As of my last writing, I thought that the majority of my medical care related to my accident was behind me. That was two weeks ago, and I've been in Yaounde on medical hold since then. PC Cameroon is in the process of moving offices but has already opened its new transit house, which is where I've been staying. It's a beautiful house-big and spacious with six bathrooms, four bedrooms, and more beds than I've bothered to count. It also has the most dangerous staircase that I've had the pleasure to climb, made even more challenging by my sprained ankle. Luckily, the PC admin has been more than accommodating to me and opened the medical hold room on the first floor after a few days of struggling.
I hadn't spent any significant time in Yaounde prior to this visit, and my time here has been quite different than I would have expected. Sure, I spent quite a bit of time reading, Facebooking, and Skyping with friends and family back home (I've never been so well caught up on everyone's lives!). But there have also been many more PCVs here than I would have expected and I've spent most of my time with "old" friends and making new ones. Everyone comes in Yaounde for different reasons and the emotions that come with being here are as varied as the volunteers themselves. When I first arrived there were members of my stage here that had just finished their beach trip to Kribi (the one I was supposed to go on...) They quickly left, and I prepared myself for a few days of solitude (I was consistently told that my stay here would be shorter than it was). But it was not to be. People have come through on their way to/from the airports, transit through Cameroon, and for medical/security reasons. My friend Anna found herself with a staph infection (apparently they're easy to pick up in the ocean) and has been here for over a week now. And although I always want my friends to be healthy and safe, it was nice to have a buddy to travel over to the medical office with. At one point there were four of us heading over to PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Office) each morning. They started sending a car.
I can't say that I have much faith in the Cameroonian medical system, so I was relieved and grateful for the care that I received from PCMO. Our physicians assistant made me come in each day to have my wound checked and cleaned and even got a consultation from both a surgeon and an orthopedist. Luckily I escaped any possible infections and have been recovering nicely. It's looking like I'm going to end up with a pretty sizable scar, but there could definitely be worse ailments with which to leave this country.
The night before swearing-in the members of my stage and I all spent the night at the homes of US embassy staff/ PC administrators. Many of our hosts told us to give them a call if we're ever back in town and have been extremely generous with their hospitality. So this week my friend Anna and I took our hosts up on their offers and had a little taste of life as a Foreign Service Officer. It turns out that living in Cameroon as a FSO is much more like living in America than it is like living in Cameroon as a PCV. We were definitely exposed to the finer parts of life here and the whole experience left me surprised and impressed. We went to the US embassy pool, met some Marines, ate some lasagna, and visited all the high-class Yaounde supermarkets. A big thank-you goes out to our embassy families for taking such good care of us.
So I'm heading back to Bamenda tomorrow and am looking forward to finally getting back to life at post. It's been kind of funny-I've spent the past two weeks living an American lifestyle of sorts, full of "high-speed" Wifi, American friends and modern conveniences. But I caught myself missing my little neighborhood and the friends and neighbors that I have there. In-Service-Training left me enthusiastic about getting work projects started and these past two weeks have given me ample time to reflect and plan.
TL,DR: Life in Yaounde is filled with other PCVs and (at least for me), daily trips to the medical office, and better food than I thought existed in Cameroon. I've consumed more liters of smoothie than can possibly be good for me.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Ashia, Ashia, Ashia...
My stage-mates and I spent the past two weeks at our In-Service Training conference, where we all come back together after three months at post. It was great to be together again and check in with some of the people that we haven't really been in contact with since heading to post (Cameroon is big and phone credit is expensive!). We also learned about some aspects of Peace Corps that they choose to withhold for our first three months, including applying for funding for projects and how to join committees.
Our IST was held in Bamenda, so many of my friends had to travel for two or three days to get there. But my journey consisted of a 20-minute taxi ride across town (well, probably 30 with traffic). So after IST ended I was excited to finally get out of Bamenda and the Northwest Region and explore Cameroon a little bit. My friends and I decided that we wanted to head to Kribi, the beach town in the South Region. As the Lonely Planet guidebook describes it, "there are times when Africa just hugs you". I couldn't wait. But Kribi is pretty far from Bamenda, so we decided to make a stopover at my friend Anna's post of Tombel, in the Southwest Region, to celebrate Women's Day "in village". I was pretty excited for this layover, as Anna loves Tombel and was excited to show it off to us. So after a day of recovery at my post in Upstation, we headed out to the bus agence. As I mentioned in an earlier post, buses generally leave when they are full, and not at a particular time. So we ended up waiting quite a while for ours to leave, and in the meantime I realized that I had forgotten my cell phone at home. Oops.
