Hospital

Hey, I hope everyone is doing well and the weather isn't getting anyone down. The heat has started here and we are now getting days in the 100s. I am not a fan of the extreme heat so I have decided to take a vacation to Belgium to stay cool.

Any who, I wanted to tell you guys about how the health system works here and how treat medical problems. I know my intro is a little vague but I will try to go in depth about the situation I found myself in.

About three days ago, Early walks up to me and is limping bad. I ask him what has happened and he pulls up his left pant leg to show me. That morning he had fallen into a fire and lost about a hamburger buns amount of skin. It was blistered all around and was in very bad shape. I asked him, if his mom was going to take him to the doctor? He naturally said no. I took the initiative and tried to get some supplies to fix his burn up, until he could get to the doctor. Unfortunately he had a fit and ran away. I decided it wasn't for me to chase him down and force him to go to the hospital. I found the house he was hiding in and told the three women standing there what happened. They all freaked out when they saw what had happened, but they decided to let him leave and take care of it on his own.

Three days later, today, Early walks up to me wants to talk. I ask to see his leg, by this time it is turning white, green, and yellow, around the burn. I decided action had to be taken because obviously his mom wasn't going to handle this. I tried at first to bribe him with soda so we could get to the doctor. He said yes he would take a soda then go to the doctor. I went inside to get dressed and when I came out he was gone. I acted fast and found the house he was hiding in, I told the first lady I saw that, he had to go to the doctor and I would pay. With money as no option she grabbed Early by the arm and dragged him a few feet before he decided to go in silence.

Hospitals in Senegal aren't as bad as one may think, they are just very inefficient. To get in I payed the guard 100 cfa. After that we waited in a two hour line to see the only doctor available. When we walked into the room, the doctor asked several questions.
Q: How old is the kid?
A: 5 years old. (This was clearly wrong so I had to explain to the doctor that he is 8 and isn't in any school.)
Q: When did this happen?
A: Just this morning. (Once again the doctor saw through the lie and said that the leg wouldn't look like this if it happened this morning.)
Q: Are you the mother?
A: NO

By look at these questions and answers we can tell two things. One it was important for this lady to save the Early's mother from the embarrassment of being a bad mother. She claimed she was the big sister and was taking care of him. None of which is true. Second, culturally people are willing to say anything about important things such as age, in order to just have an answer. There is a difference in the amount of medicine you give to a 5 year old and an 8 year old. The girl who came was willing to say anything so she would look like the sister.

After our two minuets in the office, we get a prescription and have to go to the secretary. She writes out a receipt and I pay for the medicine. After I pay I go to the pharmacy, get the medicine and head back to the secretary so she can mark down all the info. Next we walk into the nurses office so he can bandage Early's leg up. We walk in and he says, "You have to go into town and get these other medicines so I can treat him." I leave, get my bike, ride the two K. Get the medicine, come back and see the nurse again.

The nurse bandages Early up, and we go home. On the way back we stop and get a soda. Unfortunately, they didn't give me instructions on the medicine and so I had to look in my book to find the prescription doses. After all of this, Early's mom walks in and says, sorry, she hadn't been at the house, which was a lie. Because the day before she sent a 7 year old to find me to come to the house and clean the wound. Either way I didn't care, I told here when he needs to take the medicine and I was Happy.

Afterwards, Early thanked me and that is all I wanted. He even got a soda out of it, so in the end, we all were happy.