Visitor!!
Anyway, jenny comes today!! Wonderful..! We will go to the lake, and go to liwonde national park! And she wwill join me a little in the hospital =) Will be very interesting! =D so nice to get a visitor from a girlfriend, aa just relax and talk bullshit! Jippiiiiii!!!! =D=D=D
This sunday, I sutured a big wound in a leg! =D It was only me there, cause the clinician was busy in theatre. So i asked him "Can I do the suturing?" and he said yes. I have watched it many times, and tried a little a few times. But this time a got the whooooole wound for my self! So now I know how to do that. I'll put that on my CV. Would be awesome to get to do that also at home.
Also, I obviously don't have a place to live anymore in Bergen when i'll come back.. They suddenly had to sell the house and I have to move all my stuff (Telekinetic powers would be awesome right now)... I had no idea how to do that, cause i'm in africa! But luckily, christian and his sister Karen offered to help me... That's just wonderful.. Thank you so much guys!!!!!!!! I miss you a lot!!!!!!! =D I will make you a very nice dinner when I get home! =D
We have some visitors from Norway as well, Bodhild and Torman. Colleagus from haraldsplass =) very nice with visitors!! =D And they brought a lot of stuff from haraldsplass to Nkhoma, like some equipment and baby clothes! =)
Over and out!
Green mamba! And work..
Well, work has been busy this week.. Found a lot of sick children that I had to run up to peads with.. One of them, an 11 year old boy, is struggling with malaria/meningitis/pneumonia.. since thuesday. Still on oxygen. Im worried about him.. And yesterday I heard singing and crying and screaming from Peads. I thought it was him who had died, but it was another girl that came in today.. Also Malaria/meningitis.. She was 10. Adn she showed out to be the nieece of our gardener Wilfred. It was so sad to watch. Around 50 mothers were standing by her bed, mourning her with their own babies on their backs. I wonder what they tell their children.. They stay in this room, some of them for many manny days, even weeks. And a lot of children dies. It must be horrible to be there... Worried about your baby, and all the time babies dying.. well.. The father took her on his back and they tied her to him. When he walked out her legs where moving just as if she had been alive.. I bet she has been sitting on her fathers back so mamny times before, and this time she was dead... I can't imagine the feeling the father must have while carrying her... When I saw that I couldn't help me from crying..
The project is going well! We have gotten new, stronger triage colour papers! And thee carpennters have finally started removing the palm trees outside OPD so that we can start building roof and floor and benches before the rainy season starts.
Hehee yeaah and some fun things;
1) The matron decided that all nurses has to be called by their surname. Due to the fact that noone can pronuonce our names, Link is now Miss Heart breaker (irl: Hatlebrekke) and I am Miss Slamson (irl:svensson). Very nice names!
2) A lady today that was seen by doctor Rhona. Rhona asked for the name of the baby. The translator (a nursing student) asked the lady, and a long kind of angry discussion started. After a few minutes the translator turned to Rhona and said " The mother cannot tell you the name of the b-aby, cause she has fforgotten it"
3) A lady came in because she had went to a witch doctor to get help with abdominal pains. The witch doctor had told her to put a stick in her vagina. The lady did this, and then the stick disappered. so she came to us to see where it was. But we couldnt find it, not even on ultrasound. What we did found though, was that she was pregnant (= the reason for the abdominal pains)
***
And time for some photos! =)
When we where in Blantyre, we took a trip to the tea farms by Mulanje! =) I stole some leaves, and I intend to make tea from them... But we will see! =) I dont really know how, but i guess just dry the shit and boil it... right?
Here you can see me all covered in tea! =)Here you can see us standing with one foot in Malawi and one foot in Mozambique! =) The boarder in in the middle of this road.
Swimming at the lake of stars festival =)
More Lake of Stars...
Me and Link at the festival! shiny happy people! =)
To tired to reflect..
The woman wasn't breathing and her blood pressure was down to 60 / 40... Glucose in her blood was 2 mmol. That means she was almost in a hypoglycemic coma.... We gave her dextrose/glucose, and a lot of iv fluids.. We had to resucitate her twice.... we bagged her. The first time i bagged her (making breaths with a bag and a mask and oxygen) she came back, and started brething again.. But then she went away. I tried to bag her again, but it was to late.. She was already dead...
