Actually its way past time! I haven't been writing on here like I should have been. Unfortunately at the end of the day sometimes I get too tired and too stressed to do much writing. Sometimes I will open a Word document intending to write down everything that is happening to me and I just stare at it blankly for 15 min until I finally have to close it down and go do something else.
I did manage to jot down a few thoughts for you all, so here goes:
So, at work, my boss has been trying to make some changes to
get the hospital to operate smoother/on more of an American type level. Hence,
asking me to work there. But, its been pretty hard for me to get a lot of
changes implemented. I found, shockingly enough, that there have been no
standard policies and procedures for the facility. Everyone is pretty much just
able to do anything, anyway that they see fit. SCARY! So my boss hired a CEO to
come in and oversee some of the functioning of the place. Unfortunately, they
had a bad experience with their administrator for about 10 months before I got
there where they were actually stealing money from the place. Acting as if they
had received meds, paying out for them, when no medications were actually
delivered, and the money was just being pocketed. So the CEO is above even the
current administrator (the other one was fired) to help safeguard against that.
Its also kind of nice because he, like my boss, did his Master’s in the US and
so has a different way of looking at things from the business end of life. Its
nice to have someone that values high standards and efficiency on our side!
This last week, we also got some special outside help from a consultant from
the US. She was a hospital administrator for 30 years in the US, then in her
50s she had a breakdown one day and told her husband she had never got to do
what she really wanted to which was international work. So he was totally
supportive, told her to quit her job, he would support her, and to follow her
dream. For the last ten years she has been travelling around and doing
consulting for international hospitals around the globe. Its actually really
cool! So she’s been helping them see where they need to improve things and get
things up to standard. Its nice, cause I was able to share a lot of my ideas
with her and she put them in her report so that its her bumping heads with
people and not me. She had noticed a lot of the same things that I had though,
so that was kinda confirming.
Anyway, I am excited about where the hospital is heading. I
am going to help them come up with a policy and procedure manual, redesign all
the charts, and possibly a few other things. On top of already taking over
scheduling for staff and running after a few infection control issues, I am
feeling like I am starting to make a difference. That’s nice. For a while
there, I wasn’t really sure. And that was kind of depressing.
Life here is interesting. I was thinking the other day about
how I ought to explain it to you guys. So I wake up in the morning to the sweet
sounds of the alarm on my phone, hit the snooze a couple times like any good
20-something, and finally crawl out from under my K-State blanket and stumble
to the bathroom. My bathroom doesn’t have a sink. It doesn’t have a shower. It
does have a toilet… of sorts… which is actually just a ceramic hole in the
floor. There is also no water tank to flush this toilet, so I have to keep a
bucket of water handy. Which leads me to the next part… there is also no tap in
my house. Well… there is one, but they haven’t hooked up the water pressure to
pump it up to the second story, so I have to go down and get it from a tap in
the courtyard. At least its clean water right? Although, I don’t recommend
drinking it until its boiled. I have a kettle that is specifically for this
purpose and I keep lots of 1.5L bottles around full of drinking water that has
been properly boiled. So after bathing (i.e. splashing water on myself from a
basin) I get dressed and head off to work. Since I don’t have a closet yet (I
am gonna get a wardrobe eventually, hopefully with a magical back that leads
into Narnia!) I have to keep all my clothes folded. This is fine, except that
it has necessitated the purchase of a dreaded object called the iron. I know
you know all too well my history with this object and my intense feelings of
disdain in relation to its use. (see also: ironing in clothing construction,
church clothes) Slowly, I have been trying to embrace this as it is a very
significant part of the culture here for people to dress very well. Even if
your clothes aren’t really nice, they should be clean and well pressed. I lock
the front door before leaving the house, and this consists of fastening the
large metal door with a padlock. Then I walk up the hill, through a small
marketplace, and down another hill to catch a taxi. If I am really late for
work, then I can flag down a motorcycle to take me the rest of the way. I have
my usual cyclist, Roger, who is very safe in his driving, so I don’t mind going
with him. Otherwise, I cram into a “taxi” (really a small van) with 14 of my
now closest friends and speed off down the road. It costs me about $.20 to go
to work every day in the Taxi, but they like to try and charge me double if they
think I don’t know the price since I am a foreigner. I just check how much they
will charge before I agree to get in, and this usually alleviates any
misunderstanding or unnecessary mayhem. (I had a OK Corral standoff with the
taxi guy once in the middle of a busy traffic jam because he wanted to
overcharge me, and I wasn’t having any of it! Okay, it was only $.20, but it was the principle of the thing! I think he thought that I was gonna hit him, so he finally gave in and gave me the correct price.) Once I get to work, I walk up
the hill, change into my white (40’s style dress) nurse's uniform, and go get report to start
my day.
