Day #6

May 6, 2010

Once again, 7 am came too quickly. This was only the beginning of sleepless nights.

Clinic at 8 am. I was on record duty in the record room at first. The record room is arguably the HOTTEST place at the clinic. When the power is not on, there are no fans = no airflow. There are no windows and it gets very dark if it's stormy outside because sunlight can't get in through the doorway when the clouds are covering it. Thank goodness it wasn't stormy. I sorted charts for about 2 hours. At the Abomosu clinic they have paper charts for everyone. They each have a number. Before we got there, they did not have anything organized. They just threw charts in the room. I don't know how they ever found anything. So we get straight to organizing those charts to hopefully help things run more smoothly at the clinic. After the records were done, I helped Lindsay with take blood pressures, temperatures, and pulses.

Lunch: PB&J and an apple. PB&J quickly became the staple lunch food. Gloria brought over some fried plantains. Those were really good. Then....the power came back on, YAY, YAY, YAY!! However the water was gone because Yow, our driver, backed over the water pipe. Oops. It only took a couple of hours to fix. Some workers also came to put in the plumbing for the washer and dryer.

For dinner we were invited to Stephen Abu's for dinner. We had fufu, peanut butter soup, spiced rice (jollof), and pineapple. Fufu is mashed plantains and kasava (first both have to be boiled), which is very sticky and almost tasteless. You pinch off a piece, dip it in soup, and then pop it in your mouth and just swallow. It was tricky to get the hang of, but I quite enjoyed it. I don't know how it's made, but peanut butter soup is my favorite Ghanaian soup. The rice was almost like spanish rice minus the tomatoes. The pineapple in Ghana is very good. Much better than the pineapple that is shipped to the US. It's very sweet and juicy and not very sour. We all loved it. In Ghana you eat everything with your hands. My right hand (the hand that you are supposed to eat with anyways) was covered in fufu and peanut butter soup. Well worth it though for the delicious dinner. The Abu's didn't eat with us, but I wish they had. I'm grateful for their hospitality. The Abu's are simply amazing.

Stephanie, Lindsay, and Alison eating their fufu, peanut butter soup, pineapple and rice

Mmmm...mmmm...good

After dinner most people went to institute, but Alison, Stephanie, and I decided to stay home and just go next week. I had already been once anyways. After Lindsay and I took our respective showers, the four of us sat down and watch Vantage Point. It was nice to have a little time to ourselves and the house was MUCH cooler with fewer bodies.