And all this before 10 am..... Can you imagine?
I want to recommend a blog; A friend of ours who is hitch hiking across africa wrote about Nkhoma hospital. It is an very truthful and interesting blogpost and I really recommend it. He describes the hospital with the eyes of someone coming from the outuside.. I'm starting to loose those eyes, so it is very interesting to read.
Anyway, this is the address:
www.goacrossafrica.blogspot.com Look for the post called "Weddingdress from the boss", from the 13 of october.
Here you can read a piece of it:
"I walked through the hospital, well hospital, It’s seems that it is for the Malawian standard a good hospital, more developed and with more possibilities, like the Xray. But furthermore try to forget the word hospital as you know it or as I know it. Imagine just a few buildings/stones, large rooms, old hospital beds, in and outside corridors and everywhere the smell of urine.people, many people sitting, laying, sleeping, crying, eating everywhere in the in and outside corridors, dust and dust outside where people are laying with sick children, waiting and waiting. The hygiene what I've seen and heard is not a issue, its almost not there, only as I've heard in the operating chamber. HIV, Malaria, TBC, Malnutrition are the main problems, with not enough qualified doctors, and other staff. So yes it is what they show on the TV in the west, but man o man its so devastating that its very hard to believe for someone from the west"
Lake of Stars <3
Can life be better?
This must have been the best weekend in my life (or at least one of them). Everyone that know me, knows about my passion for festivals. The freedom, the relexed feeling, the friendship.. The hippe-like atmosphere. Just wonderful! And here in Malawi, at the Lake of Stars festival (which is supposed to be the biggest in africa), I found the Perfect festival!
Not to much people, and everyone who where there was happy and relaxed. No fighting, no problems at all. Just happy people. swimming, listening to the bands, chatting, drinking, smoking, releaxing! There was only two scenes, one big and one small. They were both located straight on the beach! I've never had a better festival feeling! Mostly it was reggae music, and the whole festival was kind of reggae-inspired. Extremely nice!
First night i slept in our tent at a lodge close by. The second night, I didn't sleep at all. Or a little, when a nice friend offered me his tent. The thing was that the other girls wanted to go home, and they took the car. So me and Link stayed at the festival. But it was just lovely! I slep for two hours on the beach, but it was quite cold so I covered myself with sand and made a temporary tent out of my towel and my skirt. It was very comfortable! then i woke up again around 2 or 3 pm. And i danced with Link and met a lot of wonderful people!! =) Then I decided to go home to the tent. That was located 15 km away. Not a good plan. So, a friend of mine convinced me to take his tent on the beach at the festival area, while he slept outside. The tent was miniature!! I could hardly fit in. It was really the smallest tent i've ever seen. The funny thing is that the guy who borrowed it to me, was 2 metres tall! And he always slept in that tent. I don't get it...;)
I think I slept for an hour or two. Then I sat outside, looking at the sunrise. soft reggae music in the air. Vervet monkeys running around playing right next to me. Wonderful, Wonderful feeling.
And i made two new friends I would like to tell you about! =)
The first one, Pete, was a dutch guy who travells from cape town to cairo (from the south of south africa to the north of egypt).He was the one who borrowed me his tent. He is around 40, is married and has three sons. But he travels alone. He has all he need in a backpack, and he gets around by hitch hiking. He has no real plan of when he is going back to holland, just when he is finished. We met him in blantyre as well, and he hitch hiked with us to lilongwe. So I was very glad to see him again at the lake of stars. And we bacame very good friends. We were laying in the sand for about 24 hours, just talking and discussing about nothing and everything. Life, death, movies, music, food, his family, my family, politics, philosophy.. religion... everything! He had a passion for Lars Von Tries movies, so I think we ended up discussing his movies for hours. He had some really intersting points I've never thought about, and I had the same. We had a great connection, it was really really nice, and this really proves that you can make very good friends with people that are very unlike your self. Age, back ground, everything can be completely different. It is so nice, a few times in your life you meet people that you just feel like you known your whole life. This was one of those times. Maybe you will never meet those people again, but you will still always remember them. I am really glad I met Pete.
