Day 7

Tuesday May 7^th, 2013

The day started off with a hiccup.  We were on our way to Saint Patrick’s Hospital when we had bus problems.  We sat for an hour and a half while these guys removed our tire and worked out our breaks because they kept overheating.  This place was just another shop on the side of the road.  It was a junk yard/repair shop.  The jack was too small so they got a stump and put the jack on top and jacked up the bus.  It was so unstable to my eyes.  Then a guy crawled under and did work.  It seemed so dangerous but they must be used to things like that.  We were by a great big hill and I kept thinking of the song “There is a Green Hill Faraway.”  We were pretty late for our teaching at the hospital.  We were teaching second year nursing students.  We had one hour to do all four of our topics and answer questions.  HIV was last and they had such good questions.  Some that I didn’t even know the answer too and Lisa had to Google a few as well.  So it went really well.  A guy got up and said he heard about a drug that makes women less attractive to men to help them to not have sex.  It was pretty hysterical.  The girls (the room was all girls except this guy) were giving him so much crap.  In the belly of the beast.  I also told them they couldn’t get HIV from kissing and they wanted ME to demonstrate.  It was pretty funny.  They asked what to do if you’re in the moment and don’t have protection.  Lisa said to ask yourself “Would I die for this person?” Because if you get HIV you will die.  The straight and simple answer.  I am glad we had her help.  We toured the hospital and I saw a birth! We were stuck in the birthing hall and heard a lady whaling.  So I looked through the window and saw her bearing now.  It was just like the movies with no epidural and the lady was screaming! They cut her and yanked and we watched the baby slide out.  I took a few seconds and we finally heard him cry.  It was so cool!!! Ah.  No way would we get that experience in America without being some sort of Medical in training.  Kiley ended up passing out which was pretty funny.  We got lunch and headed back to teach.  Lisa taught about CPR and had brought the mannequins for the girls to practice on.  I went and did interviews for my research.  It turns out that health care for expectant mothers is totally free up to 3 months after birth which was very interesting.  I talked to a doctor that trained in the UK and then 3 moms.   One mom was 18 with twins, single, living off her parents and it never crossed her mind to use a condom.  I asked if she had been taught about HIV which she had been but she wasn’t concerned about contracting it.  Totally blew my mind.  I saw many African boobies today.  The moms have no problems with just whipping them out and feeding.  Really interesting when I did interviews.  Nobody had a problem.  On the way home we saw pigs wandering around in the road.  We stopped at Richards house (which was not much, but a bachelor condo) and then stopped at a tiny clinic that we will work at next week.  There were like 12 kids so we gave out starbursts and within seconds the crowd swarmed!!! Kids come out of nowhere.  It was so much fun.  We got back to the hotel and I had a lot of homework to catch up on so I read a lot.