The trip down was relatively easy-only one bus breakdown and a long-winded medicine salesman to contend with. We arrived in Tombel by dinnertime and were met with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies straight out of the Dutch oven. It turns out that Tombel is beautiful, albeit the most humid place I have ever been. Mercifully, it began to pour and we had a chance to cool off before we ate.
The next day was Women's Day and Anna and her postmate Ben had been asked to speak at the town celebration. It began at 10 and we were asked to arrive at 9. Luckily, we've all been in Cameroon long enough to entirely disregard those instructions and, feeling proud of ourselves, showed up at 9:45. We were still the first ones there. So we watched the women of Tombel trickle in, all in their matching pagne (fabric). Every year there is an official "Women's Day" pagne, and Anna was wearing a giant dress (called a cava) and headscarf made out of it. But most of the other women wearing pagne specific to their individual women's groups, so the grandstand was quite the visually appealing place to watch and wait.
And watch and wait we did. By the time Anna and Ben got up to speak, the event had already been going on for about three hours. And as entertaining as their speech was (Women Dey? Women Dey!), we were all exhausted and ready to leave after it was over. By the time we left, they hadn't even gotten to the parade so it's anyone's guess how much more remained.
That evening we decided to split up for the night, as there wasn't enough bed space for all of us. So Rachel and I offered to take a moto across town to Ben's house, where there is a guest room and more than enough space for the two of us to sleep. An 100FCFA ($0.20) moto ride across town seemed a small price to pay for not having to sleep three people to a bed. But as we were rounding the corner to reach the junction where all the moto boys wait, my leg went out from under me and suddenly I was on the ground. Well actually, below the ground. I had fallen into one of the giant gutters on the side of the road, and my left leg was about two feet below street level. The rest of my body was somewhere in between. I slowly extracted myself from the gutter and assessed the damages; as far as I could tell the main problem was my right ankle and leg, both of which hurt pretty badly. But Rachel took one look at me and thought otherwise-my left leg had a deep gash and was already bleeding quite bit. We decided to head back to Anna's, which was luckily still quite close. As soon as we walked in the door, my friends that are here as Health volunteers took one look at me and determined that I needed to go to the hospital and would likely need stitches. They also decided that it was for the best that I forgo getting cleaned up at home (as the water was a little questionable) and instead leave that for the professionals. Little did we know what was in store.
One nice thing about living in a small town was that Anna called one of her friends that is a moto driver and he came right to the house to pick us up. He didn't say a word about my bleeding leg, nor put up a protest when I climbed on right behind him. And when we arrived at the hospital, he refused to take any payment and sat down to wait with us. We had no idea how long the entire procedure would take so we didn't let him stay, but the gesture was definitely appreciated.
Given that we arrived around 10:00 on a Saturday night, there was no doctor on site. The nurse grudgingly agreed to call him, and we waited for the better part of half an hour. And when he finally did arrive (on moto, of course), he demanded that we pay his transport fare of 200FCFA. At this point in the evening we wanted to stay on his good side, so we paid up. Of course, his arrival coincided with the power being cut (only for a minute or two, but long enough to raise my anxiety level). He took us into the operating theater and rested my leg in a shallow metal dish. After opening the sterile supplies (I hope they were sterile...), he began to clean off my leg. So painful. It was deep and fairly long (between four and five inches) and the doctor was not shy about rubbing antiseptic directly into it. As I tried to fight him off, he just repeated "ashia, ashia, ashia" as way of apology. Ashia is the local word for sorry, although it can also be used sarcastically. But this apology didn't even come close to making up for the force he applied to my leg. After a few seconds of this, he seemed to realize that perhaps local anesthesia was a smart next move. Unfortunately for me, this was an equally painful process that involved about six shots directly adjacent to the wound. I will be forever indebted to Anna for being by my side throughout the whole ordeal.
