June 9, 2013

June 9, 2013 — Olaoluwatomi

It is the end of the day and I’m glad. I am home after a ten hour call. Home is a tent big enough for me to move around and sleep in. Today was not so busy and I was happy for the extra time it gave to sit and think about the past and spend time with the patients without being harried. Working with another doctor made the workload light enough to make me smile and relax a bit .

My ward rounds consisted of me encouraging and entreating patients — in my naija-coloured Arabic — to sit up and not lie so much in bed, to eat and to drink. I asked if they felt better and many answered ‘Quois’ to my many questions seeking their well being.

I spoke with the husband of a pregnant woman with Hepatitis E and Malaria who is unconscious. They are both very young and they look very much like childhood sweethearts. He had been crying uncontrollably, which is unusual in a place like this where the impending death of a relative is received with no show of emotions. Using a translator, we encouraged, comforted and gave him hope; not false hope but enough to make him see the sun hiding behind the dark clouds.

I looked intently at the people I passed to and from my work today and wondered yet again how they could smile and be so happy living in tents parceled out to them by UNHCR. I wondered yet again if the young girls playing with abandon would still smile in a few years when their childhood would end abruptly and they would be made to get married at ages too early to even mention. I looked at the colorful body wraps the women wore, the lines on their faces delineating not age but hardship, the leanness caused by inadequate nutrition and wondered what it would be like to be in their shoes!

The morning team wrapped up the day with many smiles, glad to be handing over to the night team. We joked, we laughed and we swapped stories and we put aside the cares of the day for just one more day!
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Olaoluwatomi is a Physician, blogs at www.olaoluwatomi.blogspot.com and tweets at @Olaoluwatomi