Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Lots of rain along with some action

The past week it rained almost every day. Along with the rain came cooler weather, and I have loved every bit of it. Not only did we get rain, but we also got a lot of action.

On the first morning of rain we heard “parto” coming from outside our fence. “Parto!” A man was standing outside our fence yelling “birth.” It was 5:30 AM and the girls got up to get ready for the new baby. Unfortunately, I had just battled a fever that same night so I wasn’t feeling strong enough to help out. All I know is that while the mom was in the room hooked up to an IV it was raining cats and dogs outside. I never heard a thing, not the mom yelling or the baby’s first cry. I was a bit sad, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be the only women giving birth in our clinic.

As the days came so did the rain. It would not let up. Due to the rain we didn’t see very many patients. All the roads where full of barro (mud), making it very difficult for patients to come and for us to leave the clinic. There were some nights when we were unable to attend VBS because of the bad roads.

The birth wasn’t the only exciting thing we saw. I got to witness a circumcision of a 6 year old boy. Due to an infection he had he was unable to urinate and it was causing him lots of pain. The only way to help was to remove part of the foreskin and give him his antibiotics.

This week we should be having two other women coming in to give birth. I’m super excited! And this time I’m not missing out. So hopefully next week I can update my blog to let you know how it went.