If I Wasn't So Sad

A day in the life of retired nurse in an African Medical Clinic is enough to make anyone crazy. It is difficult to outsmart a Malawian, they always can come up with something you did not anticipate. My main job has been to keeping some semblance order. I get to go out and tell them that we can not see anymore patients. Today, I spent 20 minutes outside the clinic with my Malawian assistant trying to make them understand we needed to close.

Each morning we give out a certain number of tickets and leave some for add ons. We had added 7 more patients and 3 for glasses. This gave us a total of 140 people to be seen. I sent the 3 for glasses only plus 2 others to register. The next thing I see the registration people packing up and I ask them did you register 140 people. "Yes." Then I find out they were missing 5 people. Nobody asked where the other 5 were. In the confusion no one sent them in to register.

I couldn't help but think I must be losing my mind as I did preliminary intakes. They seem to all think were are going to cure them of a lifetime of problems. Sometimes they have headaches, sometimes a stomach ache, they all have pain that starts somewhere and causes a whole host of problems elsewhere. When you ask them when their symptoms started it could be months or years ago, like 1972 or when my last child was born, 4 years ago. A lot gets lost in the translation. They tell you some pretty strange things and you never know what it will turn into by the time the doctor sees them.

Most of the people here look old beyond their years. It is strange to see people the age of my children that look older than me. It is a very hard life for these people. Most of the complaints they have are a result of the environment they live in. My head and whole body would hurt too if I carried heavy things on my head. On the side of the road you see women carrying huge logs on their heads. Today we saw a lady carrying a suitcase on her head. The suit case had wheels.

The first day of the clinic we saw those who were the better off than most of the population. One of the days it seemed that a large percentage of people that came in had been seen at the hospital within hours or 2-3 days. It all seems so insane. They tell us the medicine from the hospital didn't work and we have the same stuff as the hospital. They probably go to the hospital and tell them our medicine didn't work.

Here in Malawi they are required to have a health passbook, without it they can't be seen. If they forget it they are told to buy another one. So what if their whole health history is in the one at home. The word must have gotten out that we wanted them to bring in their pass book as today the percentage of those without books went drastically down.

There is so much these people do not understand about taking care of themselves, but in all these that pass through our clinics are some of those delightful old people who beat the odds and are in their 80's and just need glasses and some medicine to help with their aches and pains.