The other friend I met, was also someone I will never forget! His name was Peanut, and he was a 1 week old baby vervet monkey! His mother had died right after giving birth to him, and a nice old lady took care of him. She was carrying him around, and he was the most adorable thing I've seen in my whole life! I held him for a long time, and he grabbed my hair and wouldn't let go. He looked like a little prematura human baby (with fur) and he sucked his tumb. Just like a human baby! God, i could have spent the rest of my life holding him.
Me and little peanut <3
And talking about friends <3 My very good friend Jenny is soon coming to visit me!!! =D =D =D Im really looking forwaed to it. It will be sooo nice!!!! =D Jippiiiiiiii!!!
Internet is as of now pretty slow..Tried to upload more pics from the festival, but it failed... Will try again tomorrow. Tired now, sleeping needed.
Good night everyone!! =)
*Miss you Christian..Love you!*
Oh Busy day! And horrible witch doctors....
Today has been a really busy day. I was on a 7 to 7 shift, wich means that I work from 7 am til 7 pm. Usually we have a 3 hour lunch break between 1 pm and 4 pm. But today, we had a very interesting class to attend to Neonatal resucutation =). Our peadiatrician Barbara held a one hour course in new born CPR. We watched a dvd about it, and then we got to practice on little baby dolly. It was fun!
Dr. Rhona and dutch med. student Floor are resucutating dollAfter that, there were no time for lunch. It was a little bit of an emergency in medical ward, and Dr. Rhona needed som assistance. One patient had an interesting, but serious, condition: she had an Empyema. Shortly described, it is when you get a bad infection in one of your lungs so it gets filled with puss. This patient was HIV positiv, so any infection she gets will be much worse than for any other patient. This lady was as good as dead when she came to the hospital two weeks earlier. You can se her x-ray from admission day here....:
As you can see, her left side is perfectly normal. Her right side, on the other hand, looks like someone messed up the picture. But it is really the way it looks. Her right lung was almost completely filled with puss. It is being treated with antibiotics iv, but she also needed a chest drainage. When it is water, you can use a normal cannula. But when it comes to puss, wich is much thicker, you need a really big thing to get it out. "The needle" used for drainage is about 1 to 1.5 cm in diameter, and it is being pushed all the way in to the lung. This was done without any problem two weeks ago. Rhona and another doctor here drained the lung for, i am not kidding, 6 litres of puss. 6 LITRES!!, Normally a lung can hold as maximum 6 litres of air. They thought that it was empty, but later on it showed that she still had a lot of puss in her lung. We tried again, Or Rhona tried while I was holding the patient. We didn't have one of the drainage needles, so we tried with normal, green and grey cannulas, thinking maybe we could get it out. But the puss was still to thick, so it didn't work. We have to make a new try tomorrow. Rhona is estimating to get out at least 2 more litres tomorrow morning. I will SO bring my camera!
Another case was quite sad.. An old lady gasping for air at the ward. She was in urgent need of oxygen, but her guardians refused. They believed that the oxygenmachine was what killed people. Didn't matter how many times we trie to explain to them, they still refused. It is a part of a traditional belief. Some patients rather believe in the witch doctors out in the villages. This lady will probobly die tonight because she cannot have oxygen. That is so frustrating to know when you go to bed..
Last week we had a very sick boy in medical ward. He was about 16 years. During night time his guardians said that they just wanted to take him to the toilet, but they never came back. Not until the next morning, when the boy was allready dead. They had decided to escape from the hospital to get to a witch doctor. The boy had been on oxygen at the hospital, and he didn't even survive the way to the witch doctor. He was dead before they got there.
Another patient came to the hospital after being treated for a minor issue like migraine or something by a witch doctor. The witch doctor had given him some really horrible potion, no one knows what was inside it. He died of liver failure caused by that potion, only hours after arriving to the hospital.
I know that it is a belief and that that is what is true to these people... but i really get angry. There are so many people who wouldn't have to die if we could do something about this horrible witch doctors. They really mess everything up.
