Cameroon Recap: Part 5 - Medical Sessions
Part 5 - Medical Sessions
We had several ‘Medical Sessions’ meant to brief us on the many, many, many things we would come up against, but also to ‘reassure’ us that more volunteers got hurt in car accidents than fell ill to filaria, rabies, HIV and the like. We were also told that many of our host families had pets, and not to touch them until we completed our rabies shots. One of the families even had a monkey, and we were “NOT TO PET THE MONKEY.” I’m sorry, but get 40 young adults together tell them that and you can’t help but get some laughs, and requests for a repeat. “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO PET THE MONKEY!” Our buddy, one of the class-clown types, ended up at the host family next door to us, with a family of 12 born-again Christians, and the monkey! He also got held up at knife point the 6th day in, and he’s still there. Impressive :)
One of my favorites though happened just after our briefing about what to do if we were injured or having a medical emergency. They told us to go to the hospital first and then to call the PC medical phone, as someone was on call and had it 24 hours a day for emergencies. They also gave us their personal phone numbers in case of dire need, and asked that we only really call if we couldn’t get through to the first number, and it was an extreme emergency. As we were sitting there during the lecture the emergency phone the nurse had sitting on her desk started to ring. She paused for a minute, picked it up and looked at it and, not wanting to stop the lecture, put it aside, saying ‘see that is a volunteer calling.’ It rang again, and someone behind me said “Wait, isn’t the ring tone Morse code for “S.O.S.?” YUP. Did she answer it, No. Hmmmmm. We then proceeded to a culture seminar on the problem with apathy in Cameroon. Seriously.
We also learned how to create “clean drinking water” by adding a good portion of bleach. Hmmmmm again. And that we shouldn’t use iodine tablets for more than 3 weeks straight as it would cause liver damage. Huh.
They did however furnish us each with a very nice water filter; move over Brita this was the real deal. We learned how to put it all together & clean it and all and then proceeded to our host families with all our bags, our giant filters, our large medical kits and about 20 lbs of paperwork and readers which we could never quite find time to read.
We made it about 2 days at our host family on the bottled water they had provided before we had to boil water for our filter. Water had to be boiled for 2 minutes at full boil before filtering it to make sure to kill all the little meanies and then clean them out. During dinner we told our host mom that we needed to boil water – the PC had already briefed the families that us Americans had weak stomachs and would have weird requirements – so she had one of the boys go get a bucket of water from the tap in the driveway and bring it into the kitchen. They then put it on the stove and pulled up chairs for us to wait. While chatting with the mom, the younger son brought in a stool, and then 2 of the other family members joined us. Now a large iron pot of water takes some time to boil, so after discussing how the school system works in Cameroon, I felt compelled to point out that we were in fact, watching the pot of water boil. And then in my best French tried to explain the expression “a watched pot never boils.” In fact it does, it just seems to take eons with 7 in the audience. THEN, once it had sufficiently boiled for 2 minutes the mom pulled the pot off the stove, and we proceeded to – watch the pot cool… so that we could put it in the filter (can’t do it while hot because it would break the ceramic filters). After about 5 minutes I realized that it was going to take a good hour to cool and that they had other things to do, and my limited French just couldn’t last us that long without many minutes of awkward silence, and so I made the suggestion that we deal with the cool water in the morning. Everyone smiled at my grand idea, and we went to bed.
Another interesting point in the Medical Sessions involved one of Cameroon’s big subsistence crops: peanuts.
We were warned by the medical staff about a fungus that can grow on peanuts if they get too wet and start to mold. We were told that this fungus generates a carcinogenic toxin…greeeaat. Alas, the first evening in our host family what were we offered? Why moldy peanuts. They had them drying on a blanket on the ground near the kitchen, with a stray rooster running around over them, and then put some in a bowl and offered them to us. They were, in fact, quite soggy and soft, and the shells all had some mold on them. Now I’m a peanut fan, so I didn’t want to give the wrong impression, or offend them by not taking the offering, so I had a couple, ate them slowly, dropped several ‘accidentally’ and skirted the issue. They all sat around knocking back handfuls and chatting. Scratch your head and say “wouldn’t you realize the peanuts were soggy in the first place and stop eating them?” Yeah, I don’t know….
