Langano is really fun. It is hard thinking about leaving it! I told Brian (who I saw this last weekend) that all the things I do during a work day are things he would love to do- work that is really fun for him. He is better equipped for community health than I am!
I am working a lot on keeping our latrine project moving. We have 12 to build, and we're almost finished with #5, the hole is dug for #6, we chose a spot for #7, and we're discussing possible placement for #8. I'm learning about how we can demand more community participation (getting them to dig the hole) than I demanded last fall when we started this project. Things are moving faster now that we're demanding more. We chose the spot for #8, told them to dig, and we said we'd be out in one week, if they hadn't finished digging, we'd dump the dirt back in and fill it up! I like the young man, Ganamo, that is working for us so that makes it easy to interact with him and check up on him.
We've had lots of teams come out! We had a team from Baylor University/nursing school a few weeks ago and we have another one from a church in New York here now. NOT to mention the constant stream of visitors- it is a great place to have visitors because it has the camp facility and (usually) a cook for meals, so it is really fun! With the medical teams my job has mostly been to take the nurses out for community visits. I love watching their reactions- I took two nice ladies out today, and they were just amazed and loved the experience so much! We just sat in a smoky hut, and the women made us coffee over the fire and we drank it, what is it about those visits that are so amazing? They leave me feeling good to, I think because its one of my favorite things to do in the whole world! Brian will be down this weekend so I'm going to try to take him out to visit.
We had a labor patient in on Monday. It was complicated because she was the village leaders' sister in law, so that puts a different kind of pressure on us to make sure things work out ok. There was a lady from our area that died in the clinic over Christmas so it makes us a little leary- we're more tempted to transfer her out sooner. Her clinical picture was a little weird- the baby seemed (from her stomach size) to be premature, but we couldn't tell for sure because she had more fat on her than most Ethiopian women, and the woman tried telling us she was full term. Anyways, about 3 we felt uneasy and told the family to pay for a tranport to a hospital- I was going to drive her. We didn't want a bad situation on our hands in the evenings because we do not as an SIM rule drive after dark.
So I went to get the car, feeling tired from just having arrived from Addis and just so many people and languages around, drove down to the clinic to pick her up and they said, "check on her she may deliver." So I watched her moaning and groaning, stepped out the door to have the guard call Allyson (I wanted her to be there for the delivery) and when I got back in the room, barely got gloves on and THERE was this little baby all goopy and green from meconium not breathing but big eyes open looking at me!! I called for Kim and we had to work a while with the bag and mask and the suction to get the baby breathing, but he perked right up after a few minutes. He was 1.7 kilos! (About 3.7 pounds!?) She stayed overnight so we could watch the baby, but he looked good as gold today. He's so cute! We were so glad she didn't deliver on the road, I don't think the baby would have lived.
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