Check out this! These floors are not very clean i tell you..... Look at my feet, after ONE DAY of walking, WITH shoes (crocs) in the hospital....
12 october
Wohoo!! I am sitting at home, ON internet!!!
We went to Blantyre this weekend with Justice. It was a nice city, and we stayed at a cozy hostel close to centrum.
Blantyre is the commercial main city of malawi so it is much more modernized than the rest of the country. It felt more west-inspired, if you know wat I mean.
They had a great shopping mall called GAME where you could buy anything you wanted, like a miniature IKEA. Link bought some exercise machines, and I wanted to buy a playstation 2 for only 30.000 kwatcha (ca 900 NOK). But I didn't, I couldn't afford it. I have been broke since the vacation with christian, but today I get sallary again. Jippi!! And it was at GAME we found the salvation; Mobile internet!! Link went in again just to buy a bottle of water. And that's when she found it. Itt is for sure a miracle!! =) It is cheap and much faster then the connection at the hospital. Wow! wonderful. Especially today, cause I am home being sick.
We also stopped by zomba plateau and Mount Mulanje. Cool. High things. I don''t know how high. According to the guide book J.R.R Tolkien viisted mount mulanje before he wrote LOTR, and some claim that this mountain was his inspirationnt doom for mou. I don't know about that, Mulanje looked very green and friendly. But there Is also a river, the shire river, wich goes through, flat, green and beatuful landscapes. This river is claimed to be Tolkiens inspiration for "The Shire" in the books, where the hobbits live. That seems more likely, it really looks hobbit-like in these areas arounf the shire river. =)
Also, Bad news; I am sick. Ick. Not nice at all. Been vomitting and having diorrhea (how the h*ll is that word really spelled? everyone here spells it different. Even those guys with english as their native tounge). It was proboblly caused by antibiotics I was taking for a minor infection, cause I started on antibiotics (doxy) last thuesday, and i got relly sick. then I stoppen on thursday, and then iwas fine over the weekend. started again on another kind, erytromycin, on sunday evening. And I was a wreck all day yesterday. Vomitting bio (gall-bladder green stuff. Very unpleasant). Link took care of me, and got me water and went down to the hospital to collect some im anti imetics (kvalmestillende/ mot illamående). I got a injection in my butt. It didn't hurt very much though, guess i'm getting used to it... I must admit, i'm really a whimp. I can do anything to the patients, doesn't bother me at all. But when it comes to me, I hate needles and injektions. Ick! well, we are all hypocrits, are we not....
I gave blood again last week (monday, before I got sick). A little girl in peads needed rhd negative blood and I was the only one availible. It was a little to early really to give blood again, only five weeks since last time. But they only took 200 mls, just for that girl. So I was alright. 
Little Chinisi receving my blood =) They are having lunch, Nsima with dried fish.
Some photos =)
Sunset by Namchengwa lodge, Mangochi.
The bicycle taxi broke down on the way to Liwonde national park. christian got very popular among the children in the village =)
Captain Hafstad visiting the M.S Ilala, the horror of lake malawi.... ;)As described in the guidebook; "Children vomitting, a horrible smell, overwroded and awful. Cochraches in your hair and spiders on your legs"
Me in the kitchen, cutting up malawi ciclides for dinner! =D3 october; Thanks Karen!
