Again, I (Chrissy) woke up pretty early to make a second attempt at shadowing in the pediatrics ward of UTH. This time, it finally worked out and I was paired with doctor in one of the many wards. Of course, there was a huge disparity in the experience that children have at UTH compared to the children in my own country. It was decorated with cartoon paintings and had a friendlier atmosphere, but the children were all crammed very closely in the rooms. There was no privacy, little attention from doctors and nurses, and no televisions or video games, of course.
Most of the patients were very poor, coming from compounds I recognized included Misisi, Chipata, Kamwala, Chawala, and more. One of the girls had been in the hospital for two weeks with fungal meningitis. The doctor told the girl’s mother she needed to stay for a further two weeks. I definitely understood the mother’s frustration—to sit around in a hospital for two weeks with the doctor attending your child constantly changing and very little information is very irritating. After another two weeks, she’ll have been in the hospital with her daughter for a full month. I can only assume she has other children at home that are also dependent on her presence. Her daughter was ten and HIV positive. She’s been on anti-retroviral drugs her entire life.
There was another child in that particular room (contained 5 or 6 patients) who was HIV positive. He was a 13 year old boy who was also sick with meningitis. That seems to be a very common ailment for children in the area. Another girl in the room was from Chipata and so sick with meningitis, her file indicated “3rd degree nerve palsy”. I’m not totally sure what that means but she was being taken to the hospital for surgery while I was there. Over the past few days, the swelling in her brain has gotten so bad she’s lost the ability to speak and sit up on her own. The doctor told the nurse she needed to be taken to surgery with all urgency, and her family couldn’t “afford to wait”. I don’t know what ended up happening, but I hope she’s okay.
One of the medical students who was there doing a shift asked me a lot of questions about the United States. He looked so puzzled and surprised when I told him that children do not die of meningitis, Tb, measles, cholera, and other infectious diseases at the rate that they do here. He just smiled sadly and said he hoped that could be the future for Zambia. It made me feel really upset and helpless to talk to him about it, especially in the presence of pre-teens dying of AIDS. It was a good learning experience, but I was kind of happy when it became time for me to say goodbye and leave to meet Sarah at Fountain of Hope.
I (Sarah) got up around 7:30 and went in to the office to do a few things before heading to Fountain Of Hope. When I got to Fountain they were about to do the hot seat. Every week the boys at Fountain have a hot seat session. Some of the boys who have been causing problems must sit in the middle of a circle, one at a time, and all the boys around the outside can ask them questions. The boy in the middle has to answer all the questions. Vasco and Kenny usually facilitate the discussion, and Vasco asked me if I wanted to sit in on this weeks session.
This past weekend two of the boys, Rafael (Rafa) and Moses, had stolen four small laptops from FOH. The laptops had been donated and there aren’t many of them, so losing four was a big deal. The boys had been caught down by the intercity bus station by the police and had been kept in custody at the police station over night (one boy for 2 nights and one boy for 1 night). Vasco and Kenny had just picked them up on Sunday, and only two of the laptops had been recovered. Today Rafa and Moses were the boys to sit in the hot seat.
Rafa was first to sit in the middle. Right away the boys started raising their hands to ask him questions. When ensued was one of the most intense interrogations of a child I had ever witnessed, and Vasco and Kenny participated. All the boys were all speaking in Nyanja but Vasco took the time to repeat the questions and answers in English so that I could understand. and also to reiterate what had been said. The boys do speak English but it’s just easier for them to speak in Nyanja. Rafa first said that he stole the laptops and left because one of the boys (Frank) had told him that he was going to be kicked out of FOH soon. Vasco asked Frank why he would said that to Rafa. Frank replied that it was because he heard that the boys could only stay at Fountain for 6 months. Frank then said that he didn’t know where he heard this information, and Vasco went on to give examples of all the boys who had been there for over 6 months, and all the way up to 10 years. One of the boys then asked Rafa what he was going to use the money for after he sold the computers. Rafa said that he wanted to buy a bus ticket to go back home. Vasco called him out on this and reminded Rafa that he had already run away from home once, and on a bus ride back he had gotten off and come back to Fountain. They had also called Rafa’s family after and they had said they didn’t want Rafa back because he stole too much. Rafa had stolen over 3.5 million kwacha (around $700). Rafa couldn’t seem to get his story straight as to why he had stolen, but he did admit to convincing Moses, who was younger, to help him steal. It’s crazy to think that these boys are only 9 and 12. After about another 10 minutes of questioning Vasco had to go deal with another problem and left the hot seat. Unfortunately for me this meant that everything went back to being in Nyanja. I stayed for another 25 minutes, struggling to understand the conversation, and then got up and left. Another 30 minutes passed and they were still talking, and I was on the basketball court with some of the kids when I heard a loud “smack.” I looked over and saw that one of the teachers was hitting Rafa in the back with a rubber stick. This was still in the middle of the circle, in front of the rest of the boys. I guess this is the type of punishment they get for breaking the rules. To a certain extent I can see how they feel it’s necessary, but it was still really hard for me to watch.
I then went into the office to start working on writing up the information to put on Fountain’s website. Chrissy and I had been asked to help with the organization’s website, which was quite incomplete. A guy in the UK had created the website but there was still no information on it, so that became out newest task. Chrissy got there shortly, and we worked together for a little while before I had to leave for basketball practice. Chrissy stayed to continue compiling information for the site before meeting Francis to get pizza and groceries for our big goodbye party this weekend.
Both practices went fine and I was really happy with the turnout in numbers for the younger team. The older boys had a full team by the end of practice, but I was upset that so many had come late, especially after this weekend’s game. After practice we had a really long team talk where both Coach Robert and I said a few things. He really dragged on his part and I could tell that most of the boys had stopped listening and were bored and cold. At this point it was about 6:30 and was really dark out, really cold, and even I just wanted to finish up. Finally he was done talking and then I got to remind the team that I had promised to take them out to pizza today. I was going to treat the boys who had played over the weekend, but some of the others decided to come along as well. We piled into two cars and went over to the closest Pizza Inn. I could only afford to go somewhere with BOGO, otherwise I would be broke. I ordered 12 medium pizzas, one for each of the boys and one for me. I spent a decent amount of money but it was worth it. The wait was really long but it was fun just getting to hang out with the guys. I only know them in a basketball setting since I only see them at practice, so this was a nice change. After we got our pizzas we all parted and I got dropped off at home.
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