Friday March 13th
Leaving Nkope was a pretty sad affair.
We were given very little notice, and so we didn’t manage to say goodbye
properly to everyone that we wanted to. Clara, the amazing midwife wasn’t in
but we left gifts for her with her house-keeper [who didn’t speak a word of
English] and some of the kids who we would play with were just nowhere to be
seen. James, our legendary cook and his beautiful young son Ishmael, were
coming with us to Malindi [where St Martin’s Hospital is based]. Driving
through the village for the last time was poignant. We drove past the market where we would go
every day to buy food or essentials [such as deep friend doughnuts, or kilos of
kidney beans] and lots of people waved us off.
Arriving at the hospital was so
strange. 3 weeks ago we’d been horrified at how basic and crumbling the place
was, but with rural village health centre eyes it looked almost modern now! We
were thrown a really love leaving party that Danni will talk more about in her
blog post, and we had some interesting discussions that really hit home just
how different our lives were.
- “In
England, do you have villages?” Why yes, yes we do. “So people live in
huts made of mud with thatch straw roofing then?” Dear lord, no. To us,
rural means surrounded by greenery and not too near a city. There are
still tarmac roads, often a train station, constant electricity, usually
broadband internet, landline phones, plumbing and usually a village GP.
Peoples mouths gaped open in disbelief.
- “So,
there are no power cuts?” Well, occasionally one house will lose it’s
power due to a fuse problem and once in a blue moon a street will go dark
for 20 minutes, and it will make headline news in the local paper. In
general, we take electricity for granted – it never cuts out.
- “Here
in Africa, many people present to hospital late because they trust traditional
healers much more. A child died this morning because they turned up to
hospital when it was too late. Do you have spiritual, traditional healers
in the UK?” Err….not really. Most people trust doctors and will see a
doctor in the first instance. One of the many reasons our health outcomes
are so good.
- “So
do you ever have shortages of gloves in hospitals?” Oh my gosh, we are SO
lucky in the UK. Women at Nkope health centre over the weekend had to give
birth without midwives being able to perform vaginal exams because they
had so few gloves that they just had to guess how dilated the woman was.
Any woman in obstructed labour would have died.
- “So,
do houses look like this in the UK?” Well….no. <cue me showing a
picture of my house, which is exceptional even by UK standards but it’s
the only pictures I had> “Wow. You live in heaven! And there are really
only 4 people sharing that entire kitchen? You have more than one bathroom
in your house?! You own your own car?”.
I’d felt pretty embarrassed after I’d
shown them the pictures, but it really hit me just how far away from home I
was.
We then danced the night away, woke up
early to catch a minibus [read: rusty sardine can stuffed with too many people]
to Lilongwe, the capital – another experience that Danni will fill you in
about.
I’m sure you’re wondering why the title
of this blog post is “The day that Danni nearly crushed a duckling…”, and now
that I’ve grabbed your attention for long enough, I’ll tell you. In our little
compound in the village lived a family of ducks. Their ducklings were freakin’
adorable and so we tried [and often failed] to pick them up and stroke them.
Danni finally managed just before we left but the little ducky didn’t seem too
happy. She tried to put it down, and as she did so she dropped the heavy [!!]
bag from her shoulder and missed the little fluffball by several centimetres.
That would not have been a nice way to end our village experience. Thankfully
the duck was fine to live another day.
Thanks for staying tuned – I’m quite
enjoying the blogging lark!
Much love,
Dan
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