The doctor stitched me up (three internal stitches and eight or nine external ones-he couldn't tell me how many) and it wasn't too painful, although I'm not convinced the anesthesia completely covered the area he stitched. I kept asking if he was finished and he would respond "yes, I am finished", before starting another stitch. And we were in an English-speaking region. When I questioned him about it, he told me that he meant he was finishing. That is not a cultural difference that I'm okay with. Especially not when each additional stitch took me by surprise. But finally, he was finished and cleaned up my leg and foot, both of which were pretty bloody. He even started to clean up my flip-flop until he realized that he had taken off his gloves. And they say there is no customer service in Cameroon. With one final (and refused) offer of an injectable painkiller, we were on our way. Getting a moto at an isolated hospital in the middle of the night in the rain wasn't easily accomplished, but finally we were home and I was surrounded by my friends, who had waited up to make sure that I was okay.
I should mention at this point that the Peace Corps Medical Officer was incredibly helpful throughout this process. Neither Anna nor I had a phone that had any phone credit on it (guess I should have gone back to get my phone in Bamenda) and Dr. Jorge called us back at regular intervals to make sure that everything was going okay. He encouraged me to skip the beach trip and after trying to convince myself that I could still go I reluctantly agreed. So the next morning my friends boarded a bus headed to Douala and Kribi and I found myself on one headed back to Bamenda. Unfortunately, the bus trip took about three hours longer than it did on the way down. My postmate Eric agreed to let me stay with him as I recuperated and has been a great host so far. We've been eating avocado sandwiches, watching Modern Family (season 5!) and are planning to make chocolate chip cookies this evening. He's never made them. I don't even know how that is possible. I just learned that I have to head back to Yaounde tomorrow to see the Peace Corps Medical Officer in person, which I'm not thrilled about. But at least I'll get to see my friends one more time as they come through on their way back to their respective posts.
TL,DR: Beach trip to Kribi was replaced by emergency room visit in Tombel. A first-hand glimpse into the Cameroonian medical system was something I could have done without. But 12 stitches and a sprained ankle I've learned to be careful where I step.
Our IST was held in Bamenda, so many of my friends had to travel for two or three days to get there. But my journey consisted of a 20-minute taxi ride across town (well, probably 30 with traffic). So after IST ended I was excited to finally get out of Bamenda and the Northwest Region and explore Cameroon a little bit. My friends and I decided that we wanted to head to Kribi, the beach town in the South Region. As the Lonely Planet guidebook describes it, "there are times when Africa just hugs you". I couldn't wait. But Kribi is pretty far from Bamenda, so we decided to make a stopover at my friend Anna's post of Tombel, in the Southwest Region, to celebrate Women's Day "in village". I was pretty excited for this layover, as Anna loves Tombel and was excited to show it off to us. So after a day of recovery at my post in Upstation, we headed out to the bus agence. As I mentioned in an earlier post, buses generally leave when they are full, and not at a particular time. So we ended up waiting quite a while for ours to leave, and in the meantime I realized that I had forgotten my cell phone at home. Oops.
The trip down was relatively easy-only one bus breakdown and a long-winded medicine salesman to contend with. We arrived in Tombel by dinnertime and were met with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies straight out of the Dutch oven. It turns out that Tombel is beautiful, albeit the most humid place I have ever been. Mercifully, it began to pour and we had a chance to cool off before we ate.
The next day was Women's Day and Anna and her postmate Ben had been asked to speak at the town celebration. It began at 10 and we were asked to arrive at 9. Luckily, we've all been in Cameroon long enough to entirely disregard those instructions and, feeling proud of ourselves, showed up at 9:45. We were still the first ones there. So we watched the women of Tombel trickle in, all in their matching pagne (fabric). Every year there is an official "Women's Day" pagne, and Anna was wearing a giant dress (called a cava) and headscarf made out of it. But most of the other women wearing pagne specific to their individual women's groups, so the grandstand was quite the visually appealing place to watch and wait.
And watch and wait we did. By the time Anna and Ben got up to speak, the event had already been going on for about three hours. And as entertaining as their speech was (Women Dey? Women Dey!), we were all exhausted and ready to leave after it was over. By the time we left, they hadn't even gotten to the parade so it's anyone's guess how much more remained.
