Saturday - work and then hiking

Saturday: day 5 in Cameroon, day 4 of the wards today.

Today started out with the usual routine: church at 6:40am. Because it is Saturday the church service was only music. The whole congregation sang call and response-style accompanied by percussion, with many people standing up to dance.

Church was followed by morning rounds on the wards with a break for breakfast. Several interesting patients came in last night, including a woman who has been almost unresponsive for 5 days who was previously admitted to another hospital, not really treated, and told to go to Mbingo for further care. Another lady came in with newly diagnosed diabetes, which is not really interesting medically, but the thought of being a patient with insulin-dependent diabetes in a developing coutry is pretty horrible.

Some good news - while we were on rounds today the brother of the patinet who had been waiting for chemo for so many weeks actually showed up with the medication, and the patinet will start chemo today or tomorrow!

Since my last post, two other residents, one third year in pediatrics from CA and one third year in family medicine from SC arrived, and it has been so nice to have some company! The resident from CA and I are staying in the same house, and I appreciate having a roommate.

This afternoon one of the other westerners took the three US residents on a hike up a mountain that overlooks the hospital and all the surrouding land. Beautiful! It turns out that this hospital sits on a large amount of land because it started out as a leprosy hospital and none of the local chiefs wanted their villagers to be close to leprosy patients. We ran into a number of Cameroonians on the way, many of them carying heavy loads on their heads while walking up the mountain. We saw a lot of flora, including banana trees, coffee plants, and all sorts of flowers. The views from the top of the moutain were amazing! I'll post some pictures. On the way up we saw chickens, and on the way down we saw a man hearding about 20 cows with horns up the mountain, and saw two horses tied up in some tall grass.

After the hike my roommate and I went to the Saturday market and bought sugarcane (50 cents for about 6 feet of it), bananas (20 cents for 10 or so), and a papaya (25 cents). We found ampicillin, penicillin, and viagra there as well, go figure.

Thanks for checking in, and hope you all are doing well! Check back for more pictures!

-Karen