We become entrenched

We are now settling into the swing of things at KATH, although the language barrier keeps Roma and I from doing everything we would ordinarily want to do. After years of feeling like we don't accomplish anything if we we're not overworked, it's hard to get used to mainly observing.

Seeing how medicine (well, pediatrics at least) is practiced here makes me feel both confident in what I've learned so far and utterly ignorant of what is seen here. In the peds emergency department, ALMOST EVERYONE has malaria. Even the kids who come in for ear infections and asthma exacerbations have malaria. Of course, this is the main teritary care center for northern Ghana, and the kids who are sent there has already been seen by other doctors and determined to be ill, so the sample is skewed. The management of their other issues is pretty rountine; in fact, with a few technical and pharmaceutical limitations, it's a lot like the US. But it seems everyone has to get started on antimalarials in addition to the two antibiotics they are getting for meningitis or the drainage of their abscess.


As others in the group have observed, we are also getting accustomed to the extreme poverty around here. Perhaps the is because the hospital has arranged for a driver to take us from the guest house to the hospital and back. So, after being served breakfast by someone whose annual salary is probably less than my monthly salary, we a picked up in a Land Rover with A/C and driven past communities composed mainly of shacks. The contrast is striking. We also worry that a taxi driver who charges us 40,000 cedis to take all of us across town is cheating us, when that's about $4.

On a side note, why do the keyboards in Ghana have a dollar sign?

More nonlinear updates:

Best Recent Food: Red-red, a concoction of beans, grilled meat, and onions, with fried plantains on the side. I could eat this three times a day.
Complemented nicely by a Star beer, the local lager that is actually decent (and the restaurant near our place has 20oz bottles for 9,000 cedis - about 1$!)

Recent Overly Religious Business Name: "Finger of God Communications"

Homesick Moment: No decent coffee to be found, only Nescafe (I have to go back to the US to drink brewed coffee from Africa? Although the instant stuff is from Cote d'Ivoire)

Update for Rich: Wine seems to be hard to come by, although Johnny Walker Black runs in abundance. I'll keep you posted.