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!