June 10th Torogo, Cote d' Ivoire

This morning we woke up early and got ready to work our frist day in the Dispensary. Diane made us French Toast for breakfast. The french actually call it unwanted bread...it was good none the less! We joined the workers for their devotional mainly so we could be inroduced because we had no idea what they were saying. For my first roation I was in the injection room with Sudamon. I couldn't understand him, actually didn't know his name until a few days later, and for most of the time he would leave me alone in the room with patients and I just sat there and stared...it was awkward. It was slow at first, but then it began to pick up. The injection room has a main room where people come to get their injections and then a smaller room with 4 beds in it where people would get IV's. We had one little girl who was tehre with a very high fever and dehydration. She had malaria. At one point we had to give her anti-seizure drugs because her fever was so high we were afraid she was going to start seizing, thankfully she never did. To cool her off I would take a rag get it wet with "cold" water and rub it all over her body, she hated that.

Here is part of the injection room....the toilet wasn't used

Here is looking from the main room into the room with beds....the little girl laying with her mom is the one with malaria

Here are all the injections....

Along with the girl being there all day, we had a man who had come and was just lying outside and couldn't move...honestly I thought he was dead until they brought him into the room. We hooked him up to an IV gave him fluids and some medications and by the end of the day he was a lot better. Throughout the day we had a bunch of kids come in with fevers and other just to get routine medication administration. They would bring us a bag with their injections from the pharmacy, hand us their "chart" which were actually just index cards, and we would give them an injection. Most of the medication came in ampules and I never knew how much to give so I would just draw it all up...look over at Sudamon for the nod and administer it. It felt weird because in school we check at least 3 times and our instructors are hoovering over us in case we did something wrong...that was not the case. The only time we measured it was if we gave Penicillin and we would keep the remains of that and use it on somone else.

The language at this point was still hard. I knew how to greet which was a big thing..always shake hands no matter what! They love shaking hands and if you don't, its considered rude. You also only shake, hand, and recieve things with your right hand..you're left hand is considered unclean for reasons I will let your imagination take you.

Health care is so different. Rarely would they wash their hands between patients, they have limited supplies...but one relief was that they do NOT reuse needles. I was glad to see that! When someone comes to the dispensary it is an all day event. They get there hours before it opens and stay until they get seen.

After the work day was over we went into town, Korhogo, to the market to buy material for our scrubs from Africa! Every $1 is 500 Francs. We drew quite a large crowd of followers...a bunch of new white people not knowing what they were doing, I would have stared too. We then went to a gas station and got this delicious ice cream that came in plastic bags. Everything is in plastic bags. This ice cream was made from coconut milk and it was the best EVER! It's called Star ice cream..if you ever go to Africa it's a must! For dinner we went to La Bonne Cuisine (The good food). We had rice with a pureed peanut sauce and a chicken leg. It was really good, especially the peanut sauce! The sleep aragements aren't bad. I sleep on an air matress and have a ceiling fan which makes all the difference! Tomorrow will be another exciting day in the Dispensary!

Walking through the market...

The resturant...

The team plus Christie. Christie is in the top left (she was there on her own as an apprentice and was there a total of 8 weeks). The next is Sarah and then me. Bottom left to right is Emily, Kait, and Mindy. We have our cokes and OK tip top which is a coffee tasting soda...so delicious!

I know I know..

I know I've been slacking...school started picking up more...but I promise that I will post again soon!! I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since my last one...Sorry guys! For now here is a picture!

1 Peter 4:10 "As each one has recieved a gift, use it to serve one another as good stwewards of God's varied grace."

June 9th...Bamako/ Torogo

You might be thinking what happened to June 8th? Well June 8th was actually the day of the previous post...it just all blurred together and I forgot...


On June 9th we loaded up our Jeep (see picture in previous post, which is actually a picture taken the morning of June 9th) and made the 9 1/2 hour drive down to Torogo. Now 9 1/2 hours is a long time...especially when you are crammed in that jeep with no leg space and what little leg space you had was occupied by some sort of luggage. Not to mention that there is not such thing as rest stops or fast food resturants where we were. We stopped once for a roadside lunch and back woods potty break...