We had several ‘Medical Sessions’ meant to brief us on the many, many, many things we would come up against, but also to ‘reassure’ us that more volunteers got hurt in car accidents than fell ill to filaria, rabies, HIV and the like. We were also told that many of our host families had pets, and not to touch them until we completed our rabies shots. One of the families even had a monkey, and we were “NOT TO PET THE MONKEY.” I’m sorry, but get 40 young adults together tell them that and you can’t help but get some laughs, and requests for a repeat. “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO PET THE MONKEY!” Our buddy, one of the class-clown types, ended up at the host family next door to us, with a family of 12 born-again Christians, and the monkey! He also got held up at knife point the 6th day in, and he’s still there. Impressive :)
One of my favorites though happened just after our briefing about what to do if we were injured or having a medical emergency. They told us to go to the hospital first and then to call the PC medical phone, as someone was on call and had it 24 hours a day for emergencies. They also gave us their personal phone numbers in case of dire need, and asked that we only really call if we couldn’t get through to the first number, and it was an extreme emergency. As we were sitting there during the lecture the emergency phone the nurse had sitting on her desk started to ring. She paused for a minute, picked it up and looked at it and, not wanting to stop the lecture, put it aside, saying ‘see that is a volunteer calling.’ It rang again, and someone behind me said “Wait, isn’t the ring tone Morse code for “S.O.S.?” YUP. Did she answer it, No. Hmmmmm. We then proceeded to a culture seminar on the problem with apathy in Cameroon. Seriously.
We also learned how to create “clean drinking water” by adding a good portion of bleach. Hmmmmm again. And that we shouldn’t use iodine tablets for more than 3 weeks straight as it would cause liver damage. Huh.
They did however furnish us each with a very nice water filter; move over Brita this was the real deal. We learned how to put it all together & clean it and all and then proceeded to our host families with all our bags, our giant filters, our large medical kits and about 20 lbs of paperwork and readers which we could never quite find time to read.
We made it about 2 days at our host family on the bottled water they had provided before we had to boil water for our filter. Water had to be boiled for 2 minutes at full boil before filtering it to make sure to kill all the little meanies and then clean them out. During dinner we told our host mom that we needed to boil water – the PC had already briefed the families that us Americans had weak stomachs and would have weird requirements – so she had one of the boys go get a bucket of water from the tap in the driveway and bring it into the kitchen. They then put it on the stove and pulled up chairs for us to wait. While chatting with the mom, the younger son brought in a stool, and then 2 of the other family members joined us. Now a large iron pot of water takes some time to boil, so after discussing how the school system works in Cameroon, I felt compelled to point out that we were in fact, watching the pot of water boil. And then in my best French tried to explain the expression “a watched pot never boils.” In fact it does, it just seems to take eons with 7 in the audience. THEN, once it had sufficiently boiled for 2 minutes the mom pulled the pot off the stove, and we proceeded to – watch the pot cool… so that we could put it in the filter (can’t do it while hot because it would break the ceramic filters). After about 5 minutes I realized that it was going to take a good hour to cool and that they had other things to do, and my limited French just couldn’t last us that long without many minutes of awkward silence, and so I made the suggestion that we deal with the cool water in the morning. Everyone smiled at my grand idea, and we went to bed.
Another interesting point in the Medical Sessions involved one of Cameroon’s big subsistence crops: peanuts.
We were warned by the medical staff about a fungus that can grow on peanuts if they get too wet and start to mold. We were told that this fungus generates a carcinogenic toxin…greeeaat. Alas, the first evening in our host family what were we offered? Why moldy peanuts. They had them drying on a blanket on the ground near the kitchen, with a stray rooster running around over them, and then put some in a bowl and offered them to us. They were, in fact, quite soggy and soft, and the shells all had some mold on them. Now I’m a peanut fan, so I didn’t want to give the wrong impression, or offend them by not taking the offering, so I had a couple, ate them slowly, dropped several ‘accidentally’ and skirted the issue. They all sat around knocking back handfuls and chatting. Scratch your head and say “wouldn’t you realize the peanuts were soggy in the first place and stop eating them?” Yeah, I don’t know….
posted by alohaafrica at
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