9 hours away from Departure

Wow. I just can't believe today is the day I leave.
The last 4 weeks were just surreal in how it flew by.

So many experiences that I probably would have never gotten if I hadn't come to Ghana.So many awesome people/volunteers I will never forget.

Ghana has been spectacular, and when I first wrote my blog and said "I hope that in the future I will remember this summer" in most delicate details, I now confirm that claim is going to be true.

Yesterday I finished off my work in Ghana with my final visit to the leprosy village.
I will miss every single patient I treated, every single child I got to say "efoa" to.

Thank You to everyone who made my life absolutely spectacular this summer!

Swansea MeSHers

Abi
Steph
Jess M
Jess H
Maz
Josh
Cris
Alex
Richa
Liz
Rhi
Ellie
Fembe
Sam
Becky
Chris (in memory of your legendary return!)

and Freya (Nottingham!)

Americans!

Sara
Arienne
Alicia(hope you are feeling better!)
Tamara
Aaron!

Canadian
Lin!

Summer 2012- A total Success! Now, leaving Ho for Accra. I hope it will be a safe and sound journey back!

Last Days In Ghana

Here's the picture of the local Ghanaian Banku!
 
You eat this with only with your right hand! Yes, no silverware! (But I am guilty, i did use a spoon)

I finally went to the Diabetes center in the Municipal Hospital on Friday!

I met Gifted and Teena, the two nurses at the department.
I mainly worked on using technology (computer) to record the diagnosis, medications, vitals, etc into the system.
 

This, unlike ordinary record sheet, leads to the pharmacist giving the prescription to the patient, so wrong type of medicine or the wrong dosage can lead to devastating consequences! I paid my utmost attention to all the details, to make sure I was always on top of things and not making mistakes.

Because I came around 9 in the morning, which is a little bit after the rush hour in the Diabetes department (because there is a huge influx around 7:30 and 8), we didn't have too many patients to take care of.

So though I had plenty of patients' records to take care of for 2 hours, after it I had half an hour to chat with the two nurses and take pictures at the place.

Many people are interested in my hair, because it is rare to see hair grown out like mine. (Many Ghanaians, both male and female, often trim their hair very shortly) Interesting!

After the work in the morning was finished, Tamara came to visit me, and we both went to OPD, where Arienne was wrapping up her work. Sara was not feeling well that morning, so she couldn't come to the hospital with us :(  She feels better now though!

The three of us went to Melcom's to buy some juice, but mainly to break our 10/20 Cedi paper into change.
We did get juice, but they didn't have small change, so some of us had to settle for 5 cedi's and some lost money because they rounded the total amount!

Oh well, thats how it works in Ghana!

In the afternoon, we went to the cured Leprosy Village.
Sara, Arienne had their first goes on treating the patients!
 
Though Sara is a medical student and 25, and Arienne is 20 and a college student, I was a veteran in dressing wounds at the leprosy village! (I feel so proud!!!)

Initially, Arienne's university UC Berkeley, because it had funded her to come to Ghana, had control over what she could and couldn't do medically. They barred her from dressing wounds because she was not professionally trained to do so. But she convinced them otherwise, so now she can treat the patients with us! Yay!!

We usually have 8 or more volunteers coming to the village, but we only had 3 days on Friday. It took a bit more time to treat the patients than before, but we individually felt that we accomplished something, so that made up for the prolonged time!

Overall, Friday was a very productive day!

When we returned to the hostel, we had a volunteer who just arrived! Freya is from England, and she is going to start university at Nottingham (hopefully I am spelling it right), and she is studying nursing.

Normally, there would be a tour on the weekends.
But since I was the only one signed up to go on the tour, I decided to stay put for the weekend and get a refund. Tamara left on Friday to go to the orphanages in the Northern Ghana. But on Saturday evening, Lin from Canada arrived. So we are number-wise even in the game!
 
Both on Saturday and Sunday, I shopped like a madman in the market. My bargaining skills increased as I visited each shop! They had some very good deals, and I couldn't resist changing my wardrobe a little.

Plus, some of the Swansea students said that Americans lack a sense of fashion. Well, I better show them how we dress!!

