I was woken up by a rooster this morning, which was then followed by the steady thumping of mortar and pestle (not the little mortar and pestles like at home, but big giant ones used to grind millet and other grains). I took my first bucket bath (as in there was a bucket of water and I had a wash cloth, there are also these amusing plastic teapots (I used one to wash my hair)). Then we had breakfast (I’ve become fond of froufrou which is a fried millet fritter). Liz wasn’t feeling well (I think she may have caught my cold, sorry), so she stayed at the house and I went into the clinic with Drissa/Badry (Drissa is apparently a common name so he goes by Badry).
We got there a bit early and there weren’t any patients yet so I just read emails and the news on the computer for a bit. After the patients began to I worked with Dr Kolo. I got to take temperatures, check palor, look up noses and feel for spleen and liver enlargement for the kids in the incidence study (there are 300 kids in the study and about 50 kids come in each day, so it was a lot of kids). Some of the kids found my amusing and other found me terrifying. We were very busy for most of the morning, but by 12:30 it had really tapered off and I went back to the office to see what was up. Thera’s daughters had come into the office and Badry took us out for a tour of the health center. We went across the street and saw the traditional medicine center and the buildings the malaria project used to use. We got to check out the building where they prepare the traditional medicines, it had a very pleasant herb smell (they had medicines for hemorrhoids, hepatitis, cough and some other things that I couldn’t translate. Fortunately the clinic and the tradition doctors (which have formed a union by the way) have come to an understanding that anything serious should be sent to the clinic, especially anything that looks like severe malaria. After the tour we took a little drive around part of the town; apparently the girls’ grandfather was a medical chief in Bandiagara (he passed away a few months ago) and the girls wanted to see where he had lived.
We headed back to the house for lunch; there were specially prepared plates of hard boiled eggs and diced cucumber for Liz and me. We ate lunch (I ate some of the rice and sauce too), then headed back to the lab. There wasn’t much to do in the afternoon, Badry told me I could check my email and use the computer. I surfed around looking at anything I could think of, but I got pretty bored, so I asked Badry if there was anything I could help with. He said they were making the folders for the study participants, it wasn’t “scientific,” but if I wanted I could help (yes please, I would rather do something than nothing). So I put the labels and cover sheets on the binders (apparently they call them dossiers) and as I usually do, I worked quickly and soon ran out of that job. But, fortunately I could then occupy myself with putting the binders in numerical order, then there were some papers to put in. While I was working Badry kept saying that I must be tired and that I could go back to the house and rest (it was only like 6pm, so I could go back to the house and be bored I thought). When we finished everything it was 7pm and I was a bit hungry so we came back and had dinner. After dinner Thera’s daughters tried to teach Liz and I a card game; with my limited French I had a difficult time understanding, so Liz and I were a tandem team. We played a few games then went to bed.
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