaccines for polio, tetanus, measles, hep B, diphtheria, and so on, and the pregnant women get tetanus shots. It's seems like they have quite a good vaccination program going, at least for the people living here in Addis. And the ladies working in the sick child room said that they had a lot less kids come in every day now than they used to, so maybe that is because of the vaccinations. The biggest reason it was boring in the vaccination room was because the people working there weren't very friendly. They were only speaking Amharic to one another the whole time and totally ignoring me, and it was the same for the other two girls when they spent their day there. So we decided one day was enough!
In the sick child room I saw a bunch of kids come in, mostly small kids under 4 or 5. The nurse would take a quick look at them, the parents would tell them whats wrong and then the nurse prescribed medicines. So since there are no doctors here in the health centers, the nurses do it all! They diagnose and prescribe medicines, and I'm sure there must be a lot of wrong treatment given, but at the same time a lot of people get help. And if a really sick child comes in, it is brought to the hospital. Most of the children have problems like infections in tonsils, eyes, ears or umbilical cord, vomiting and diarrhea and problems with feeding. A lot of them were so scared of the nurses in white uniforms, the almost started crying just by the look of them. But there was definitely less crying in this room than in the vaccination room! All but one baby wailed when jabbed! One baby got three jabs and I was so sorry for the poor thing, getting stung in both of the thighs and arm!
Friday I spent the whole day in the hotel room in close proximity of the toilet, I guess that's all you need to know ,) But later in the night I was feeling fine again, and we had a good game of Alias all of us girls together.
Saturday we ventured to a big nice hotel where there was a big conference for the womens health organization of Ethiopia, which is the sister organizations of norske kvinners sanitetsforening. We spent a few hours listening to some things we understood absolutely nothing of, cause it was all in amharic, but at least we showed out support ;)
One morning while waiting in the hotel for a cab I got into a conversation with these two spanish medical doctors, and it was so cool to speak some spanish again! They were actually from Barcelona, right next to where I was living when I was in Spain. They were working with some projects with women and childrens health here, and one of them has promised me some documents with statistics that might help with my paper I have to write while I'm here. Last night I met one of them again and I happend to tell her I had been sick, and she was so sweet asking me about what it was and how I should go about treating it. And I got there name and room number on a note, so that if any of us got ill again we could just get a hold of her. So now we have our own doctor in the house ;) This doctor only spoke spanish and has to use a translator all the time she is here, so I think she really enjoyed just being able to speak her language straight to someones face.
Today we have been hanging out with Malene from Åndalsnes ( girl that works here in Addis in a orphanage), first having some lunch and then swimming and tanning at a big hotel. We also had the experience of taking a sharing taxi, which are wan type cars (folkevogn busser) that drive specific routes around town picking up and dropping of people for a very low price. We haven't used these before, cause we have no clue where they go and the people don't speak english. But Malene uses them every day on her way to the orphanage, so we were fine with her :)
Plans for the week to come includes some night shifts at the heath centers birth and labor rooms! For some reason no babies here want to be born during the day, so we have to come at night if we are to see any births. So hopefully monday night and thuesday morning there will be lots of births! Tomorrow during the day, since we are doing a night shift, I am planning to go see the orphanage Malene works in and play with the kids there and help of in any way I can. Some time during this week we will also go with our Ethiopian friend Birikt on top of a mountain that is quite near to here and see the view, a marked and a monastery thats on the top. It's always good to bring a local to the marked to deal with all the haggling and getting a good price :) The mountain is over 4000m over sea level I thinkg, so it will also be the highest I've ever been I'm pretty sure. And sometime between all of this I need to start writing this paper!!
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