Overall, the weekend was very relaxing. I got to listen to a lot of both local Ghanaian music and One Direction. Yeah, I know I am VERY behind on pop culture! On facebook, literally thousands of pictures were posted by the Swansea Students and I couldn't help but look through every single one of them and comment!

Sara and Arienne got their braids done on Saturday! (though it did take quite a long time!)

So finally, Today. I woke up with a terrible headache. I WAS going to go back to Diabetes as early as 7:30. But when I woke up around 6:30, I did not have the energy to get up.

So I went to the Royal hospital around 9:30, and went around the wards to take vitals.
I came back and had a nice Yam lunch. In the afternoon, we cleaned the Hostel. The JCL (living room), bedrooms, and the bathroom. Now everything feels much cleaner. We haven't cleaned the hostel since a week and a half before the Swansea MeSHers left! (Medicinal science and humanities FYI).

Anyway, I only have tomorrow as the full day, and I am off to the airport on Wednesday to catch a plane to Atlanta that night.

A month surely has flown by very quickly. As I listen to One Direction's Forever Young (originally by Alphaville), I imagine how fast my childhood and teenage years have passed.

Life is short! And we gotta make the most out of it! As I wake up every morning breathing, I thank god for giving me another day to live my day to the fullest. That is why I am in Africa! I have experienced amazing things and I wish to come back to Africa next summer to serve! Africa is truly the land of  "real" opportunity.
Opportunity to make fantastic changes in this land! Much work needs to be done, and there's always more than enough opportunity to serve and contribute!

The summer of 2012 has truly been an eye opening experience. I know I've been coughing a lot and some things haven't gone as smoothly I wanted them to go, but I always thank god for giving me this amazing chance in Africa.

Outreach!

Tuesday, that was yesterday. Yet again I've failed to write a post on time. But yesterday was pretty hectic and chaotic.

In the morning, we prepared to leave for the medical outreach. As usual, we had toast with jam and leftover snacks and food from the day before. I had been taking antibiotics for my cough for several days now, although I still have more tablets to take, my still cough didn't get any better so I stopped taking it since that morning.

We went to a local clinic first to pick up vaccines for polio to inoculate the young ones in the village. Tamara and Sarah, who were American volunteers who came recently to Blue-Med, joined us on the outreach! Unfortunately, Alicia, who went through depression and a bad stomach aches, went back to California early.

The Blue Med group primarily worked on inoculating the children, but the volunteers mostly worked on treating eczema, ring-worms, and wounds.

We primarily treated the children in school. Still to this day, I can't exactly tell if the blotch on children's heads are ring-worms or some other disease or just a scar (though I've gotten better at it!). So I always make sure someone else checked the child I treated.

After the outreach was over, we headed over to the Royal hospital, and relaxed at a bar for an hour as some Blue Med people went back to the hostel to get condoms. Yes you heard me. CONDOMS!

No, they are not for our use, thank you very much. This is actually the first sexual health outreach we did over the course of 3 weeks. Although many Ghanaians do know the consequence of risky behaviors, oftentimes not much precaution is taken. So we had a wooden male genitalia to demonstrate the proper way to put on a condom. We went around the town to give out condoms to various people, and demonstrated how to use them correctly.

Though it was definitely awkward giving out condoms (as you can imagine...) we knew we were helping to educate so that made us feel a bit more confident.

Now, the story is going to get very ugly.
The thirteen British volunteers left today, Wednesday. So as one can expect, they decided to throw a last night party yesterday. Party itself was not the bad part. But some volunteers decided to participate in a competition who can drink the most shots of gin (BAD BAD IDEA).

And of course, others unscheduled people joined in and before anyone knew, one after another  become intoxicated.

I left the bar rather early so I didn't see too much drinking going on, but when I saw them crawling back into the hostel, I knew some people had made some bad decisions to go overboard. Bathrooms were quickly filled with people throwing up into the toilets and bins. I really hoped that no one had to go to the hospital.

So the night passed as people were just too tired to carry on. In the morning, a lot of people were just extremely tired, but everyone was apparently feeling not too bad (very surprising). Im just glad that no one had to go to the ER.

So Today, all 13 of them left, and we said our final good byes. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged. After 3 weeks of volunteer and fun, it was sad for them to leave, but they felt like it was time to leave. They got tired of eating rice, which is understandable, since half of our meals are rice+ red sauce hehe.

