He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything. ~Arabic Proverb

“Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold.” - Brad Pitt

Now it’s time to tell you about the medical clinics in Livingstone. I was able to help in 2 of the clinics, Maramba and Libuyu. Quite the experience. As I mentioned earlier, we wandered over to Maramba clinic when the doctors arrived at the Old People’s Home. Antonia and I were immediately stationed at a desk in the waiting area, and Toby was ushered in to the pharmacy area to help hand out any medications (at least I THINK that’s where he disappeared to). Without much of an explanation on what we were to do, I looked expectantly to Antonia, but there wasn’t time for more than a “fill in their books” before people started to line up at our little desk. Like everything else here, it was dive in feet first and all the rest be damned! Ok, off we go…the waiting room was full of people sitting in chairs, they all seemed to know who arrived first, and it seemed it was first come first served. They would come up to the desk and hand me their ‘medical book’, which turned out to be a recycled school exercise book, the kind our kids use the first years of school. I would stamp the ‘book’ with the days date, enter their name and number into the clinic records book, and then they would move over a chair to where Antonia would take their temperature, blood pressure and pulse. She would relate this back to me and I would record that in their ‘book’, hand it back and they would move on to wait to see the clinician or nurse, or some would just leave! While waiting for Antonia to get those numbers, I would still be processing more ‘books’, or if the folks didn’t have a ‘book’ I would have to figure out if there was one at the clinic, with their name on it (in that case they were given a slip of paper with the info on it, while having to wait for it to be found so the numbers could be entered….. that could take the whole day right there!) and if they did not already have a ‘book’ I was to create a new one for them, name, where they lived, district, birth date etc., it was very difficult trying to understand the accents…”I’m sorry, can you spell your name for me? No? Don’t speak English?” You get the drift. Chaos reigned supreme. We could ‘process’ 50 -100 people in a morning! Insanely fast paced. Right at 11am, Antonia would through down her pen, blood pressure cuff or what ever and get up, saying” It’s 11, time to leave”. But, but…the van’s not here yet…there are still people waiting…she didn’t care, it was 11 and time to leave! Bet you can tell I was not particularly enamoured with her. At the Libuyu clinic there was an electronic blood pressure cuff, so I was actually able to take the pressures myself! Exciting….slip the thing on the arm, turn it on, and voila! instant numbers, no mistakes. They also had a scale, so weighing the folks was also added to the things we could do. Never did quite figure out why this person should be weighed, but not that one, or why some didn’t needed the temperature taken but some did. Libuyu used the same type of ‘book’ for the folks and seemed to have the same problem with finding the ‘books’ that had been filed at the clinic for ‘safe’ keeping. I went into the records area at one time to try and help find some records, but I never was able to discover where those particular record books were. I think perhaps we might have been more use on some days organizing those record rooms!

  

The most fun I had at the clinics was the day I got to do the baby weighing. I arrived with Brave and he took me thorough to a courtyard, where 100’s of parents with their children were waiting on benches, situated under a bit of shade from a central tree. Brave stationed me at a cloth sling, attached to a large scale (rather like a scale used to weigh those huge salmon caught here in the local waters) hanging from metal cross bars. The nurse that was present, gave the parents a talk about bring up baby to be happy and healthy and then the fun began! Parents lined up, handed the baby’s record book to the fellow next to me, I would get the child into the sling (some of the kids were 2 and 3 years old, so pretty heavy) call out the weight and the fellow would record it. Getting some of the kids into the sling was rather like trying to put a diaper on a child while holding it, getting those squirmy little legs through the holes, and then trying to lift the whole contraption, child included, to hook up with the scale. Very glad I didn’t drop anyone! Another assembly line process, but it was sure fun to interact with all the babies! We checked the records after and saw that nearly 200 babies had been weighed that morning! Of course I didn’t do all the weighing, after an hour or so, I thought my arms would fall off, so I wandered around and visited with some of the waiting families, and then would go back and help some more.