"We'll meet back at the compound", "I need to get to the compound", "See you around the compound". No, these are not lines from a bad movie, these are everyday utterances here. David Koresh eat your heart out.
The compound is about 15 meters square, the walls rise about 6 feet, the buildings approach 12 feet, roofed with corrugated iron. The north and east walls are both topped by rings of razor wire. The gate is made of heavy steel, with a series of unappealing spikes surmounting it. The gate shuts with a clang of great finality.
The south wall houses the kitchen, a few staff lodgings, and in the corner, the pair of bathing stalls and lavatories. On the north wall once finds the dining room, the three volunteer dorms, and a few more staff living quarters. In the courtyard on the east side are a pair of clotheslines and a large, black polytank, containing all the water for clothes washing and bathing.
My room is a basic affair, just a bunk bed on a vinyl floor, small mirror to the right of the rear door, two power outlets, and a bare fluorescent bulb hanging from a wire. I've set up my mosquito netting on the bottom bunk with parachute cord; the top bunk I'm using to stage my gear. I keep a fan close to the bed, without any airflow it can become rather stifling.
On account of the heat of the rooms, most idle time at the compound is spent on the trip of concrete stoeps in front of the dorms. Each porch is separated from the others by a waist-high whitewashed concrete abutment. Tom, the German volunteer who lives in the room behind mine, had rigged an old speaker up to a headphone jack and placed it in the corner of our stoep. I added a cheap shortwave radio and my ipod, now our eclectic mix of Dr. Dre, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Tom Waits, Snoop Dogg, Alabama 3, and the BBC World Service have become welcome diversions.
A fine red dust constantly drifts over the compound, it's a constant fight to keep it outside. Withing an hour, a book left out on the porch can pick up a cinnamon-like coating. The roads in Teshie are unpaved, and as such any motor traffic kicks up a plume of that same red dust. It's disheartening to feel that you're getting a nice, even tan, then it all wash off in the evening.
I've been keeping track of time by two calendar systems. The first, more accurate one, is a hand drawn calendar I keep taped to the wall. The other, which is less accurate but shows a great deal of class, is an ever lengthening row of 1.5 liter water bottles I've drank during my time here. I have plans to reenact great battles of the civil war, utilizing the Voltic bottles as the Union, while the Aqua Fills will serve as the Confederacy. Maybe a whiskey bottle can fill in for Grant?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Does Kalashnikov Make A Stethoscope?
The name "Police Hospital" sounds like something out of a bad joke. "Hey, did you hear the one about the police hospital?". I'm sure there'd be a punchline involving taser-defibrillators and colonoscopy-cavity searches. Well, I work at said hospital. The Police Hospital.
The hospital is a quick tro-tro trip into town, an area of Accra called Osu. Osu is one of Accra's more "cosmopolitan" regions. A few higher-end stoes rub elbows with westernized eating establishments and embassies.
The Police Hospital was only opened to the public relatively recently. Prior to that, it had been the territory of policemen, their families, injured suspects and prisoners. These days though, all are welcome.
Seattlites are loathe to jaywalk. Why this is is beyond me. Maybe we're so starved for sunlight that we're willing to stare at a glowing red hand as a low budget S.A.D. treatment. I am no exception to this stereotype. It can be raining, windy and the entire homeless population of Pioneer Square is shuffling towards me; but by god I'll hold my ground until the sign says "walk". In Ghana, this approach does not work. In Accra you can occasionally find a crosswalk. About 1 in 8 of these has some form of signal. 95% of these controlled crosswalks do not function. The other 5% function, but in a malevolent fashion, designed to trick you into the oncoming truck, proudly emblazoned with "God Never Fails". To cross the street and live goes against many years of conditioning and common sense; just walk out when you're reasonably sure the oncoming car will stop in time for you, then stand in the middle of the road until the other lane obliges.
I love the fact that I'm jaywalking in front of the Police Hospital.
Most of my work in the hospital is in the Public Health Unit. The PHU functions as a rotating clinic, changing type of patient from day to day. Pre-natal, newborns, infants, the PHU does it all. The PHU runs very well, the presence of some newcomer oroni just initally caused confusion. Eventually it was made clear that I knew the basics and wanted to work. Some days I take blood pressures, others I administer vitamin supplements or weigh infants, whatever is needed of me.
