And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin




Sunday, July 29, 2007

Dear Diary, Part 2

Day 9 – Tuesday

I cannot believe I’ve been here a week already – more than a week, actually! Man, time is fuh-lyin’ here. Or at least it seems that way, I’m so stinkin’ busy. But, better busy than bored, I always say.

I spent most of today holed up in my house on the computer, further fleshing out the project plan and analyzing the mSupply system in the context of the pharmacy’s business processes. Although I did pop by the dispensary for a couple hours in the morning to help pack pills and whatnot. Stan was missing again (he went to Chipata yesterday) and I found out he’s been admitted to the hospital. Apparently, he was on quite a bender over the weekend and got himself into a fight at a bar; split his face open pretty good.

“In Chipata?” I asked Temba.

“No, in Katete stores,” he told me, spreading the latest batch of scrips on the counter. Katete is the boma, or main town, closest to Saint Francis; it’s maybe 8 – 10 kilometers from the hospital, but there is a modest “shopping district” just about 2 or 3 kilometers away called Katete stores. There are some small groceries carrying only non-perishables, a couple bars, a few small take-away restaurants serving mainly nshima and chicken, a petrol station, and other “general dealers” carrying basic household items.

“But I thought he was in Chipata yesterday,” I say. “Was this last night then?”

“Yes,” nods Temba, counting pills.

“But he will be ok?” I ask.

“He will be fine,” Temba says.

“Poor Stanislas,” I say, shaking my head. “That is not good.”

Temba laughs. “Ah, but don’t worry. Stanislas – he will be fine. He just sometimes likes too much to enjoy – to, to have a drink. And then he gets very…talkative.”

“Talkative?”

“Yes, talkative.”

“Ah, gotcha,” I nod. “But…he will be ok?” I ask.

“He will be fine,” Temba says.

I wonder to myself if I should go visit him and ultimately decide against it – I tell myself it’s because I’m afraid my showing up might embarrass him, but I think the truth is I’m still slightly uncomfortable about our encounter on Saturday. Maybe I will go tomorrow.


Day 10 – Wednesday

So…kind of a weird day today. I spent part of the morning at pharmacy (where I learned that Stan is on the mend and will be discharged soon), and then a few hours back at my house modifying the ARV dispensing tool that I built back in February (I’ve managed to convince the guys that they should start using it again - at least until mSupply is fully implemented - but there’s a drug regimen that needs to be added to it and, consequently, the formulas for all of the related cells across all 72 worksheets need to be updated). Anyhoo, so I was back at my house working on that but, for some reason, I couldn’t focus. So I did this really silly thing where I started reading through old (I mean really old – years old) journal entries and suddenly found myself wrestling some old ghosts – ones I thought I’d long since vanquished – and it kinda threw me. Funny how that stuff can just come up out of nowhere and bite you in the ass.

Anyway, so I wrestled. And, of course, prayed – which for me, most of the time, is just another form of wrestling. But, as a pastor once told me, that is pretty much the way it should be. “Do you know,” he asked, “that Israel, the name God gave his people, literally means struggles with God?” I looked at him. “Yeah, y’know – Jacob and the angel and the hip socket?” I nodded. “‘You shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel, because you have struggled with God,’” he quoted. “So go on and struggle, Katie. As a Christian, it’s kind of your job – your birthright, even. And anyway, God’s big enough.”

So I struggled with God today. Quite a bit, I might add. Even did a little fist-shaking. And I cried, too – big snotty, wailing tears. But it was good.

Except that now I’m behind on my work.


Day 11 – Thursday

Stan was discharged today. He popped by pharmacy for a bit and seemed in good spirits. He’ll be back on the clock tomorrow.

I did another brief tour in the dispensary in the morning and added at least three more Chinyanja phrases to my repertoire: Tubili ngat vamvela kupweteka for “Take two whenever you feel pain”; Mumwe yonse for “Take all of these at once”; and Kupanga, which apparently means “Mix this packet of oral rehydration salts with one liter of water and drink.” Yeah, no, that can’t be right.

Kupanga?” I ask Temba, holding out the packet of salts.

He nods. “Kupanga.”