3 October
Thanks Karen! =D
Ok worst crisis over! I am now in a better mode. And MANY THANKS TO KAREN FERRIS! =D (Christians sister) She sent a lot of baby clothes here, and I tell you, that is exactely what we need. Yesterday a young girl came to our house, carring a naked baby, just a few days old. She was talking in chichewa, I didn't understand much, but I got that she wanted help. She had given birth at home, and not been to the hospital afterwards. I examined the baby, and she was just fine. But I told the girl to go to the hospital anyway, to get herself checked properly. I gave her some old clothes I don't use anymore, cause the clothes she was wearing were dirty and broken. And I got some of the baby clothes from Karen. I gave her some baby bodies, two little hats, a pair of socks and a orange baby blanket. She got so happy, and immediately started dressing the baby. I took some photos, hopefully I can post them here. I told her where the clothes came from, and that they had once belonged to a little girl in Norway called Ronja. She was so happy, and she told me to thank you so much for giving her the clothes, and that she will pray for you =). Alsso I've given some of the clothes to my gardener Wilfred. He has three dauhters, one of them little baby girl, 5 months old, called Sala. He got very happy to get some new clothes for her, and when I met his family next time I will take some photos of her in the new clothes. The rest of the clothes I will give to our house maid Olivia. She is giving birth to her second child in November, and she is very poor. I have not yet told her, But I know she will be very happy.. =)
It is sunday, Im alone at work. Only me in whole OPD and private ward. Lack off staff again. The students have gone, and we are once againg struggling... Anyway, a good thing is that the triage has been done oven though me and Link was not here. The bad thing is that the colour slips mysteriously has run out, so we have to buy new ones. But well, thats not the biggest issue in the world, I'm just happy things worked! And the emergency room is soon finished, so now we are only waiting for the equipment to arrive. Jippi!! =)
If anyone wants to send me something to assist the people here, the adress is:
Nurse Maria Svensson
O.P.D
Nkhoma Hospital
BOX 48
Nkhoma
Lilongwe District
Malawi
everything is welcome, but most urgent we need baby clothes, especially little hats and socks.
And if someone working at a hospital has the possibility to donate these things, we would be very grateful:
* A pulse-oxi-meter (Pox)
* some fever thermometres (celsius scale)
* Wound care equipment (Aquacel, polymem, solvaline, Zink etc etc...)
Me with the little baby now in possession of Ronjas clothes =)
Mother with baby
Post-Christian-Depression....
1 october
Crying =(
Christian left today. I can see no light. Everything is dark and depressing. I want to sleep until christimas. And eat. Chocolate. A lot. And listen to sentimental music and watch sentimental movies. Yes. That what I should do.
2 october
Shit. Nothing works. God so tired i get. =(
Three weeks in good living conditions is not good. You get used to things working again. And then you come back to the real life in Malawi, and you realise that nothing is working, ever... And we have an invasion of cochroaches and giant spiders in our house. I hate it. But in one way it's good. I can get my frustration out by going berserk woth the DOOM-spray and killing every god damn insect I can see.... amohahahaha.....*evil*
Farewell my dear... =(
30 september
So have this wonderful three weeks come to an end. They have gone so fast... It felt like christian came just a few days ago. But yet we have done a lot!
For me, it has been vaccation in heaven! For Christian it has been three weeks of great contrast. From eating Nsima on the floor in a clay house and being hunted by traditional demons, to sleep in a king size bed in a delexe suite in the best hotel in lilongwe.. I must say that Christian made an impression on me. He is a kind of luxurious guy, likes it nice and clean and somehow expensive.. ;) But he has not once complained, and he has really had an intense, pracitical course in malawian lifestyles. He has been travelling like a malawian (overcrowded minibuses, back of trucks, bicycle taxi, ambulancetransport..) He has been eating lika a malawian (Nsima, nsima, nsima...) and he has even learned to think in ”Malawi-time” which means no watch, no clue about time or date and to never be surprised when a malawian turns up three hours later then agreed....;)
He has seen the hospital, he has witnessed me and clinical officer daniel repairing a broken arm (which made him never want to return to the hospital ever again...)
He has also gotten used to get food stolen by monkeys (with great blue balls).
And he has now also learnt a lesson. He must marry me, 'cause as of now we are living in sin. The traditional chief of Nkhoma/ the Chief priest of all Nkhoma synod churches came to our house a monday morning at 7:30. He had heard the rumour that I lived together with a man I was not married to. So he came, and he explained to Christian that he had to marry me, and he could arrange it all right there and then. We politely turned his offer down (or Christian did, I kind of agreed with the priest. I mean, what would Jesus say if he knew, seriously?)
....
I asked Christian just now what his greatest impression of Malawi was. And he said (quote); ” That people were so happy. Even though they live such a hard life. Maybe we have something to learn from them”
=)
