I arrived this morning at Bujumbura's public hospital: Hôpital Prince Régent Charles, prepared to translate for Dr. friend Danica McKenzie during her patient visits. Dressed in doctors scrubs and a make shift hair net (a half sheet wrapped around my head: reeeeal professional), I rather enjoyed looking like I knew what I was
doing. Yet I soon found myself standing next to a patient speaking Kurundi, a doctor speaking French and Danica, understanding mostly english and quickly realized that my limited 'doctor vocabulary' made the job much harder than I had expected. Thank goodness the French use many of OUR english words in their medicines. Glucose, Fructose, Nyacine, Ribose... I am pretty sure Wonderbread Canada came up with those.
The outdoor walkways connecting hospital rooms were lined with families eating lunch. Most had come to the city center and had no means to return home until their sick/pregnant family members were also ready for the big trek back up the mountainous hills or to wherever home was. Apparently, if unable to pay for medical fees, they are not allowed to leave the hospital. In my calculations this leaves several options:
A. One family member leaves and tries to quickly find work to pay back the debt
B. The family calls another relative with enough cash to make the trek down to the city center
C. The patient tries escaping through one of the already broken hospital windows with a bed sheet.
D. All wait for the family's food to dissapear and four to ten more bodies require medical assistance
I am not sure Prince Charles would appreciate having a hospital inducing these type of responses named after him.
Anyways, after being stared at by dozens of 'my' newest patients and hallway friends who, I am sure, were very impressed by my African style turban, it was my turn to stare. Maybe I was a phoney doctor, maybe uneducated in french medical terms, but experienced or not, I somehow found myself included in a real life African surgery. I wasn't sure if I had stepped onto an episode of House or whether Discovery Channel had expanded it's filming range. All I knew was that at L'Hôpital Prince Régent Charles my borrowed green medical scrubs and London Drugs underwater camera had somehow verified my legitimate access into the operating room. Sweet.
Several swift slices (no longer talking about Wonderbread here) and a few litres of blood later, I watched as a young woman pried open a woman's belly and wedged out a very large and rather greenish curly haired baby. (In Canada we would call this a ceaserean.) The experience gave me new respect for Danica, who has already performed several of these 'procedures' here, working with dull knives and almost no life saving equippment should something go wrong. I watch the young doctor clean off the bloody knife and reach for a large needle threaded with blue string and I decide not to get sick.
