Casey, Lindsay, Matt, Jamison and I have had a great week in the Western region around the city of Elubo, where we have been doing some huge outreaches. We got to the Super Gardens Hotel late Sunday night. We had fun figuring out how to shut a bathroom door that doesn’t stay shut, but does lock from the outside.
On Monday we went to Tarkwa and saw about 325 patients in one day. Ernest, the optometrist with us, has discovered my love of Microsoft Excel and relatively fast typing speed and has me covering data entry at every outreach while we’re in the Elubo area. Although I love giving visual acuity exams, I still get to see some patients while entering data and also really do love Excel, so I can’t complain too much. When the volunteers introduced ourselves to the crowd of community members at the beginning of the day, I got a great laugh out of my “ma chay” (“Good morning”). The Ghanaians really love to hear obronis (white people) speaking Twi. I generally get a light chuckle from anyone who I tell “thank you” in Twi.
On Tuesday, our outreach was in Ichaban, only a 25 minute drive from the hotel. It was definitely my shortest drive to an outreach yet. It was also extremely hot and humid! The weather has been a little more manageable with the help of rain coming more often, but today was an exception. I took a break from data entry to do some visual acuity exams outside in the sun for about 30 minutes and my shirt was drenched in sweat. We did, however, see over 300 patients again, so all the sweating was definitely worth it. On the way back from the outreach, we stopped at a chop bar that has great fufu and Matt, Lindsay, and I got our first tastes. Fufu is very similar to banku – a very doughy, starchy ball that is eaten with stew. We got an extra bonus because we ordered ours with goat meat. Fufu is not my favorite, but I did really enjoy the goat!
Wednesday we had another short outreach to Kwesi. The church where the outreach took place was enclosed in a large gate, which helped everything stay better organized, but also really eliminated any hint of a breeze. The people in this area were extremely nice, except when the line to see the doctors got too long. At that point, a fairly loud and aggressive argument broke out every time a new patient went to the doctor, as everyone shifted chairs to the next available seat. Ghanaians generally have little sense of queues, but when one does form, as happens during our screenings, they take it very seriously. A highlight of my day was sending my first “small girl” on an errand. Ghanaian adults often have children who are within shouting vicinity run errands for them, like getting change for larger bills or buying them a bag of water. These errands usually begin by the adult beckoning “small girl!” or “small boy!” During a short break after doing visual acuity screenings, I saw a girl who looked about 13 years old sitting nearby and called her over to go out to the street to buy Fan Choco’s (very delicious frozen chocolate milk) for the volunteers. It was very satisfying to not only send my first small child on an errand, but also to enjoy a cold Fan Choco on a hot afternoon!
Thursday, our screening took place in Agona. The church where the outreach took place was very small, so visual acuity screenings took place with the eye charts attached to the Crystal Eye Clinic van. There also was no space for me to do data entry near the medication/eyeglasses dispersion table, so I found a little landing on the stairs up to the church’s balcony and set up data entry camp there for the day. Toward the end of the day, a couple of 10-year old named Obed and Buesba started hanging around my chair. I talked to them for a while and they decided they wanted to help me, so they would go outside to pick up patient’s slips from medication dispersion and bring them to me to enter into the computer – so helpful!
We ended up seeing about 1200 patients in 4 days in the Elubo region with 80 referrals for surgery. The week was not the most glamorous, but it was really rewarding!
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