Our time here is beginning to wear on me. Turning away the extra patients at the gate every day doesn’t bother me as much anymore, and empirically treating three things at once and hoping the patient gets better seems like a totally reasonable way to practice medicine. I am not prone to homesickness, but the Christmas season has unexpectedly stirred up my deepest and saddest longings for home – for our sunny little apartment in Chicago, for jogging on our treadmill while watching music videos on the computer, for the birthdays and family gatherings that we are missing, for Christmas with all its trappings and music and decorations. I even find myself missing residency.
Fortunately, our program director Dave appointed himself social chairman and ordered us to take a field a trip. I have felt hesitant to leave the clinic compound because there is no other back-up for our on-call nurses. Ninety-nine percent of the time they don’t need our help, but I don’t want them to feel abandoned or overwhelmed. So, we have been stewing around here for months now. Dave seems to have no problem deserting the clinic for a few hours though, so this Saturday he herded us into the company Land Cruiser and drove to Bonga.
Bonga is not much of tourist town, but it is the closest small city. Saturday morning is the outdoor Bonga market. We passed through throngs of people headed to the market, everyone leading their cows or carrying heavy bags of grain on their shoulders. The market itself looked like a carnival from a distance – colorful tarps and tents spread over a dirt field, overflowing with people. Some tents were lined with the neatly-folded traditional white scarves that women wear, others displayed skirts and polo shirts and Obama t-shirts. Shoe venders lined the roads with piles of shoes, from rubber flip-flops to women’s dress shoes crusted with sequins and fake gems. There was a row of tailors sitting in the shade, busily working their foot-pedal sewing machines. The food market was more open than the rest, with the vendors squatting impossibly close together on tarps in the dirt with their offerings spread out in front of them. Small piles of unlabelled yellow, red, and brown spices, huge mounds of coarse salt, stacks of red onions and hot peppers, piles of beans and grains weighed out in 1 kilo increments. Aside from bananas and gomen (like spinach), there were surprisingly few fruits or vegetables for sale. Some of the merchants sat in a small circle of shade under a hand-held umbrella; most squinted and sweated in the direct mid-day sun and tried to avoid the legs of customers who picked their way through the crowded patchwork of vendors.
We were quickly trailed by children offering to guide us through the market. They asked us to buy them shoes and tried to sell us discarded price-tags and other worthless scraps. Some older school kids seemed to want nothing more than to talk with us in English. Surprisingly, most of the vendors spoke a little English as well. Edwin and I bought a decorative boona-pot, and Emily bought a skirt. After about an hour of fighting the sun and the chaos and the children, we’d had enough of the Bonga market. We stopped in to visit Father Alemayehu, the priest who originally guided Lalmba’s founders to the place where Chiri Health Center stands. He had a feast waiting for us. We ate until we were too stuffed to even drink a cup of after-lunch boona; we thanked him profusely, and headed back to Chiri. Edwin figured out how to plug his IPod into the Land Cruiser’s radio, so we sped back to Chiri with Beatles music floating out of our windows.
I was surprised at how refreshing it was to get away for just a few hours. Dave’s openness and fearlessness were contagious. And of course, there were no emergency patients while we were gone; the clinic didn’t burn to the ground or grind to a halt. I don’t think the on-call nurse even noticed we were gone. Later that night the electricity went off, so Dave, Emily, Edwin and I sat in the Big House and played Scrabble by candle-light. I found myself feeling much less self-pity and much more gratitude. Much more adventurousness. I don’t know how a home-body like me ended up so far from home, but it is a rare and wonderful opportunity. I’m so glad that we are here.
Fortunately, our program director Dave appointed himself social chairman and ordered us to take a field a trip. I have felt hesitant to leave the clinic compound because there is no other back-up for our on-call nurses. Ninety-nine percent of the time they don’t need our help, but I don’t want them to feel abandoned or overwhelmed. So, we have been stewing around here for months now. Dave seems to have no problem deserting the clinic for a few hours though, so this Saturday he herded us into the company Land Cruiser and drove to Bonga.
Bonga is not much of tourist town, but it is the closest small city. Saturday morning is the outdoor Bonga market. We passed through throngs of people headed to the market, everyone leading their cows or carrying heavy bags of grain on their shoulders. The market itself looked like a carnival from a distance – colorful tarps and tents spread over a dirt field, overflowing with people. Some tents were lined with the neatly-folded traditional white scarves that women wear, others displayed skirts and polo shirts and Obama t-shirts. Shoe venders lined the roads with piles of shoes, from rubber flip-flops to women’s dress shoes crusted with sequins and fake gems. There was a row of tailors sitting in the shade, busily working their foot-pedal sewing machines. The food market was more open than the rest, with the vendors squatting impossibly close together on tarps in the dirt with their offerings spread out in front of them. Small piles of unlabelled yellow, red, and brown spices, huge mounds of coarse salt, stacks of red onions and hot peppers, piles of beans and grains weighed out in 1 kilo increments. Aside from bananas and gomen (like spinach), there were surprisingly few fruits or vegetables for sale. Some of the merchants sat in a small circle of shade under a hand-held umbrella; most squinted and sweated in the direct mid-day sun and tried to avoid the legs of customers who picked their way through the crowded patchwork of vendors.
We were quickly trailed by children offering to guide us through the market. They asked us to buy them shoes and tried to sell us discarded price-tags and other worthless scraps. Some older school kids seemed to want nothing more than to talk with us in English. Surprisingly, most of the vendors spoke a little English as well. Edwin and I bought a decorative boona-pot, and Emily bought a skirt. After about an hour of fighting the sun and the chaos and the children, we’d had enough of the Bonga market. We stopped in to visit Father Alemayehu, the priest who originally guided Lalmba’s founders to the place where Chiri Health Center stands. He had a feast waiting for us. We ate until we were too stuffed to even drink a cup of after-lunch boona; we thanked him profusely, and headed back to Chiri. Edwin figured out how to plug his IPod into the Land Cruiser’s radio, so we sped back to Chiri with Beatles music floating out of our windows.
I was surprised at how refreshing it was to get away for just a few hours. Dave’s openness and fearlessness were contagious. And of course, there were no emergency patients while we were gone; the clinic didn’t burn to the ground or grind to a halt. I don’t think the on-call nurse even noticed we were gone. Later that night the electricity went off, so Dave, Emily, Edwin and I sat in the Big House and played Scrabble by candle-light. I found myself feeling much less self-pity and much more gratitude. Much more adventurousness. I don’t know how a home-body like me ended up so far from home, but it is a rare and wonderful opportunity. I’m so glad that we are here.
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