My life in Niger

I would like to tell you more about my life here in Galmi, Niger.  There is more to it than bugs (thank goodness!) 

  I live in a duplex with my own space.  I have a kitchen, dining area, and living room all connected and then a bedroom with a bathroom attached.  My neighbor is a young woman from the US who is here for a year teaching at the dayschool for missionary kids.  Despite having my own space, it feels a bit cramped and institutional and not homey at all, so I spend most of my time at my friend Marta’s place.  Her living room is more pleasant and personal and I have done most of my cooking in her kitchen.  There is a gas oven/stove in each unit which is lit with a match each use.  No pilot light!  The oven is unpredicatable, but Marta managed to bake a dark chocolate birthday cake for Katy that was amazing, maybe the best I’ve ever had.  Unlike my time in Zimbabwe, water and electricity are reliable here.  There is even a built in water filter at everyone’s kitchen sink. 

  I keep my mosquito net tucked in around my mattress at all times to keep unwanted visitors out of my bed.  They “fixed” (read : doused with insecticide) my swamp cooler so at night I can get the temp in my room down to the 80’s which lets me sleep more comfortably although the night it rained the air was so humid I stuck to everything.  Yesterday the high dipped nearly 20 degrees to 89 and people came to the hospital wearing sweaters.  The fans were off in the hospital because people were cold, so there was no moving air to absorb my sweat.  I am definitely not fully acclimated, but less uncomfortable than the first week.

Last week, I heard that there was a baptism going on at our compound swimming pool, Katy and I went to watch.  It was exciting to see nearly 20 people, most teenagers, be baptized.  I thought that it was interesting that no one here claps, since that is usually my experience of church affirmation in response to a baptism.  They tell me that it is rare to see baptisms here, so I am glad that I got to witness these. 

  Hospital rounds start between 8 and 8:30, and we each round on our own patients that we admit.  Today my stack was the largest it has been: 25, all children.  I was relieved that none of my children were in the deaths box today.  On Saturday, my first weekend call day, a severely ill 17 year old came in.  her blood pressure was 60/? (normal is 100-120/60-80) and despite our efforts to get IV fluids into her, she died within 15 minutes of my seeing her.  I found out later that she was one of the teenagers that had been baptized the weekend before.  Today I sent home about 5 children who would probably be dead without the treatment they received from the hospital and from me.  I sent 2 more to the Nutritional Center to have intensive nutritional support.  I am on call tonight and am afraid that my stack of people to round on tomorrow will be even higher than today.

   We are all working hard and barely keeping up with the burden of malaria here.  My favorite age for kids is between 4 and 8, but it is amazing how hard it is for children born here to make it to that stage.  Most days I work in the under-5 clinic, which is swamped with children brought from near and far, most with malaria and some with something else.  In some ways it is easy, because at this time of the year, we just assume that everyone has malaria, but that makes it hard sometimes to see clearly and notice when something else is going on.  Many children are malnourished.  Children without good nutrition do worse with everything.  Brain development is put on hold and even mild infections can turn life threatening because their bodies can’t fight.  I see between 30 and 50 patients a day in this clinic.

  There was a mother who brought 2 of her children to the clinic.  Her younger child died in the 5 minutes spent writing admission paperwork for the hospital.  A little while later, a child was noticed in the waiting room having a seizure (either from malaria itself or from the fever).  The staff brought the child in to give her medicine, but couldn’t find the mom, who was trying to make arrangements for her dead child.  I don’t know if she lost both her children that day or if maybe the older one lived. 

  I was asked by one of the long term missionary doctors if I am having “more fun” here than in Zimbabwe.  He suggested that I am probably saving a lot more lives here.  That may be true, but I admit that this work makes my soul weary.  Even if 5 or 10 live for every death, I feel the pain of 10-20 deaths a week more strongly than the joy of 100 lives saved.  So pray for me and the other doctors and staff at the hospital.  We are soul weary, even when well rested.  And we are not always well rested. 

For me the constant itching is also trying.  I have mysterious bites all over my body that itch all day long and try to keep me up at night.  I am taking Benadryl every night and Claritin every day, but still the itchiness persists. 

Much as it was in Zimbabwe, cooking is a creative outlet here.  I made delicious onion rings and applesauce this past week, and not so delicious burgers.  I bought meat off a man who had strapped a chunk of cow to his motorcycle and brought it to the compound.  Then I had to dissect the tendons from the meat and figure out how to operate the electric meat grinder.  This may be the freshest ground beef that I have ever eaten and I am more seriously considering being a vegetarian than I ever would have thought possible.

Niger is a hard place.  Not the hardest, but definitely hard.  I don’t know if I will come back, but I think that if God called me here, I would be both honored and humbled that he would entrust such a difficult place to me.