That evening we decided to split up for the night, as there wasn't enough bed space for all of us. So Rachel and I offered to take a moto across town to Ben's house, where there is a guest room and more than enough space for the two of us to sleep. An 100FCFA ($0.20) moto ride across town seemed a small price to pay for not having to sleep three people to a bed. But as we were rounding the corner to reach the junction where all the moto boys wait, my leg went out from under me and suddenly I was on the ground. Well actually, below the ground. I had fallen into one of the giant gutters on the side of the road, and my left leg was about two feet below street level. The rest of my body was somewhere in between. I slowly extracted myself from the gutter and assessed the damages; as far as I could tell the main problem was my right ankle and leg, both of which hurt pretty badly. But Rachel took one look at me and thought otherwise-my left leg had a deep gash and was already bleeding quite bit. We decided to head back to Anna's, which was luckily still quite close. As soon as we walked in the door, my friends that are here as Health volunteers took one look at me and determined that I needed to go to the hospital and would likely need stitches. They also decided that it was for the best that I forgo getting cleaned up at home (as the water was a little questionable) and instead leave that for the professionals. Little did we know what was in store.
One nice thing about living in a small town was that Anna called one of her friends that is a moto driver and he came right to the house to pick us up. He didn't say a word about my bleeding leg, nor put up a protest when I climbed on right behind him. And when we arrived at the hospital, he refused to take any payment and sat down to wait with us. We had no idea how long the entire procedure would take so we didn't let him stay, but the gesture was definitely appreciated.
Given that we arrived around 10:00 on a Saturday night, there was no doctor on site. The nurse grudgingly agreed to call him, and we waited for the better part of half an hour. And when he finally did arrive (on moto, of course), he demanded that we pay his transport fare of 200FCFA. At this point in the evening we wanted to stay on his good side, so we paid up. Of course, his arrival coincided with the power being cut (only for a minute or two, but long enough to raise my anxiety level). He took us into the operating theater and rested my leg in a shallow metal dish. After opening the sterile supplies (I hope they were sterile...), he began to clean off my leg. So painful. It was deep and fairly long (between four and five inches) and the doctor was not shy about rubbing antiseptic directly into it. As I tried to fight him off, he just repeated "ashia, ashia, ashia" as way of apology. Ashia is the local word for sorry, although it can also be used sarcastically. But this apology didn't even come close to making up for the force he applied to my leg. After a few seconds of this, he seemed to realize that perhaps local anesthesia was a smart next move. Unfortunately for me, this was an equally painful process that involved about six shots directly adjacent to the wound. I will be forever indebted to Anna for being by my side throughout the whole ordeal.
The doctor stitched me up (three internal stitches and eight or nine external ones-he couldn't tell me how many) and it wasn't too painful, although I'm not convinced the anesthesia completely covered the area he stitched. I kept asking if he was finished and he would respond "yes, I am finished", before starting another stitch. And we were in an English-speaking region. When I questioned him about it, he told me that he meant he was finishing. That is not a cultural difference that I'm okay with. Especially not when each additional stitch took me by surprise. But finally, he was finished and cleaned up my leg and foot, both of which were pretty bloody. He even started to clean up my flip-flop until he realized that he had taken off his gloves. And they say there is no customer service in Cameroon. With one final (and refused) offer of an injectable painkiller, we were on our way. Getting a moto at an isolated hospital in the middle of the night in the rain wasn't easily accomplished, but finally we were home and I was surrounded by my friends, who had waited up to make sure that I was okay.
I should mention at this point that the Peace Corps Medical Officer was incredibly helpful throughout this process. Neither Anna nor I had a phone that had any phone credit on it (guess I should have gone back to get my phone in Bamenda) and Dr. Jorge called us back at regular intervals to make sure that everything was going okay. He encouraged me to skip the beach trip and after trying to convince myself that I could still go I reluctantly agreed. So the next morning my friends boarded a bus headed to Douala and Kribi and I found myself on one headed back to Bamenda. Unfortunately, the bus trip took about three hours longer than it did on the way down. My postmate Eric agreed to let me stay with him as I recuperated and has been a great host so far. We've been eating avocado sandwiches, watching Modern Family (season 5!) and are planning to make chocolate chip cookies this evening. He's never made them. I don't even know how that is possible. I just learned that I have to head back to Yaounde tomorrow to see the Peace Corps Medical Officer in person, which I'm not thrilled about. But at least I'll get to see my friends one more time as they come through on their way back to their respective posts.
TL,DR: Beach trip to Kribi was replaced by emergency room visit in Tombel. A first-hand glimpse into the Cameroonian medical system was something I could have done without. But 12 stitches and a sprained ankle I've learned to be careful where I step.
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