At first I found it strange that many of the men in the hospital carried Kalashnikovs, but it's a police hospital, and as such has some patients who need to be guarded. After seeing a guard scratch his nose with the muzzle of his assault rifle I felt very secure. I hope that in the event of a prisoner escape or scuffle no one is stupid enough to open up with his nose scratcher. The 7.62mm round of Mr. Kalashnikov's baby has enough force to punch through the walls of the hospital and do bad things to whoever is getting the worst physical of their life, "I turned my head to cough and got a pneumothorax!". The AK is also far too easy to set to rock and roll and spray and pray at your target. This is all well and good if you're a child soldier who has been snorting a combination of cocaine and gunpowder, but 15 or so bullets rattling around a hospital ward is no one's idea of a good time.
The staff of the hospital is well trained and does an excellent job, all things considered. It's just some of the little differences, especially in terms of cleanliness. They dispose of needles in cardboard sharps containers, but don't wear gloves. I once requested a pair and found out that there were no gloves in the PHU to be found. Hand washing and sanitization are two things we in the West take for granted. I'm given strange looks when I wash my hands after administering a vitamin supplement to an infant. I simply don't want to serve as a disease vector in a room full of infants, and I sure as hell can't just pull on a new pair of gloves. There are few things more disconcerting than opening up an old-school sphygmomanometer and having a trio of cockroaches make their great escape from its innards. The hospital functions, and does a good job, I'm just glad I have evac insurance.
The hospital is a quick tro-tro trip into town, an area of Accra called Osu. Osu is one of Accra's more "cosmopolitan" regions. A few higher-end stoes rub elbows with westernized eating establishments and embassies.
The Police Hospital was only opened to the public relatively recently. Prior to that, it had been the territory of policemen, their families, injured suspects and prisoners. These days though, all are welcome.
Seattlites are loathe to jaywalk. Why this is is beyond me. Maybe we're so starved for sunlight that we're willing to stare at a glowing red hand as a low budget S.A.D. treatment. I am no exception to this stereotype. It can be raining, windy and the entire homeless population of Pioneer Square is shuffling towards me; but by god I'll hold my ground until the sign says "walk". In Ghana, this approach does not work. In Accra you can occasionally find a crosswalk. About 1 in 8 of these has some form of signal. 95% of these controlled crosswalks do not function. The other 5% function, but in a malevolent fashion, designed to trick you into the oncoming truck, proudly emblazoned with "God Never Fails". To cross the street and live goes against many years of conditioning and common sense; just walk out when you're reasonably sure the oncoming car will stop in time for you, then stand in the middle of the road until the other lane obliges.
I love the fact that I'm jaywalking in front of the Police Hospital.
Most of my work in the hospital is in the Public Health Unit. The PHU functions as a rotating clinic, changing type of patient from day to day. Pre-natal, newborns, infants, the PHU does it all. The PHU runs very well, the presence of some newcomer oroni just initally caused confusion. Eventually it was made clear that I knew the basics and wanted to work. Some days I take blood pressures, others I administer vitamin supplements or weigh infants, whatever is needed of me.
At first I found it strange that many of the men in the hospital carried Kalashnikovs, but it's a police hospital, and as such has some patients who need to be guarded. After seeing a guard scratch his nose with the muzzle of his assault rifle I felt very secure. I hope that in the event of a prisoner escape or scuffle no one is stupid enough to open up with his nose scratcher. The 7.62mm round of Mr. Kalashnikov's baby has enough force to punch through the walls of the hospital and do bad things to whoever is getting the worst physical of their life, "I turned my head to cough and got a pneumothorax!". The AK is also far too easy to set to rock and roll and spray and pray at your target. This is all well and good if you're a child soldier who has been snorting a combination of cocaine and gunpowder, but 15 or so bullets rattling around a hospital ward is no one's idea of a good time.