“And they know what that means?” I ask, scratching the word into my notebook.

“Yes, it means make, to make,” he assures me.

“And that’s all you say? Kupanga?”

“Koo-PAIN-ga,” Jacob pipes in from the counter.

“Koo-PAIN-ga,” I repeat to myself, reading from the notebook.

Temba looks at me as I recite. “I think now you can even dispense without the notebook,” he says, then gestures at the new pile of completed scrips by the dispensing window.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I protest. “I think I probably still need the notebook.”

“Ah, but you can do it!” he insists.

“No, seriously, Temba. I don’t want to mess it up. I need the notebook.”

“No, no! You can even – ”

“She needs the notebook,” Jacob says from the counter. They laugh.

*****

I spent the afternoon at home studying the user manual and working on the project plan and tonight I got the email reply I’d been waiting for from the mSupply developers in Nepal.

Oof.

Yeah, it’s gonna be a reeeaally busy weekend. And not just for me, incidentally – the hospital lost two more doctors today. And by “lost” I mean that two of the volunteers finished their tour. I swear, this place is hemorrhaging personnel. But then, they depend mostly on volunteers to staff the place and no volunteer can stay on indefinitely. That makes eight that have gone in just the last week, though (there were a bunch of Irish medical students who left last week), and no replacements have arrived - nor do there appear to be any on the horizon. Plus another one of the doctors has been in Lusaka at a training workshop so the burden has shifted to the three remaining docs (all but one of whom are volunteers) and a handful of medical students. These guys are exhausted – I am awed by their commitment and, frankly, their stamina. I really don’t know how they do it.


Day 12 – Friday

So there was a chicken in the hospital post today. Moffat’s dinner, I suspect (Moffat is the sweet elderly man who mans the post office). I was in the office emailing my reply back to mSupply when Moffat came in with the thing, its feet bound with string, and placed it in a shallow cardboard box in the corner whence it began squawking in protest and flapping its wings, hopping and stumbling in a vain attempt to escape. I must have looked stricken, because Moffat laughed and chided me “You can just keep working! It will not harm you!” Pshaw. As if I thought it would.

And Stan was officially back to work today – and still in good spirits – although he tried to tell me that the wounds on his face were the result of a bike accident. I was glad to see him smiling, though.

Oh, and Chris and Amy are back in the States now. Er, they left yesterday, so they should have arrived by now. I talked to them a couple days ago. Apparently Kondwani is developing at lightening speed – she’s making new sounds and is more engaged than ever. And a Fatty McCheeks now, too! Chris says she’s up to – oh, shoot I forget how many kilos he said… Seven, maybe? I don’t know. I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve seen her. Feels like it’s been months.

Aw, man – now I’m all mushy. :-(


Day 13 – Saturday

Had an unexpectedly productive day today. I love when that happens! I spent most of last night trying (unsuccessfully) to reason my way through a concept that I couldn’t wrap my brain around – an incredibly simple concept, I should add, to do with units and pack sizes of drug products, but one that is critical because the whole mSupply system sort of hinges on it (units and pack sizes are what the system uses to calculate the total stock of a particular drug item). Anyways, I was trying to figure it out so I could put the data in the right format for the import file but I kept getting stuck. I finally gave up about midnight and decided I’d just wander over to pharmacy in the morning and see if looking at the actual stock and having a visual representation would help me grasp it.

Well, I got lucky, because Jeremiah (who doesn’t typically work on weekends) just happened to be at the hospital casting out a demon that was troubling a patient who’d been admitted to the wards (yep, you read that right) and popped by the pharmacy when he was through. I spent a couple hours with him picking his brain and made serious headway on the import file; even managed, based on some of the things we discussed, to finally reason my way to understanding the concept that had been eluding me. Weee! Anyways, I got so much more done in the morning than I expected that I decided to take the afternoon off and go for a gorgeous hike up a nearby escarpment with some of the other volunteers. It was a bit overcast so the pics I took didn’t really come out, but it was fantastic!

After the hike, though, it was back to the salt mines and another late night on the computer. I am in bed now, scribbling this entry in my notebook by the light of my headlamp and I am, I must say, plumb tuckered.

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