Bangui Sub-Prefecture

There is always something happening here. First a possible safety issue and we were evacuated. Then I got sick and fainted, along with 8 other international staff. The other day I was going to brush my teeth and smelt something funny, I saw smoke coming our of someone's room so had a look to find an electrical fire. I ran inside to tell everyone FIRE! Lucky we had an extinguisher, but the poor guy has all his stuff covered in the extinguisher dust. And just now ( Sunday night) the project manager and surgeon have been 'arrested' by the police! A child died today soon after surgery, so the parents called the police. The parents believe we took out the child's heart during surgery! Crazy crazy!

Apart from the drama it's been a good long week. 7 days. This week my goals were to educate the nurses on how to do a urinalysis , how to give metronidazole properly (i caught one nurse guessing the dose! - but after i trainer her it was all done correctly!) And change the doctors round, and give night shift more tasks such as restocking and cleaning to make the days easier. I would say I got about 50% done so will continue for the next week.

A cleaner asked me if I could adopt her daughter this week. She was dead serious, it was really sad, I said no I can't but kids really need their parents and love which she obviously has if she is willing to give up her daughter to a stranger at the hope of a better life.

This week I also had two infants with respiratory distress, which I transferred to ICU (they are fine, but we don't give oxygen on my ward) and one poor 4 year old boy who has steven Johnson's syndrome or lyons syndrome, I can't remember which one. But the result is his lips are a wound, we are unable to clean them because he is in so much pain and suffering. They have been stuck together for two days. Another nurse gave oil to put on them and they have begun to open. He may need surgery this week to open them fully, and clean his mouth properly. The poor mum is really upset but grateful we are trying to help.

Last thing. 2 nurses are leaving soon so
we threw a party for all national and international staff at a local club. It was awesome and just what I needed after a long week. Almost all the men at work told me they were going to dance with me. Africans are great dancers! Two of my favourite nurses were there, we danced together. It was really nice to see them out side of work. Everyone danced a lot! One guy who also proposed and said he was willing to move to Australia with me danced with me a lot, I tried to get away without being rude! They dance really really close! !! Or just grab your wrists and start dancing. Either way it was still awesome finally seeing a slice of the real bangui, rather than just the xpat one.

UPDATE: we had a meeting about today's events. There was a lot of yelling, anger and some violence at the hospital by the relatives of the dead child and the police who took the surgeon to a room to interrogate him. It was really unsafe and luckily the national staff and guard came to help the project manager. Both are home now but all emergency activities are suspended until the government offer an apology and publicly acknowledge that we had no part in the child's death. The national staff are supportive but the local population can be very against white people. So everyone has to stay home until further notice.Read more