ELWA Hospital

Today we drove out to ELWA Hospital to teach NRP to the staff. Our friend Andy, a college student who job shadowed John last week, gave us a tour of the hospital. This hospital is smaller than JFK; it is a single story building, but has all the basic departments that a community would need. Like most facilities around here, ELWA is in need of equipment. Another problem over here in Liberia is that if a piece of equipment is donated to a hospital there isn't anyone around here who knows how to trouble shoot or fix the equipment if it breaks. That is the case with a ventilator in the NICU where John works. A ventilator isn't much good if it doesn't work. There are no IV pumps, so the nurses use the old fashioned method of counting drips/minute. Any of you nurses remember how to do that? Labor and delivery only has one birthing table with stirrups. It looks like it's from the 1950's. It is old, tattered, and rusty. There is one O.R. that does have an anesthesia machine that works well. The room was cool and clean. The staff at ELWA were friendly, but overworked. There are not enough doctors at any of the hospitals here in Liberia, so the nurses do almost everything including suturing.

Andy then took us to the hospital chapel where we would be teaching NRP. There were about 19 nurses, students, and a doctor all together, who attended the course. The nurses were very attentive and asked good questions. They were eager to learn and appreciated the hands on learning. We had 4 manikins for them to practice on. We had to emphasize that a baby only needs gentle stimulation if it is in distress after being born (ie- gently rubbing the babies back or flicking the soles of the feet).
The Liberian's believe that the African babies need more stimulation and therefore need to be hung upside down and smacked hard on their feet or back because they have a rough start being born in Africa. John and I trained MEG and GG on the basic steps of resuscitation the night before. The kids loved being there with us, learning alongside the staff.

After we finished our training we were invited to stay for dinner at Andy's living quarters. We had to walk through a jungle to get there. His house is about a hundred feet from the beach; must be rough! None of us brought our bathing suits to Liberia because we were told that the beaches were dirty, and they are in most areas. The beach that is a couple of blocks away from our house has trash and we have found some medical supplies like needles, IV tubing, and vials. Anyway, Andy's beach was very clean. Lawrence was so excited to be on the beach that he dove into the ocean with all his clothes on. The water is very warm! One of Andy's roommates swam with Lawrence and made sure that he was safe. The weather didn't stay nice for long. We made it inside the house just as the clouds began to dump their rain, and rain it did for the rest of the night. We had a nice dinner and then said our good-byes.

Michael, our friend came to pick us up in his friend's car. Of course he was an hour and a half late. The ride home was quite comical. It was raining so hard that we had to keep the windows rolled up. It didn't take long for seven people to fog up the windows and make it almost impossible to see anything outside. Not only were the windows fogged up, but the headlights were so dim that Michael had to use his hazard lights to see. You'll know how well this worked when to our amazement we found ourselves out in the middle of a field, and Michael asked us where the road went, Ha! Well, the fun didn't end here. After finding our way back to the road, Michael made a call to his friend asking him to trade out cars so that we would be in a safer one. We all got out of the car, in the pouring rain, grabbing all of our training materials and backpacks and scrambled into the other car. Once we were all settled, Michael looked over at us and said that the car wasn't working right, so out into the pouring rain once again and back into the original car. A guard was standing near by watching us crazy white people play musical cars. I'm sure he was quite entertained. Lucky for all of you reading this, we made it home safely so that I could blog about this fun day and share it with you.

Drenched~ Kim