For the most part we drove on "paved" roads. The roads had rather large pot holes that tried to be avoided, but was most of the time unsuccessful. As we drove we would see large fields of crops with sporatic mud hut villages every so often...



We would alos see people sitting by the road waiting to sell various foods. You would just stop and everyone would run up to your window trying to get you to buy food. It was their only way of making money. The food was cheap too. You could get about 10 mangos or so for $1 American. As we were driving, all of the sudden we heard this pelting noise sounding almost like rain drops...I looked up and to my suprise saw a bunch of bug guts on the window...we had driven through a swarm of flying termits...


In the end, there were actually more on the window than showen here. Throught the trip we would go throw random stops that the rebels had made in order to get money. We, however, never paid. While at the stop for the boarder, Bill got out to convince them to let us through (which was very easy, they didn't even look at our passports). While there we tried to pay a little kid to clean the wind shield...that didn't work out, he just broght a bucket and rag...so Tanner (who is Bill and Diane's youngest son) had to do it...


While we were there, one of the rebels began talking to Diane. Later we found out that he was asking her for us to bring "air conditioning" to all of Africa...even outside the buildings. She told him that was not possible..his response "You white people can do anything!"


When we made it to the Dispensary we were all so worn out..and because of that I was becoming a little home sick in the way that I wanted my own bed...especially when I say the rooms. They were worn down and I ended up opting to sleep on an air matress on the ground as opposed to a worn down matress or water bed. It ended up being very comfortable and I ended up sleeping there at the other place as well. They also warned us about Scorpions...AHHHHH!!! That is the absolutly ONE thing that I DO NOT want to have an encounter with! The year before they had found 6 scorpions in the place we were living...hopefully they all go scared away! We had dinner at Robin's house. Robin is a Nurse Practitioner that lives at the Dispensary and runs it. She had another student, Christy, staying with her for the summer. Christy had already been there 5 weeks and had 3 weeks left to go. Tomorrow they put us right into work at the dispensary. Hopefully the language barrier won't be too big of a problem! I know absolutly NO French!

One thing that I was hoping to see were animals such as Giraffes and Elephants..I found out those are in East and South Africa...not West, I was really bummed. I also learned that you can put America in the Northern part of Africa and still have room to move around...it kinda puts things into perspective...

Here is a picture of just the West part of Africa..You can see Casablanca in Morocco, and Bamako in Mali (which by the way Mali is wayyyyy bigger than Texas can ever hope to be!). Then you can see where Cote d' Ivoire is. Where we were is about where the "Cote" is...

Here is a picture of just Cote D' Ivoire

You can see Korhogo..that is a bigger town just outside of Torogo where we were for the Dispensary. We then traveled up to Ferkessedougou (yeah try saying that 10 times fast...I can't even pronounce it the first time) We just called it Ferke..so did all the natives. While in Ferke we wanted to visit orphanages, but the orphanages are in Bouake (pronounce "Bua-que")...but that will be a later post!

Up date on the Present:

When I left Africa I expected to miss it a little. Recently, however, I have missed it oh so much! Way much more than I ever expected to. It's a little suprising but at the same time exciting! I long to go back, I'm still not sure if to the same place necessarily, but possibly. Right now, however, it is a bit depressing because I need to finish school and get experience (and learn a language) before I go anywhere...We will see where God will end up leading me and when...even at the end of this year...I have no idea what I'm going to do or where I'm going to go in May....we'll see where God takes me!

