Sarah

 

We started at the intensive care ward where we arrived at 08:40. At 08 the doctors were supposed to be there, but when we came they still hadn't showed up. And until the doctors had visited and checked the children none of the nurses could do anything. So for about two hours we sat there, looking through journals and waiting. What's interesting is that even though people are not fluent in English, the work-language is English. Everything is written in English. Everything has to be documented in English. All their education is also in English. Our English skills, that we Swedes usually are so proud of, is hardly enough when it comes to all this medical language. But still we are the only ones really speaking.

 

 

After two hours of not really doing anything at all we went for walk in the building. Greeting everyone we met with a Mambo or Jambo. There was not really anything at all going on. It looked like the whole 2nd floor was only waiting for the doctors to arrive. The biggest happening was when a cleaning lady opened the door on me while peeing on the squatting toilets. When the door flung wide open all I cried out was "Nooo" while my desperate eyes met with a mother to a patient 10 metres away. She probably saw everything. Everything of me. At least the incident made it possible for me to use the one swahilian phrase I feel comfortable with but never get to use. When the cleaning lady met me outside later she said "sorry, sorry", and I: "Hakuna matata".

 

After two hours of flipping through papers a nurse took us to the basement and practially threw us in in a renal ward, where there were rows of patients recieving heamodialysis. Not Jenny nor I had seen this treatment before which made the time until lunch truly fly. (And for once we timed our lunch with the others!) When we got back from lunch one of the doctors was there, but when we left he still hadn't written the plan for the day.