After everyone got on their tros and left, the hostel felt really empty. Only 3 Americans and I remained, until new people come this weekend.

Today was a really lax day. We basically spent time with Swansea students until they left around 3, then the rest of us played cards and chatted about everything from college and med school to our personal lives.

We strolled about the village in the evening, and saw some campfires where we stayed for a couple of minutes.

My parents are worried that I've been coughing for over 3 weeks, though without any other symptoms. I should go see a doctor when i go back.

Tomorrow, Arienne, Sarah, and I are planning to go to the municipal hospital in the morning. They are going to work in the OPD for the morning while I work in Diabetes department. Then we most likely will go to the maternity and the labor ward to see if there are things we can help out with.

Labor Ward!

Monday was a very interesting day, like every single day was in Ghana!

But yesterday was particularly more interesting. For the first time in my life, I watched the miracle of birth in the labor ward. Rhiannon and Abi warned me that my stomach will churn really badly before we went into the delivery room.

While I left the room to get my glasses, within 30 seconds, the delivery took place! Oh noooooo! Rhi and Abi told me I missed everything within that short span of time!

Usually birth takes more than 30 seconds, but this one was more like a pop, and there was the baby!

Either way, the labor itself was very explicit and gruesome. But the baby was beautiful! Of course, i didn't really get a chance to take pictures but a day well spent, helping out in the maternity and labor wards. The three of us went to the surgery rooms to watch a surgery only to find out that we had to come back Tuesday because there were no surgeries yesterday.

I went to the bank after to withdraw some money, and we went to Melcom to buy some pineapple juice!

Green Turtle Lodge

Ah, so I ran out of gas last night, and stopped my journal on Thursday.
Now today is Tuesday. So I shall be up do date by the end of this hour.

Actually, I will start with Thursday night.
We were originally going to go to the beach we went 2 weeks ago, because not many people preferred to go on a 20 hour tro ride to safari.

That plan was in place until many of us realized that we should go somewhere different. The beach is nice, but boring if we go there again!

So we decided to go to this Green Turtle Lodge in West Ghana. Approximately 8 hours away, but in reality, took closer to 10 than 8. This place is also a beach, but we also went to visit the floating village on stilts. 

It definitely was a very long and bumpy tro ride. It took about 3 and a half hours to get to Accra from Ho. We stopped at the local mall to shop for a couple of sweets!

For the first time in my life, (i think), I had a Cadbury chocolate and a kinder chocolate!
They were very rich and tasty! The English chocolates were very good! After we came out of the mall, we actually saw a mini accident of a truck bumping into a car. It happened so casually that not many of us noticed. I guess this is not too uncommon in Ghana!

So after a nice snack, we headed West again. The ride from Accra to the Lodge was about good 6 hours. I thought my back was going to crumble to pieces because the road was so bumpy and rough. To add even more spice to this journey, we got lost in a really sketchy neighborhood around 6 o'clock, when the sun set and darkness prevailed. We also thought that we had flatted the tire. The journey was definitely long and tough.

But when we got to the lodge, everything felt just right!
The breeze and the relaxation took place, and we sat in the booth at the local bar talking about American and British cultures. I told the 4 girls who came on the tour with me all about American parties and special events like the Prom! They were so surprised because they thought prom only existed in TV shows! They told me they don't really have Prom in Britain! (Gasp!) Oh what fun they were missing out! We had a nice chat and a nice "tea" (british word for dinner). I had a delicious tuna pasta. I couldn't finish everything because there were just too much to eat!

We thought we were going to stay in the nice huts we saw when we got here, but we ended up sleeping in tents! (a bit disappointed but oh well!) The waves were so strong that i felt like they were going to flood our area while we were sleeping!

A beautiful morning, and a great breakfast as well! I had a "half-English" breakfast. It was basically an American breakfast with beans and lots of bread.

Jess and Rhi!

We had a relaxing day. Lots of swimming, tanning, soccer (football for Brits), volleyball, and body-boarding!

