Jikka Ukku

I apologize for the long delay in blogging. A lot has happened since I last posted and I honestly didn’t know exactly how to write about what was happening since there was so much uncertainty going on. Since the last update we have had to stop with surgeries all together. The decision was made to slow things down after realizing we needed more anesthesia help. For the safety of the women, the best thing to do was to pause until we found more help. Last Sunday we discharged the last woman out of the ward until we could find more anesthesia help. It was an extremely hard decision to make to close the ward for now. I haven’t slowed down though. The past week was spent training the new nurses we had recently hired and I have been busy working on writing policies and translating them into French. Google translate has been my close friend. Close when the internet is working which has not been very constant recently. A good friend from the Mercy Ship has been here for the last two weeks to help out. She came to help on the ward but since we don’t have any patients she has been busy working on the training of the nurses. It’s been great having her here for the nurses, but also to have another friend around. She brought lots of chocolate and letters from friends on the ship. It’s been a great encouragement having her here. Thanks Karin!

This Thursday we have an anesthesia provider coming for a week! I can’t wait. I’m excited to finally be nursing again and to see these new nurses in action. Most importantly though, I’m excited to finally be doing surgeries once again. Our surgical list is getting longer by the week.

Other things which have been happening… yesterday I killed two scorpions. Snakes have been a frequent topic of conversation lately. I have yet to see one which I thank God for daily. My neighbor killed one outside my place last week. A puff adder was found in another neighbors home, and the viper I blogged about in the past have been enough snake stories for me. I’m sure more are to come but I still pray I won’t see one.

I am continuing my hausa lessons. Sannu sannu. Yesterday we were learning about money. Wow. I am ok with up to about 50f but beyond that I am completely lost. I am getting better at counting numbers, but counting money is completely different. Everything is in multiples of five. For example, the number 6 is shidda. The number 30 is talatin. If you want to say something is 30f, you would say it costs dala shidda. 5 times six is 30. Ok, that is doable. Lets say something costs 3750f though. That would be jikka ukku da rabi da hamsin. Jikka ukku is 3000 since jikka means thousand and ukku is three. Da rabi means half of 1000 (500) and da hamsin means 250. So you have jikka ukku (3000) da rabi (500) da hamsin (250). So you add the 500+250 to=750. I failed pre-cal in college. After class yesterday I was thinking how Grandma Daphne would have loved this. Math is not my strong suite. 9750f is jikka goma ba hamsin. Ba means minus. Jikka goma is 10,000f-hamsin (250)=9750f. Oy. Please continue to pray for my hausa skills.