Nanton and Russian Bear

Monday, June 14th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Today we did a village outreach to Nanton. Ali told us that this village is very very big… even bigger compared to Nantonkurugu. So, us volunteers were embracing for quite a hard day. However, the slow start my Ali in the morning meant that most of the adults decided to go out to the farms instead of wait on us to get their eyes checked. Only people that had noticeable or serious eye problems stayed behind for us to screen. With no nurse this time around, we felt like we were quite short-staffed this round in the beginning as Ali then had to step in as the diagnoser… which seems odd but we kind of just accept it now, as there seems to be no other choice (But really, is it right to have anyone besides a certified nurse or doctor do diagnosis in a town where there could potential be very serious eye problems?). But we had a member of the town step up and offer to help with writing down ID cards and translating… he turned out to be a great help. I was in charge of the refraction station today, and there were quite a number of people that required glasses, despite really not having much of a population to screen. Everything went quite smoothly with the help of the town volunteer, and we finished at a decent time. The only real problems we had were running out of duck tape to screen the patients, so the folks doing eye acuity had some trouble. We even tried nails in the wall, but that didn’t really work. Plus, there was that added fear that if we banged into the wall too much, the whole house would kind of just fall apart. But in the end, with the small number of patients, it turned out ok.

After, we went to the market to get some odds and ends finished, while I struggled furiously to get some more cedi. The bank that I had originally traded money with refused to trade me, which I found totally absurd. They said something like “we only serve people with accounts here”, they then redirected me to the foreign exchange bureau, which was closed. John/Christian were with me, and Christian made a good point by saying, “haha, I bet they intentionally screwed you over.” And maybe… just maybe… he’s right. When I was walking through town by myself that one day, not a single person approached me for money or made a serious effort to become my “friend” (although there were some that came up to me to chat about the Ghana world cup game), however just walking with Christian/John allowed for multiple kids and beggars to approach us for money. It was quite interesting… to see that I’m really not on par with the “samingas” (people that come from the white man’s land). Anyway, maybe I’ll try the foreign exchange bureau tomorrow.

Today also happens to be Claire’s 21st birthday. Way to spend a milestone in Africa huh… haha All of us volunteers knew that the conditions for a great party were hardly met in this type of environment, but we tried to make the most of it by buying a banana bread “cake” (it ended up tasting like marshmallows) with matches as candles and some Russian Bear (from South Africa!) Vodka with Coke to have some casual drinks during dinner. She seemed to enjoy it. Camil, our driver, made a surprise visit as well to wish Claire happy birthday and shared a couple drinks with her. He would later take most of the group to Sparkles to chill, while Christian and I stayed behind.