Loads of pictures were taken, a lot of food was consumed, and fun filled day presumed!
Jess and I pretended to be models at the beach, holding the half broken/mutilated surfboards! Our tro driver took some photos but didn't realize his fingers were in the way haha

At night, we met new friends from the U.S. and Switzerland! Most of them were medical students and undergraduate students from Brown University (well, the U.S. people were).
I asked them about how they came to Ghana and other questions about college and med school. I feel so blessed to be able to talk to these new people and learn so much from them!

The campfire kept the chilly shore cozy and warm. I actually felt cold during that night, wasn't too well. I hope that I wasn't going to be sick. Thankfully, when I woke up the next morning, I felt fine. Thank goodness!

We left early Sunday morning around 6 for the village on stilts. It was a 2 hour ride from the lodge. When we arrived, we took a 45 minute canoe ride to the village. Our steersmen and Issac, our tro driver Kuma were rowing very diligently throughout the entire ride.

Jess, Maz, Rhi, Kuma!

The boat was a bit leaky so we had to keep shoveling water out to keep ourselves floating! When it started to drizzle, we hoped that it didn't rain too hard or our boats might sink!

The village was very exotic. I really wondered how could people live on water! They even had a school on water as well!

Becky, Kuma Me, Maz, Issac, Rhi, Jess!

 After the nice visit at the village, we came back to the place where we left from.
We also had a nice lunch at the spanish cafe. I had a fantastic fish meal. The four 

girls had pasta for meal but I went out of the ordinary and had a Tilapia!

The way back to our hostel was yet again long and bumpy. We left around 1 and arrived around 10. I slept so much on the tro, and the girls talked so much (not that it was a bad thing, the talk is usually interesting!).

What a long day! My back ached, and my cough hasn't gotten better. I really need to go to the doctor when I go back to the States in a week or so.

Really relaxing trip though. Totally worth it!

Another Busy Week went by

Im yet again falling behind in my "daily" blog/journal. Of course it's been a while since I broke the system.

Quick Briefings and I'm going to start uploading pictures!

Tuesday: Royal Hospital.

Fembe doing some charts!








Unlike what its name suggests, the Royal Hospital was not the most Royal hospital I've been to, but in Africa, you can't expect too much. Even this hospital is one of the most visited and sought hospitals in the town.

With Fembe, Chris and Abi, I set out around 8 for the tro-ride to Royal Hospital. When we got there around 9, we walked around the hospital, examining different wards and labs. About an half hour later, Jess Morris (Because there are 2 Jesses!) arrived surprisingly. We basically left her because we thought us three were the only ones coming to the hospital, oops!

We went around the Wards, taking patient's vitals, such as taking blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiration rate. We went to the male, female, and private wards to individually measure and record their vitals.

After hospital work was done, we left around 1 o'clock to go to Melcom, a local supermarket. Snacks and all sorts of goodies were filled into our bags and we happily took the taxi back to the hostel.

Then, we changed our clothes to get ready to paint the local primary school.
The group already did some work on it before I came, but we came back once again to create more artistic masterpieces.

My face and body were colored with paint. I needed some turpentine to wash the paint out. And it started pouring when we were almost done, and never stopped until we got back. Soaked and wet, I went straight to the shower to wash down some mud and paint.

A tiring day, but definitely worth it.

Uh oh, battery is running out, Ill try to finish tomorrow...


I'm back on my lap top again.
So Today is 7/9/12. Time is flying.

I'll try to catch up with all the things tonight. 10:42 PM. I shall finish this in an hour.

So lets go back to last Wednesday.
Medical Outreach Yes!

We traveled about 40 minutes on the tro to get to the local primary school to do medical outreach.

Ellie and I volunteered to demonstrate teeth hygiene. Although to us, cleaning teeth and taking bath is like daily rituals, it is not so in Africa. Samantha and I each explained to the children how to properly take baths.

After personal hygiene was taken care of, we started treating children with wounds, ring worms, and infections. Vitamins, painkillers, toothbrushes and toothpastes were handed out to those who needed them.

It was about lunchtime when we finished most of our work. When we were looking at the school cafeteria, (well, more like a shack) we saw 6 children with no food. Their parents were unable to afford them school lunches. The volunteers from our group pitched in several Cedis and made enough money (around 70 Cedis) to feed the 6 children for two months.

Not many of us brought too much money, but we all felt like these kids needed to be fed more than anything. We have hope in humanity!

