Friday I spent the morning heating my water for tea, reading in my hammock, and washing clothes. In the afternoon I went to the clinic to hang out as I do about every day I spend in the village to greet the long line of villagers waiting to be seen for a wide-rage of reasons and say hello to the clinic staff. There was a maternity case and like I usually do, I walked in to spend time with the woman in labor.
It was perfect timing as the head was crowning as I joined them, the TBA (trained birth attendant) joked that I should put on gloves and help her out, and the mother of the woman in labor danced and sang with me. As the head popped out the TBA started to look stressed and concerned, the mother stopped talking, the woman in labor stopped pushing; the umbilical chord was wrapped around the newborn's neck. There are no ultrasounds at rural clinics, and there's no equipment for c-sections. We were in a bind. The TBA called for the clinic nurse to come and help. Minutes, but what seemed like hours, passed and the baby's head was laying there. The TBA tried frantically to unwind the chord and was finally successful. The baby boy was then born and the TBA started to hit it's chest to make the baby start crying. We waited silently, still, hopeful...and then, it cried. We breathed a sigh of relief, I unclenched my hand from the woman's shoulder that I had been unknowingly clinging to, and we cheered. A beautiful baby boy had entered the world...and cried as soon as he opened his eyes to see a white girl's face staring back at him, as if even in their first moments of life they still fear the muzungu(white person).
Later in the evening I cooked and ate dinner with Bethany and Jeremy, an American couple that has lived in my village for quite some time. Deciding to spend the night, we started making our game plan...literally..."should we play Settler's of Katan or Cribbage?"
Around 8pm we got a knock at the door. One of Jeremy's workers, Elijah, had come to ask if we could bring his wife to the clinic. Through major language barriers, we found that the woman had been badly burned and she was too weak to sit on the back of his bike to go to the clinic.
We got to his home and found a crowd of people. They carried Elijah's wife to the car, as she couldn't stand. A woman had told us that her and her baby were badly burned from water. The woman, in shock, climbed in the back of the car with me...I had to hold her body and head so she didn't fall. From the light I could see her arms, layers of skin peeled back with puss and blood around the burns. Under the layers of burnt skin you could see the white, never been touched by the sun, skin.
We decided that this woman did not need to go to the clinic, but needed to be rushed to the hospital. First, due to requirements from the hospital, we went to the clinic for a referral. We then sped to the hospital, as I held up her limp body and rested her burnt arms on my legs. On our way we hear the story: she and her baby had been scolded by boiling water at 3pm. The neighbors and friends came to help her and thought she should go to the clinic, but were in no rush because no one had a functioning bicycle at the moment. They waited. At 5, we picked up Elijah to take him to get his pay for the month during which he said nothing about his wife. At 7, the woman became unconscious and they started to worry. Elijah then got on his bike to get to Jeremy and Bethany's house...the only people with a vehicle in the village and the only people he knew of to turn to for help.
At 9 we arrived at the hospital. The baby who had been burnt was not crying, was not opening his eyes; it had been 6 hours since the incident. We left the hospital to head back to the village, leaving Elijah, his wife, and the baby at the hospital to wait for the doctor.
On Saturday when we came into town, we saw Elijah around 8am. His wife had not seen a doctor, as the doctor was not arriving until 10am. The clinic has nothing to help burn victims except for ib prophen, which is what she had been given.
I went to bed on Friday night and stared at the thatched roof above me. What a day. Through joys of births and victims at the clinic, the constant reminder of illness is always difficult, yet beautiful. The bond that ties everyone together is family, and the sense of family here is so powerful that it helps people through the biggest of problems. The community I live in have become my extended family members, eating with me, visiting with me, and asking for whatever help I can give. If that help is standing in a labor room holding my breath until a newborn baby breaths, then at the end of the day this experience is more than worth it. If that help is holding a woman while driving her to the hospital telling her in my best Bemba "It's going to be okay," then at the end of the day I can lay in bed and stare at my thatched roof and feel blessed to have the opportunity to be a part of this beautiful world.
October ended nicely with a trip to Lake Tanganyika for Zambia's Independence Day. The weather is hotter than ever and it was a relief to be able to swim in the crystal clear water while catching some of the last sun rays we'll see as rainy season is rapidly approaching.
