Week 6: Zimba, Traditional Healer, and Independence Day

This week I was in Zimba for the second time on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I spent the morning with Meredith, a Physician’s Assistant student who is working with Drs. Dan and Joan Jones. A woman came in that morning who had been in a bicycle accident and she was taken to the theatre. Meredith knew that she was in the theatre so she let me go over with her to see what was going on and help clean the woman up. The woman needed several stitches in her upper lip and had a few other abrasions on her forehead and elbow. After helping the woman get stitched and cleaned up, I went back over to the outpatient department with Meredith. It was kind of nice to work with Meredith, because she does not know Tonga and can only communicate with patients who can speak English. I was able to better understand what was going on with the patients as Meredith interacted with them because they did speak in English. A number of the patients she saw were high school students. The students are taught English in school. I stayed with Meredith in the outpatient clinic until 1230 and then went for lunch at the mission house. After lunch I went to the lab. This time in lab there was more going on than last week and I got to do several blood draws. I did well with the blood draws, and it helped to build some confidence for starting an IV sometime. I also got to do several rapid blood tests for malaria. We were not able to spend the night on Monday in Zimba because the guest house we stayed at two weeks ago had some other people staying there, and the bathroom at the mission guest house was not yet completed. So we left Zimba around 1630 to head back to Choma for dinner and to spend the night.

Tuesday morning we left at 0700 to go back to Zimba. I spent the first part on the morning in the female and male wards. I was able to go around with the doctor as he did his rounds and ask him questions. After he finished his rounds, Lisa came and got Marianna and me and told us we could go over to the theatre to see the one major surgery for the day. It was a woman with an abdominal mass that the doctor was going to remove. Meredith got to scrub in and assist the doctor with the surgery. After that surgery I saw an amputation of a young boy’s finger, removal of a skin tag, and the removal of a lipoma on the forehead of a man. After the surgeries were finished for the day, I went back up to the guest house for lunch. Around 1500 I went back down to the hospital and spent the last hour and a half in the female and male wards. I helped the nurse by taking vital signs and passing medications. The nurse also had a new admission come in before I left for the day and she needed an IV started. Lisa was there when the woman came in to the ward and was able to help me start my first IV! I was able to get it in on my first try. I struggled with holding the cannula down firmly when I retracted the needle so some blood did come out. I really think that the blood draws I was able to do the day before helped prepare me for inserting an IV and I had more confidence. We left Zimba again around 1630 and headed back to Choma.

Wednesday of this week was just class time.

On Thursday, our group left early in the morning to travel to Chikuni Mission Hospital. We had plans for the day to meet with two traditional healers, one male and one female. We were only able to meet with the male traditional healer. There had been some lack of communication when we got to the village where the healer was. He had not been made aware that we were coming but was willing to talk with us for a little while about what he does as a healer. He told us that he is a diviner and works with the local hospital. He showed us the building where he makes his medicines before we left. After meeting with him we went back to the Chikuni Mission Hospital and had a short tour of the facility. We then traveled to the Monze School of Nursing and had a tour of the school facilitates.

Friday we had more class time. In the evening we all went to the Miss Rotary Independence 2009 contest. We left at 0700 and left around 2400. It was a late night and we left before the results were announced. It was a fun time to be out with everyone and do something different. There were 10 girls in the contest and they each had outfits for 5 different categories including office wear, cocktail dress, traditional, summer wear, and causal wear. In between each category of dress there was entertainment, mostly by Zambian rap groups. That part was not my favorite but there was one group of three guys that danced that was cool.

Saturday was Independence Day for Zambia. In the morning we went to the town center where it seemed like the whole town was gathered for the celebrations. Our group got to sit up under the tent behind the District Commissioner of Choma. There was a lot of singing and dancing by groups from different schools in Choma. Some children shared poems, and there was a short drama reenactment of the Zambia’s fight for independence. After the dancing, the District Commisioner briefly spoke to all the people then we were all dismissed. We came back to the guest house for lunch and had the rest of the afternoon free to do homework and relax. In the evening after dinner we had our activity night. Janna, Keri, and Lauren put together the “Zammy Awards” for us, and then we played a DVD game about movies. It was a lot of fun and afterwards I worked on homework a little and then went to bed.

Sunday was a really good day at church. There was a lot of singing, and several songs were in English this week so I was able to sing along more. The sermon was about Job and his faith in God. Throughout the singing our row had a little girl or about 4 or 5 being passed back and forth. She finally fell asleep on Sandy’s lap during the sermon. Sandy Emmett works in the global studies office at IWU, and she and Rob Dawson, the division chair of the undergraduate nursing program, came over on Tuesday of this week to stay for about a week and see how things were going here for us in Zambia. This week was pretty good overall. As usual I am attaching some pictures below!

Week 6 Photos