Well, what can I say... I suck at blogging, for sure...
Enough with the apologizing, it doesn’t
seem to help, I’m in that opinion that if you apologize, you have
to make a change, not wanting to do it again, so I won't do it...
Apologize that is...
Just after I posted my last blog, the
nurses in Kamuzu Central Hospital went in to strike. Not completely, but they strike
against doing extra shifts,overtime. The reason for this was the
payment they received, 1300 Malawi Kwacha for a normal day shift,
which is about 5 US dollars and 20 cents.
And since we were depending on these
extra shifts to be filled, cause there is to few nurses to fill a
week with work, it was a very bad situation. We were then five nurses
to fill the shifts for night and day, and I think that it can be
understandable to everyone that that doesn’t work out...
most days we were one nurse, if lucky,
two. And this happened in the whole hospital. People died because of
this. But still it took the government more than four weeks to give
the nurses what they demanded, 5000 MK for a day shift (20 US
dollars). Some days were crazy, of course they stopped all elective
surgeries, but still, emergencies come. Most patients were told to go
to other hospitals, both government and private, but not all of them
have the expertise that we do in KCH. I heard a story about casualty
(emergency room), there was one nurse on duty one afternoon, she got
some help from a Matron, but when the Matron went out to do some
business, an ambulance from a traffic accident arrived, and the nurse
failed to help the people there, there was several of badly injured
patients, the patients and guardians threatened the nurse, they
wanted to beat her up for not helping them all, so she had to run
away and hide!
But now, after these weeks of chaos
and tragedy, things are back to “normal”, and we are having too
much staff! Who would have thought!? Now everyone wants to work, all
the time! There is one nurse in theatre now that is on duty from
Monday at 4pm, up till Friday at 7.30am. Just because he wants the
money it gives! Imagine! What kind of a life is that!? But I guess it
just says how low of a salary these people receive, they need all the
money they can get. They even take out their “days off”, just to
still come and do extra shifts!
After all this, I took a week off last
week. I saw that there would be plenty of people at work, so when
Mike had to go to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to get the car he had
bought from Japan, I joined him. It was a tiring trip, we took the
bus there, 30 hours on the road, and in Dar there was mostly
paperwork to be done and time spending at Malawi Cargo, but it was
nice to see Dar es Salaam. And the trip itself was amazing,
especially going back, by car, not bus. It was also tiring, but you
make your own journey, not following someone else's schedule.
We drove through a game park, and we
saw lots of monkeys, giraffes, warthogs and even a cheetah! We almost
run over it, but didn’t! Thankfully! It was a nice ride, but we
were very tired when we came back to Lilongwe.
So these days I feel I am at work just
to show my face. We are too many people to do the work needed, of
course we are five, which we are supposed to be, but still I feel its
too much. So I have been working short days, and I don’t mind now,
I have a bit more than three weeks to go before I go home to Norway.
The feelings there are mixed. I miss
home and my people and world there, but I really don’t want to
leave this country.
Hopefully Mike's visa will be out by
then, and he can leave with me, but if not, to leave him as well, not
just the country and my friends, it will be devastating! It is really
a country, and continent to love, and it has settled deep in to my
heart.
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