A Life Of Glamour

I’m a pretty happy camper these days—happier than I’ve been in a while.  What has affected this marvelous transformation, you may ask?  (Although perhaps not in those exact words.) 

VACATION.

I am spending a week with an American friend, J.  J teaches English here, and her husband R is one of the doctors at Edna’s.  While he is out of the country I am staying with J in Half-London, a residential neighborhood where many expats make their home, enjoying some time away from the hospital.  I’m still working, and in fact I’m writing this at the hospital right now, but I come here in the morning and go away in the evening, and that has made all the difference.  I enjoy J’s company, and her home’s lack of proximity to a mosque. 

(I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but the sound of the prayer calls here is like the caterwauling of cats in heat mixed with the blare of the emergency broadcast test alarms that the nuclear power plant near my home in Plymouth gives off every so often.  Anyone who so much as suggests to me that the cry of the Muzzenin can be beautiful, an exotic melody from another culture and lifestyle, will suffer the consequences of their stupid, thoughtless remark.  And by consequences, I mean I will throw a bean-bag at your head upon my return.  A bean-bag filled with rage.  And beans.)

Anyway, J is a kind and gracious hostess, as well as an awesome cook, and I am thoroughly enjoying my time with her.  But enough about my time at Hargeisa’s finest B&B.  I want to tell you about my recent trip to an IDP camp here in the city.

A view of the camp

An IDP is an internally displaced person.  Essentially, she is a refugee who has not crossed a recognized international border.  Whereas refugees live a life of glamour, getting their malnourished faces splashed across everything the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees) can order from CafePress, IDPs have a lower profile.  Escaping violent civil war in Sudan and walking thousands of miles to Kenya and Ethiopia is a lot sexier than fleeing the countryside because all your animals died in the drought, and coming to the riches of the big city, only to discover there isn’t much happening in the riches department.  As such IDPs aren’t featured very much in international news,  They aren’t really considered an international problem, since they’ve stayed in-country.  Their collective stories often lack the scope and drama of Rwanda and the DRC and the Lost Boys of Sudan, but on a personal level these people have often lived remarkable lives, scarred by unbelievable suffering.

A family living in the camp.  Both children were covered in insect bites from sleeping on the bare ground.

I visited the camp with some friends, including Ali, who heads a newly-recognized NGO dedicated to helping the people living in one of the camps, which I’ll call MM.  There are hundreds of people at MM, many from the countryside, some from Somalia (Somaliland may consider themselves independent, but since they are not recognized by the international community, people from Somalia are still considered internally displaced), all desperately poor and in need of food, sanitation, income opportunities, and medical care.  Guess which one I helped with?  Hint:  I’m not a farmer, water and sanitation engineer, or business person. 

The waiting area and make-shift clinic.

MM has a health clinic.  And by clinic, I mean a shack built from flattened tin cans shingled together over a frame of sticks lashed with twine.  But it works.  Inside are a few tables and chairs, where nurses and translators see patients one after another, caring for basic health problems, and referring more complicated cases to the local government hospital, where they may (hopefully) receive care from a physician, if they have the 50 cents needed for bus fare.  Which many don’t.  Honestly, I’ve never seen poverty like this before.  This isn’t “I can’t afford a new iPhone on release day” poor, or “I have to buy generic” poor.  This is poor poor.  But there are plans in the works, and MM may soon be visited by doctors on a regular basis.  Fingers crossed.  I mean it.  Cross your fingers right now.  These people count themselves lucky to eat one meal of rice a day.  You can spare two minutes to cross your fingers and hope that they get a doctor to visit them.

A family waits for medical care.

My fellow nurse and I each saw about 25 patients that day, over the course of about 4 hours.  We dispensed antibiotics for the upper respiratory tract infections  and urinary tract infection which run rampant through the camp, and pain killers like Tylenol and Advil for the various aches and pains that come with a hard life.  We also gave out anti-itch cream to children covered head to toe in the bites of sand flies which feast on them all night while they sleep on the bare ground.  Heartburn is common, partly due to the habit of pouring peppers on everything (although if all I ate was rice, I’d be tempted to flavor it heavily as well), so we gave out Zantac and dietary advice (lay off the peppers!).  Strictly speaking they’d be better off with other types of meds, but Zantac all we have, so it’s what they got.  It was exhausting, but at the same time, I barely noticed how many hours had passed.  My translator Ifrah and I worked in tandem, establishing a pattern and rapport.  We did what we could for each patient and moved on to the next, stopping only briefly to indulge my severe and chronic case of portrait-itis.   (Symptoms include the overwhelming urge to take pictures, and to capture the faces of some of the worlds forgotten peoples.  Talk to your doctor if you have one or more of these symptoms.)  I found that every patient loved being asked if they could have their picture taken.  No one said no!  I also snapped a few shots of the camp as a whole.  It’s huge, filled with tiny cloth huts built close together. 

Working with my translator (on the left) to communicate with my patient.

Another view of the camp.

While I will not be here long-term, to help with the development of a real medical infrastructure, I was honored to be able to help out in some small way.  The people at the camp are so friendly and kind, despite their difficult lives and crushing poverty.  And their old ladies are wicked awesome.  

These two ladies were sisters.  They were the only ones left from their family.

Her face is so beautiful to me.