Cows and Sheep

During the middle of our clinic week in Nigeria, I had the opportunity to go on a field trip.

After breakfast, I ran over to the hospital and got registration set up. The volunteers hadn’t all arrived yet, so I left before they were able to start. After I concluded that everything was in order, I went to find Sarah, our veterinarian. Each day she spent her morning out in the bush treating cows for the nomadic Fulani tribe. And I got to go with her. 

We squeezed into a little pickup; a driver, a security officer (he had a big gun), the Fulani chief, Sarah, a pastor who spoke the language and went along to help, the local vet tech, me, and a number of other young guys who helped out. It was a fun ride. At one point we were literally driving through a field. Slightly bumpy. I’m not sure how the driver decided where to stop, since we weren’t necessarily on a road anyway, but he would pick a place, and we would get out. Then they mixed the medications to use for the animals at that location. As far as I know, it was mostly deworming and things of that sort (and an antibiotic?), but I’m not all up on my animal medication classifications, so I’m not entirely sure. 

Sarah had me watch her give a few shots, and then she handed me the syringe. A young guy named Gideon (I think) carried the bucket of medication for me, and took the cap off of my syringes for me when my hands got to slippery. It was a pretty exciting morning. I’ve given plenty of shots to people, but I’d never given one to an animal before. It wasn’t vastly different though. 

Pretty early on in the morning I got stepped on by a cow, but it wasn’t too serious. Just a reminder that cows are large creatures, and I’m a small person. We kept going, and I got to hold a baby sheep and cuddle a little calf. Day made. 

After we finished at the first location, we drove on further and got to another site with more people, and more cows and sheep. These cows were a lot rougher. A reflection of how they are handled, I was told. They didn’t make me give the shot to the huge bull that went crashing into the brush and fell down in an attempt to escape while they were trying to catch him. I was cool with that. Somewhere along the line I got stepped on again, this time a little harder. Took my toe awhile to recover. In addition, as the day went on I began to turn red and crispy. It was pretty sunny. At the last place we went, I was trying to give a shot to one disagreeable cow. She was not pleased, and she kicked me. I was a little shocked. Again, a reminder that cows are large creatures. I was very excited though, when I got home and discovered that I had a nice purple bruise just above my knee, extending in patches halfway up my thigh. 

Now, a couple of weeks later, I just have a farmers tan, and slight remnants of a bruise. Oh, and pictures of myself with baby livestock. :)

The Clinic in Jengre

I left from Loma Linda on June 12, and traveled to Nigeria with a large group of students and faculty from LLU. Our team consisted of team leaders, doctors, dentists, nurses, a veterinarian, public health professionals and students, a physical therapist, occupational therapist, pharmacy students, behavioral health students, etc. We flew through London, and then landed in Abuja, Nigeria. Once we arrived at our location, we were split up into 3 teams, to run medical clinics at each of them. I was part of a team located at Jengre Adventist Hospital. 

I really enjoyed the location. Jengre was a nice area. It was beautiful, and the people were very friendly. When I walked through the wards of the hospital it felt just like being in Béré. 

My primary object for the medical clinic was organizing registration and keeping things moving. Each day we had very large crowds of people wanting to be seen by the doctor. Sometimes it was difficult to keep things moving smoothly without interruptions. Anytime I walked through the crowd to get something or talk to someone, people would pull me aside. Every person had a story. And every person seemed to need to see the doctor. For some it was their mother, or their baby, or their wife, or their blind grandfather. Everyone seemed to have a real reason and a real need of some sort. This was very overwhelming, as on our second day, roughly 2500 people came, wanting to see the doctor. On that day we saw less than 200. At the end of the day as one man was telling me his story, I had to explain to him that it really wasn’t possible for us to see him that day…because there were literally 2000 people in line in front of him. But I hated telling him that. Because the fact that there were lots of other people with needs didn’t make his needs any less valid. 

I have a very hard time turning people away. Especially when they tell me a story and explain to me why they need what they’re asking for. I want to help everyone, and solve all of their problems. So I had to learn to avoid walking through the crowd as much as possible, because it was just too hard to listen to people and then tell them that I couldn’t help them; that maybe we could see them on another day, but I couldn’t even promise that. 

Towards the end of the week, a teenage girl tried to pull me aside. I was really hesitant to follow her, because I knew that we couldn’t add any more new patients for the day, and I didn’t want to hear another sad story and say “Sorry, maybe tomorrow.” But I did follow her. She pulled me away from the crowd, and asked me my name. Then she asked me where she was from, and if we could be friends. And that was all she wanted. She just wanted to say hi, and become friends. It was a good reminder that sometimes even a few words can make someone’s day better. Even if I can’t squeeze them in to see the doctor. 

In the end, I settled on doing my best to be fair and adhere to first come, first served, but not turn someone away if I would lose sleep over it. So I slipped in the guy with a badly infected dog bite on his foot (and he got surgery to debride it! Hopefully he’s healing nicely), the baby that supposedly hadn’t eaten in a week, the little boy who was sick and basically unresponsive, the guy with mud packed in a wound on his chest, and the guy with something like cellulitis from his shoulder all the way to his fingertips. The girl who was pregnant and bleeding somehow got lost in the crowd…so I hope that someone else got her in. 

We can’t fix everyone. But I hope that we helped a few people, and made their future a little brighter. 

This is Nigeria

(From June 14 ish)

We flew into Abuja at about 5am. As we touched down, I read a very sweet note from the lovely Ijeoma, welcoming me to her country. That was the first of many welcomes I received. I was excited by the smells as we got off of the plane. It smells like Chad here. As we walked out to baggage claim, I was pleased to see a large UNAIDS sign advertising for free HIV testing. There was even a person standing there promoting it. Yay public health! 

By midday when we arrived in Jos, I had spilled pineapple juice all over myself (did manage to drink some of it though; it was really good), we had been sideswiped by another vehicle (think bumper cars; no lasting damage), and we saw a really beautiful rainbow. Once we arrived in Jos we had a delicious lunch, followed by a trip to the king’s palace and the governor’s compound to say hello and thank you. That was exciting. I’ve never seen a king in person before. While we were waiting at the aforementioned places, we scored a few mangoes, which we enjoyed very much! 

It was close to evening by the time we started for Jengre. There were about 10 of us, and we were all really tired so most of us slept on the way. We got in to Jengre at about 7:30 pm. It was dark, and I had been asleep. I woke up as we were coming into town, and there was a marching band playing. We got closer and our leader finally decided we should just jump out of the still moving van and walk up the road. So we did. It was so amazing and beautiful. The band was playing, and the women and children were dancing on the sides of the road and came to walk with us. We walked in the light from the headlights of a police car, and tried to dodge the puddles. There was a little bit of lightning, and it started to rain, which just made it more magical. The band played until we got to the hospital, where we stopped and were able to get out of the rain while they continued to play. The kids held our hands and the women went out to dance. It was so special, and so beautiful. We felt very welcomed. 

After spending some time dancing with the children, we were able to use a very nice pit toilet, and eat dinner. After dinner we were deposited at our respective places of residence, and we finally got to sleep. It was so nice to lay down and sleep, that I didn't even notice how hard the bed was until morning when I was getting up. 

This is Nigeria, and it is a very lovely place.