here's hoping!

i was sitting outside a friends home waiting for their return and decided to "beep" my mom. it's really too expensive to call her from my cellphone, so this was my attempt to get her to call me back...but i heard her voice for only a moment and couldn't handle it! speaking with her for only once in three weeks was too little! so i went to call her from an international call box (much cheaper, bad connection..always). was good to catch up...even if it was for only 15 minutes. i used to call her twice a day for triple that each time!!!!

NOTE: "beeping" is the cameroonian tradition of calling a person and hanging up the moment it begins to ring. this is a way to say many different things, including "hi" "call me back" "i'm waiting for you" "where are you?" "here's my number" etc etc etc. it all depends on the situation. one of the main reasons beeping came into existence is probably because of the expense of airtime. people have the tendency to speak on the phone for less than 2 minutes and to hang up without saying goodbye.

anyways ...my mom chewned me (scolded me) for not writing on this as much as i had hoped. the reason for this is mainly my discouragement with the work i've been doing. you see, it's nothing like what i intended to be doing. speaking with the program director and with the doctor, i had acquired images in plenty of what kind of medical care i would be given the opportunity to provide along side a quoted "amazing, dedicated" doctor. i honestly tried to have no expectations but after being here for 3 weeks i realize i very much had expectations. those expectations included joining in the assessments, providing nursing care, and visiting the difficult to reach poor to provide the same. the first two i've seen in VERY limited amounts....and the last...on no accounts.

i've been offered the opportunity to move elsewhere in cameroon, but even that position isn't what i was looking for. it would be very exciting to go to a very rural clinic as a health educator, but i would be the only medical professional...and my intention was to come to learn and be taught tropical medicine for the underpriveledged. while the excitement of travel intices me, i'm thinking perhaps i should remain in the place i have small community and access to some medical professionals who (while the experience has been small) can teach me SOME of what i came to learn.

the up side to all of this is that things may change. i had the opportunity to be uber honest with the doctor about my frustration with the lack of patient care and after confessing some of my misgivings about staying, it seemed that she also wanted somethings to change.

just to clarify, i do not blame her for the amount of patients that walk through our door. obviously she doesn't have much power in controlling who gets sick with what. what she does have in her control (so i assume) is putting 3 sometimes 4 nurses to work instead of allowing them to sit, staring at eachother for 8+ hours a day. so i have her some ideas about how to do that. for instance, setting up a booth on a busy street so that we can take people's blood pressures and educate them on heart disease and high blood pressure. another idea was to send us out to the community and allow us to knock on doors and do health education visits. and all the while we would be promoting our clinic facility...hopefully encouraging more patients to come. she liked some of my ideas and the beginning of this week already has been an improvement.

yesterday was promising. we drove (unfortunate...because i would've rather hiked through forests to find them!) out to one village and went door to door a little bit. not for any health education yet, but only to set up contacts and make plans for the future endeavours(hopefully sooner than later). this village is quite isolated, except they at least have water, electricity, and a road (tho very bumpy...and in the rainy season i hear it's impassable). so...it was VERY nice to be out of the office showing the people that we really do want to reach them and provide some medical care. in this visit i personally found the doc a little judgemental on how the people came to live in this condition. their houses were definitely run down and clothes were worn and ragged and babies ran around half dressed. you could blame all of this on alcohol if you wanted i suppose. i just like to know the facts though...before i make accusations like that. and even if it is alcohol that they spend the majority of their income on... to really understand them and their circumstances you have to ask why? and what? and who? i can only imagine the structural injustices they face each day. what circumstances of life and government have kept them in the position that they are? "grasshoppers don't have much hope in the face of hungry chickens. " -(something like that) from paul farmer's book Pathologies of Power

also i began to create some health education posters....and i always enjoy putting some of my creativity on display, so....it was fun for me!

so here's to looking up and hoping for more.
miss you all.

written by  theresa on November 10, 2009 from Douala, Cameroon
from the travel blog: to africa
tagged Healthcare and Change
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