Oh! I forgot an important part before that! In Uganda, being colonized
by the British as they were, tea is a very important thing. Normally the ladies
break half way through the morning for tea time. Which is good, because lunch
is usually not until 1-2pm. I find however, that I don’t much like taking tea
all the time, especially if it isn’t spiced, or doesn’t have a lot of sugar…
then what am I really benefiting by the time I add all that sugar?? So I
started either taking some peach Lipton that I found in one of the ritzy
supermarkets (it doesn’t require sugar) or taking coffee (which I also don’t
take with sugar). So before I get my report and start my day with a little bleach
deep cleaning… mmmm! I first put on the kettle to boil my water for my coffee.
Kia gave me a coffee thermos mug thing so I carry it around at work and let
everyone make fun of me for being so “American” to carry my coffee around with
me. J Then
its lots of giving shots, starting IV lines, dispensing medications, dressing
wounds, and trying to make people feel better. My Luganda is still pretty
rusty, but I can get out a few words of greeting, and understand some basic
medical complaints.
The kids are the funniest. They either are super scared of me, or like this little kid (probably about 3 years old) the other day who kept coming to find me again so he could chatter away in Luganda, come sit on my lap, try on my glasses, etc. I just smiled and laughed cause I could only understand like 4-5 of the words he was rattling off to me. I like those days. Or the days that I get to hold babies.
Not so much the days that I get to catch babies... like the other day when the midwife wasn't around and this lady came with the baby just about to deliver. I only had time to barely put on gloves before, plop, the brand new baby was lying in my hands. I must have had a terrible "bunny-in-the-headlights" look, but I pretended I knew what I was doing. Did my checks, cleared the airway, got the baby breathing, looked for how to clamp the cord. Thank goodness the midwife showed up around then, and I gladly handed over. My body is funny sometimes how I can act perfectly calm in a stressful situation, but then as soon as its over I feel nauseous and like my knees might buckle. Not really a terribly good thing for a nurse, but so long as I don't get into ER nursing or OR nursing, I think I might be okay. Anyway, as soon as she came and took over I stood back and started to feel not so whoopy... ended up going and sitting down for a while so my legs didn't buckle. Don't get me wrong, I've seen several deliveries and don't have a problem with that, just never been the one solely in charge.
Thursdays are bad days too cause of immunizations. We only do immunizations on Thursdays right now, and its so hard to spend all morning poking babies and making them cry. Some of the nurses really hate it and asked me one time why I didn't seem very bothered by it. I told them its not that I'm not bothered. I hate making babies cry.... but I know WHY I'm making them cry, and I would rather make them cry now than see them suffering with diseases later. Actually there are a lot of choices like that which we make in life every single day. Would you rather be not bothered now and potentially have a very serious problem later, or be slightly inconvenienced now to not be inconvenienced later? Funny how many times we know this perfectly well and we still choose the lazy route.
I had been storing some things for a friend of mine at my place while he was out of town. He didn’t have a house here for a few months while he was working upcountry, and didn’t have anywhere to leave the furniture. I had an empty house with no furniture, so it worked out quite well. However, he moved back this last week so I begrudgingly helped him move his stuff out to his new place. (Just kidding, I was nice about it) Anyway, I am now back to an empty apartment, but that’s okay. I got some perspective the other day when I was thinking about how long it took me after I moved out of you guys’ house for me to have what I considered a full house set up. And even that changed with each new house that I moved to. What was enough for my one room with Jenna, wasn’t enough for Lake Elbo. What was enough there, I added to when I moved down on Freemont, and even that changed some when I moved to BagEnd. That helped my mind a little bit I think.
Since so few of my clothes fit anymore and some can’t be altered down very well, I am going to recycle some the fabric into pillows for the couch. My concept for the living room is recycled or repurposed products. I talked about it a long time with one of my friends the other day, because she is totally into that kind of thing and she was super excited with me. It reminded me so much of how Mom and I would bounce ideas off each other for new projects and get the other one all excited about them too! J
Well, that's kind of an update on life for the moment. I promise I really will try and get better about writing on here. In the meantime, I might post some poetry I've been working on. Enjoy my dear readers!
