The past couple days have been full of Ashley, hospitals, medicine, malaria and infested wounds. It has become more apparent to me how much I don't want to be involved in the medical field whatsoever. On Tuesday I accompanied Ashley at the Naboa Clinic where she fills prescriptions and does lab tests. The medicine is provided by the government and they only get a new shipment every 2 weeks so when they run out, they run out. Come to find out, patients don't have to pay for medicine.
This is a bench outside of the clinic where the patients wait.
Here we have the sink. Can you believe these are the conditions of a health center? A sink that looks like this, random posters taped on the wall, dirt and bugs all over the ground. I mean, it is better than no clinic but even though it is something, it's still not that great.
This little girl came all by herself to the clinic because she wasn't feeling well. The kids are so independent. They just know where to go when they don't feel good. They don't ask their mom to take them, they just walk all by themselves to get the treatment they need.
Just to take a lil break from medicine, let's talk about how we beaded yesterday! I love these women! They still have a lot of work to do as far as bead quality because most of their beads had like bugs and dirt in them but that's why were here, to teach them how their beads are going to sell. We decided to paint paper for them when we got home and it was hard! I couldn't even imagine them painting paper on a dirt floor! We felt so rude for telling them it wasn't good enough when we were having difficulties!
I got to know Elizabeth really well while beading. First off, she is gorgeous. I asked her about her family and she told me she has 6 children with two different fathers who both left her. She also had a child pass away when he was one year old because of Malaria. So sad. She said life in Namatala is hard because when she doesn't sell her tomatoes and greens, she can't feed her family. And I'm sure you can only eat tomatos and greens for so long. She continued to say when she can't feed her kids, everyone is hungry she feels bad when her children come home for lunch in the middle of school and she doesn't have food to feed them. Honestly I was on the verge of crying like 3 times. You would never guess that she lives this kind of life because of her presence. I asked her what makes her happy and she said when her family has food. Really? Like seriously.
So today was heart wrenching. It literally took everything in me to not go on a corner and cry my face off. If you read Ashley's blog like I told you to, she talked about this little girl, Silvia who's feet were being eaten by rats while she sleeps.
One foot showed improvement from when Ashley last treated it but the other foot was worse. Parts of Silvia's big toe were chewed off. Although she was very composed, you could tell she was in so much pain. I held her hand why Ashley put carbon proxide on her nibbled apon foot. Apparently she didn't have shoes so the school provided her with some. She now sleeps in them but I'm going back later today for beading and I am going to give her a pair of my socks.
This whole "doctor" thing is just too much for me to handle. I really admire people like Ashley who can deal with healing wounds and attending to the sick. I just become too emotionally invested and it grosses me out. Having these experiences have really put things into perspective for me. I have realized how blessed we are in America to be able to go to the store to get medicine and go to the hospital to get treated. We just have such easy access to everything. Life is so easy in America. We don't have to worry about rats eating our feet off. We don't have to worry about getting the flu and it maybe killing us because we can't afford to buy Theraflu. I know some people in America can't afford things, but the majority can and their conditions aren't as substandard as they are in a third world country.
On a lighter note...
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