The staff of the hospital is well trained and does an excellent job, all things considered. It's just some of the little differences, especially in terms of cleanliness. They dispose of needles in cardboard sharps containers, but don't wear gloves. I once requested a pair and found out that there were no gloves in the PHU to be found. Hand washing and sanitization are two things we in the West take for granted. I'm given strange looks when I wash my hands after administering a vitamin supplement to an infant. I simply don't want to serve as a disease vector in a room full of infants, and I sure as hell can't just pull on a new pair of gloves. There are few things more disconcerting than opening up an old-school sphygmomanometer and having a trio of cockroaches make their great escape from its innards. The hospital functions, and does a good job, I'm just glad I have evac insurance.
Monday, February 4, 2008
This Is Africa
"This is Africa". This simple phrase has become a mantra. Things seem strange? Illogical? Did three cockroaches just bust out of the sphygmomanometer? Well, this is Africa. That's all there is to it. Just relax, go with the flow and chances are you'll make it out all right.
Ghana, where do I start? It's the country as close to the "middle" of the world you can possibly get. about 6 degrees north and straddling the Prime Meridian. Ran by the British until 1957, when Ghana declared independence, the first colony in Africa to do so. The severence with Britain was relatively painless (The Brits have a talent for knowing when to get the hell out of dodge). As such, you can find traces of Britain around, the occasional bust of Queen Victoria, large Indian minority, very good chips, so on and so forth.
Ghanaians are a friendly people, as the Ministry of Tourism loves to state. This is a mixed blessing, as on one hand it's nice to be treated with courtesy by strangers, you rapidly realize that everyone has an agenda. Ghanaians are a mercantile people as well, and a cracker like myseld appears as a giant sack of money with a healthy dose of liberal guilt. Everyone wants something from you, and due to the "culture of friendliness" if you rebuff them, apparently that makes you the bad guy. The worst are the Rastas, who approach speaking a contrived patois, an accent apparently acquired from listening to too much Bob Marley. They immediately try to get you to give them some kind of personal information, phone number, address, email etc... And if you politely state no, then suddenly you change from being their brotha and you become a "damned Babylonian". The fact that Haile Selassie owned slaves has become a great source of amusement for me.
This double faced nature is really only prevalent in Accra and some of the more touristy areas. I'm staying in a town in the Greater Accra area called Teshi; and in Teshi there is a feeling of people being honestly happy to see you. Teshi is a case of the population of a city outstripping it's ability to provide for them. The roads are unpaved, pothole riddled affairs, there's electricity, but no water system, sewer system, or trash disposal. Water is trucked in by private companies to be kept in communally owned cisterns. Goats, chickens, and sheep browse throught the streets looking for food. Yet everyone seems happy. They are living their lives and enjoying them.
Ghana, where do I start? It's the country as close to the "middle" of the world you can possibly get. about 6 degrees north and straddling the Prime Meridian. Ran by the British until 1957, when Ghana declared independence, the first colony in Africa to do so. The severence with Britain was relatively painless (The Brits have a talent for knowing when to get the hell out of dodge). As such, you can find traces of Britain around, the occasional bust of Queen Victoria, large Indian minority, very good chips, so on and so forth.
Ghanaians are a friendly people, as the Ministry of Tourism loves to state. This is a mixed blessing, as on one hand it's nice to be treated with courtesy by strangers, you rapidly realize that everyone has an agenda. Ghanaians are a mercantile people as well, and a cracker like myseld appears as a giant sack of money with a healthy dose of liberal guilt. Everyone wants something from you, and due to the "culture of friendliness" if you rebuff them, apparently that makes you the bad guy. The worst are the Rastas, who approach speaking a contrived patois, an accent apparently acquired from listening to too much Bob Marley. They immediately try to get you to give them some kind of personal information, phone number, address, email etc... And if you politely state no, then suddenly you change from being their brotha and you become a "damned Babylonian". The fact that Haile Selassie owned slaves has become a great source of amusement for me.
This double faced nature is really only prevalent in Accra and some of the more touristy areas. I'm staying in a town in the Greater Accra area called Teshi; and in Teshi there is a feeling of people being honestly happy to see you. Teshi is a case of the population of a city outstripping it's ability to provide for them. The roads are unpaved, pothole riddled affairs, there's electricity, but no water system, sewer system, or trash disposal. Water is trucked in by private companies to be kept in communally owned cisterns. Goats, chickens, and sheep browse throught the streets looking for food. Yet everyone seems happy. They are living their lives and enjoying them.
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