Letters from Katie Stone, Old Fangak.

Letter No. 2

There is so much to learn here.

I gave my first injection today. The little girl was about five and wearing a matching pink shorts and shirt set. There was a butterfly pushing a cart full of daisies on the front of it. I haven’t seen any butterflies here. Or daisies for that matter.

There is a family of three staying in the inpatient ward. The two year old girl has malaria, the mother is pregnant and the father has a knee full of pus. We drain the knee usually daily. The first day Ben and I did it there were eleven 10cc syringes full of pus. The next day nine. The next day seventeen. Yesterday only two and a half.

On one particularly busy day the man was getting kind of impatient. He came and sat next to the desk by the door and was pointing to it saying “very pain, very pain” and making a little syringing motion. I told him that I couldn’t do it but I would let the doctors know he wanted someone to. Ben went to get everything ready (takes a few minutes to collect swabs, kidney dishes, syringes, needles, sterile water to irrigate, etc.). The next thing I know, I turn around and there he is with a stolen syringe and needle, jabbing it into both sides of his knee and draining the pus.

Jill heard and came storming over asking how many years he went to medical school, what he used to clean it, and how soon he wanted his leg amputated above the knee because there was sure to be more infection after what he had done. The translator kept up as best he could, and the man got fairly frightened and vomited.

Ben wrote in his notes: “Issues with compliance.”

I would guess there are 500 flies to each person here in Old Fangak. They are especially plentiful during the hottest part of the day.

Our shower is a partitioned corner in the food store building. There is a bucket and a bowl for the water and a hole in the floor for a drain. I can bathe and shampoo and condition my hair with only ½ to ¾ bucket of water. Who would’ve guessed?

A few nights ago I went to my shower after evening clinic (about 9:30PM). I heard some squeaking behind the wall and then out ran three rats, the two bigger ones fighting with the smaller one. They bit the small one pretty badly and one went running back in the wall and the other ran down the drain, leaving the little one to die at my feet. Hmm.

The “house” where we cook and eat is inhabited half by rats, half by bats. We are just visitors. The bats are most active at dawn and dusk but during the day if you walk into the left storage area they all fly into the right side, if you walk into the right side they all fly to the left.

We have pointed stick which is kept in a corner for rats. Ashley’s favorite pastime is rat hunting. Yesterday I found one who had fallen into the bucket that catches drips from the water tank. Uh oh. The rats steal the fresh bread that we buy from the market if you leave it on the table. We have a metal box that we keep food locked in to avoid that.

The bread in the market is best when you get it early morning or late afternoon when it is still hot from the oven. They are small round flat breads, four for one Sudanese pound. Fifty Sudanese pounds to twenty USD. You can do the math.

There are always about ten boys selling the bread and they all try to get you to take their bags of bread. So you have to remember their faces and buy from a different boy each day. We usually ask for four. Which means four bundles of four breads for four pounds. That lasts through breakfast and lunch and if we want more for dinner we go buy it fresh again.

Two days ago I got to help deliver a baby. James, our friend with spinal TB who is always hanging around the clinic was sitting next to a woman who was lying on the bench. He stopped me and said “she is subbaree.”

I said “what?”

“She is subbaree. Suhhhh-baaaarr-reeeen.”

“Ohhhhh, suffering. Why is she suffering?”

“She will be going to be burstings a baby I think.”

Yay!!! Baby burstings!

So we took her into the wounds/eyes/baby clinic and sat her on the bed where she moaned and looked miserable while all her women friends sat around talking and laughing. Jill checked and said she was 9cm dilated. They were going to deliver in the clinic, but then decided to go home, so Jill went to get them a razor to cut the cord. Then they decided it was too late to go home so they would deliver here. She wanted to deliver on the floor so we put down a piece of black plastic to cover the crumbling dusty cement. The women here kneel rather than squat. But she ended up on her back with her head in her sister’s lap. It was a very fast delivery. The cord was pretty tight around the baby’s neck so it was good that they didn’t go home after all, or Jill wouldn’t have been able to save the baby.

There was six year old girl who came in as an emergency four nights ago towards the end of evening clinic. Jill gave her an IV to get her fluids back up and then she was complaining of stomach pain so we gave her some pain meds. She was leaning against the bed breathing heavily and her eyes were drooping. Her mom started panicking and telling her she was going to die. This didn’t help the little girl because then of course she thought she was supposed to die.

Jill explained (through an interpreter) that the pain meds had just made her drowsy and that the mother needed to try to calm her rather than telling her to die. Her breathing became normal again and she slept with her mother watching over.

The next day she was a completely different person. She came running up to me with her walking stick and gave me this huge smile while holding tightly to my leg. Ben was supposed to examine her but she stole one of his gloves and blew it up into a balloon and started running around and playing. I have a good picture.

Well, I wrote all of that yesterday. I was going to send it when I became suddenly ill! Ben came in to asked if I wanted to walk to the market and I said sure, in a second, then hey is it just me or is it really warm in here? I stepped outside to compare temperatures and began vomiting! Horrible!

After two litres of IV fluids and some oral rehydration solution, I was better. Jill said it was normal to be sick after about seven days in a new place just because your body is adjusting to the new food and conditions.

I was lying in the resting room of the house because there is the most shade and breeze there. There were a bunch of men just 100 yards away at the river who were shooting off their guns and singing. They were going up the river by boat to a neighboring village to fight for cows. Jill said “How’s that for testosterone?”

We are safe though.

I went to sleep at about six and didn’t wake up until 9:30 when Ben came back from clinic and said there was some dinner if I wanted it. I had a bowl of mashed potatoes since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and then straight back to sleep.

I woke up around 5AM and heard Jill being called to the baby bursting room. There was a woman who had been pushing since midnight. Ashley and I went with Jill to help. It was her first baby and she was having trouble because her bones were too close together. But she was so strong! The presence of meconium was worrying Jill, who wanted to get the baby out quickly. She said “Gretchen used to say that the color of your house in California was meconium green.”

Fantastic.

A beautiful baby girl. I want to say the whole so and so pounds, so and so ounces bit. But they don’t weigh them here. Hmm.

There are so many stories. But not in the right order here. And so many more I think of after I have sent the email. Ask me when I’m back. The pictures are great. I got one two nights ago of the fires. We burn the sharps [used needles, etc.] every now and then out back of the clinic. The back of the clinic leads towards the river where some men were doing a controlled burning of the grass. The two fires were illuminating the trees in the dark. I set up the work crew’s surveying tripod so the camera would be steady for the long exposure night/fire aspect and got a fantastic shot. You’ll have to wait and see!!!

All for now.

Love

Katie

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