Friday, August 6, 2010

Yo Yo Yo

In hausa the word for leaking, dripping is yo yo. I wondered why when I walked up to the group of women and just said yo, they all laughed. I found this fun fact out yesterday and today I was reminded of a camp song in which the chorus is "Yo, yo, yo..." over and over. I sung it to a patient today and she just laughed. It's an easy word to remember when I ask the patients if they are wet or leaking.

The final patients had surgery today. Ten women in four days. When I took one of the young girls to the OR I could tell she was petrified. Her mother was there but they speak Twarg, a language not many people here speak so we had difficulty communicating. We walked across the sandy ground and when we got to the door she stopped. She started crying. The fear that must go through these women and girls. To be in this state where they are outcasts and then brought to a hospital where white nurses are telling you how to prepare and how to wash and how to sleep in a bed off the ground and then being led to an operating room which is freezing to your standards and we will put you in stirrups and make you vulnerable and a male doctor is going to do your surgery after we stick something into your vein and another man is going to poke you in your back so you can't move your legs...I took care of her after the surgery and it took a bit to get her to smile, but she did. Her and her mother have been here for over a week waiting for this day. She is dry and has so much to smile about. Please keep praying for her and her recovery.

After the final surgery of the day we heard they were here. They are the camels. We had all been wanting to ride a camel on this trip and the time had come. They were waiting outside our house. When we drove down the road and I spotted them I got really excited! They were so tall and had seats on them and I couldn't wait... until we got out of the car. Camels are not the most graceful of animals. The way they stand up and get down to the ground scares me. One of them was yelling and was hating life. There were three camels and six of us. I knew that if I waited until the second round I would chicken out so I got on one. Here in Niger we need to wear skirts down to the ground. I showed more leg today than I have in months. There was no way around it. When the camel stood I screamed. I don't know how this seat didn't slide off. It felt so awkward. As long as the camel was walking I felt ok but if it was stopped I just wanted to get off. I will fully admit this was not one of my highlights for the week. After our short walk, when it was time to get off, the camel did his same awkward movements to lay down and again, not a good moment in my life as a volunteer. I was thankful only my friends could understand what came out of my mouth. Would I ride a camel again? No, but I am glad I did it today. The men who brought them got the biggest laugh from us all.

It is raining like crazy outside right now! It's actually a good thing for the tadpoles. The day we got here, the four of us girls walked by a puddle full of frog eggs. Every day we check on them and a day or so after we found it they had hatched into tadpoles! It rains almost every night so the puddle fills up. Once we had to fill up the puddle because it was almost dry and many of the tadpoles lay dead on the sand. We drug an old wheelbarrow full of old water and dumped it in. They were happy. Last night it didn't rain and we all got busy and the puddle dried up and the tadpoles died. We hung onto hope that they found refuge in the mud and with the rain now they will come back out. We can hope... This is our nightly entertainment.
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I wrote this post last night but because of the storm the internet cut out. Here's an update on the tadpoles...they all died BUT the puddle filled back up to overflowing and it is full again of frog eggs! We will try to be more on the ball this time around.

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