We ourselves had our lunch at the clinic, and as always, waited for 2 hours because of the late tro. The Ghanaian schedule is very unpredictable. You always have to give or take (usually give) another hour or two in schedule for a taxi/tro/ or anything!

We came back to our hostel later in the afternoon, and felt good about what we have accomplished for today. Medical outreach is one of the best things we do at Blue-Med. It's always "hands-on" and we accomplish something worthwhile.

By the way, Wednesday was July 4th. I wanted the brits to celebrate the "loser's party" but they didn't bite it. Darn! And coincidentally, we had 2 American College Girls from UC Berkeley come for volunteering on Wednesday! Yay Americans! Now I am not the only Non-Brit/Non-Swansea Student haha.

Arienne and Alicia are really nice people. All of us were excited to have some new members joining the group.  

So Thursday!

Leprosy Clinic once again! I don't know if i mentioned this before or not, but Its not really "leprosy village." It's actually a "cured leprosy village," which means that the wounds are not infectious. But those wounds, many of them are really severe, often with strong stench.

This man probably had one of the most serious wounds I've seen in weeks! Hydrogen Peroxide was too strong for his wound and bleeding pursued. I had to just stick with Saline and iodine to clean the wounds.

Of course there were patients with wounds in lesser severity, but many of them needed immediate treatment of the wounds.

Leprosy Clinics are always filled with meaningful things. Although this is my third time at the clinic, I am having more fun than before! It's always encouraging to see people's faces lighten up when we finish treating their wounds and smile!

I love Ghana. It's been so amazing so far, I can't believe I am more than halfway done already!

Monkeys and Mountains and Waterfalls

What a weekend!

Steph is on a Harry Potter marathon on my lap top, so I haven't got to use internet too much.

For this weekend, we went on a trip north, near Hohoe. We first went to the Atome Monkey Sanctuary place first half of the day. More than 300 monkeys were living in the sanctuary, including 50 or so families living in packs. We went into the forest with several bananas to hand out.

When we held the lower half of the banana tightly, the monkeys would come near it, and peel and eat it. But if one holds it too loosely, then the monkey simply snatches the banana and runs away. Well, we wanted to take pictures of us "giving" the bananas instead of losing them, to the monkeys, so most of us held them tight. (except Steph, who was a bit intimidated by those lively creatures).

After the Monkey business was over, we went on to hike the supposedly tallest mountain in Ghana. (I am saying supposedly because when we got to the top, there was a peak higher than where I was standing).

886 above sea-level, the peak looked not too bad from the ground. Alas, however, the hill was quite steep. The men, Cristian and I, were leading the pack. Then we got tired of leading them because not many had the energy to follow us, so we basically took off by ourselves. Loads of perspiration and loads of fun as well. It was tough getting to the top, but the view was spectacular.

Crisitian wanted to take some pictures of him, so if you find a lot of pictures of him on facebook, that's why.

Jess and Ellie were the next two people who arrived at the top, and we all took victory pictures together. All of us were literally covered in sweat, and my cool powder, although it was doubted of its efficacy in the beginning, was doing some heavy job cooling people's heat down.

We spent the night at the local hostel, where I was bitten to death at night. Well, at least I am taking Malaria Pills so I hope I am ok.

The next day, Sunday, we went to the tallest waterfall in Ghana. The waterfall was truly majestic. It was so powerful that we barely reached its vicinity even with locked hands and creeping backwards on our knees.

Pictures should explain its power more clearly. In fact, my flip-flops broke and I had to quasi-fix it with some nails until I could buy another pair. The water was, however, very refreshing. Almost everyone had a fantastic time swimming and enjoying the cool water.

We returned to our headquarters at night, and everyone, who were exhausted at the end of the trips, went to bed without too much fooling around.

Well, I got to tell today's story right? Today is a national Ghanaian holiday, and hospitals and schools were closed for the day. Because we had no volunteering work to do, we went to the holidaty festival in the lake Volta.

Some of us went Kayaking, and all of us in the end, took a boat ride to see some nice views of the lake and the villages.

Busy weekend and Monday, but definitely worth it.
It is getting a bit late. I should go to sleep soon.

Good night!

by the way, i tried to make some cool alliteration for the title, but I realized W in waterfall was not an M. Darn.