June 7th....After the flight to Bamako

We made it a safe and "easy" (compared to the previous flight) to Bamako at 3 am their time and it was HOT! The planes didn't have terminals so you got off the plane and then got packed onto a bus to drive the the airport. Customs was easy to get through...but then we had to wait for all our luggage. Everyone's luggage but 2 got there pretty quickly so we were a bit scared but they ended up showing up! Getting luggage and then going through the survailance is not anything like in America. There is no such thing as a line or "I got here first" everyone just gets their bags and goes to the front. I don't know how they managed to "look" in everyones bag through that x-ray machine when there are about 15 of them going through at once! We met the Gruddas outside and piled into their jeep with all of our bags up top and drove to the guest house. It was a nice place. We had a bed to sleep in...and a nice SHOWER! We hadn't had a shower since we left America. For breakfast we had Manogs and crousants with chocolate in the middle. Delicious! We drove around a bit and went to the grocery store where we split up in groups with shopping lists and had to shop...in French! It was quite the experience. At that point I had wished I brought a dictionary..I hadn't even thought of it! We then went home and got dinner. We ate street food called Nem. They looked like an egg roll but were some sort of meat mixture without the fried dough on the outside. You wrapped it in a piece of lettuce dipped it in sauce and ate it. And of course we had MANGOS! We then did a devotional and went to bed because we had to wake up early the next day to drive 10 hours to Torogo.

Day 1 June 6th and 7th

Well like I promised over a month ago...here is the start of my trip.

Around 12pm on the 6th of June we all met for the first time in NYC. It was kinda nerve racking, but everyone was so nice. We hung out in NYC till 8 pm when our plane took off. We had just enough time to ride the free ferry from Statin Island to Manhatten, grab some nasty McDonalds as our last meal in America. The team included Jim Copeland who was our team leader, Emily who is a pre-med major at Grove City, Mindy who is an ICU nurse in Alabama, Kait who is a senoir nursing major at Marshal University and Sarah who had just finished Nursing school at Roberts Wesleyan. The flight took about 6 and 1/2 hours and the first hour and 1/2 was really bad turbulance. It was horrible and I felt like I was going to throw up and pass out. They wouldn't let anyone out of their seats. It was pretty bad. We flew over night which was nice considering we were tired and could sleep a little. We arrived in Cassablanca around 8 in the morning their time. They are 5 hours ahead of our time and we lost 6 hours on the plane. We didn't fly out again to Bamako until midnight so we took a train into the city. We crammed into a taxi and got a quick tour of the city and then met up with a school teacher over there. We went to the 3rd largest Mosque in the world and got a tour. It was absolutly beautiful and a shame that some other god was worshiped there. Here is a picture of our team in front of the Mosque.

Left to right is Kait, Jim, Mindy, Sarah, Me, Emily

We were then able to go back to the teacher's school compound where she lived. She is a missionary from here, but because Morocco is a closed country it cannot be known that she is a missionary. It was such a blessing that we were able to go to her place and sleep a bit, we were all so worn out. She took us to a cute little hole in the wall cafe for lunch and for dinner we went to a more formal resturant.

This is a picture of us having this delicious mint tea at the resturant!

We then headed for the airport for our next 3 hour flight to Bamako, Mali where we would meet up with the Grudda's and head to Cote d' Ivoire

Home

So I've been home for about a week and a half now. It feels weird that I'm home, and it also feels like I never left. The trip was AMAZING, and it definitly went by too fast! I was so comfortable while I was over there, but I didn't know if I could see myself living in Africa. I definitly know now that I can see myself living someplace other than America at some point in time. There is so much to talk about from the 3 weeks I was there. My plan is to go back through my journal and every few days (work schedule permiting) I'll post a day or two of my trip on here for you! Feel free to contact me whenever with any questions or comments...I'd love to hear from you!

Some kids from the village that I stayed in one night

Tomorrow

Well I'm leaving tomorrow. I am meeting the team in NYC at noon and we are hanging out there until 8 pm when we take off and leave the USA! We fly to Cassablanca Morocco and spend the day there. We then fly from there late at night to Mali where we will stay over night and then drive down to Corte d'Ivore. It's going to be a long couple of days traveling!

I appreciate your continued prayers. Please continue to pray for our saftey. We are going to a country that isn't necessarily the safest place. Pray that everything goes well traveling. I think I'm the most nervous about that, going through customs and even making sure my bag weighs the appropriate amount of less. Plus we are flying over the Atlantic, I've never been over the Atlantic before so that'll be interesting! If you want updates email my parents at mbotzenhart@stny.rr.com

See you in a month!