Ok so there are 3 things I want to
write about today: My new room-mate, people leaving and their parties
and Sarah's feet.
Lets start with my new roomie. As I
think I've mentioned before, she's from the far and exotic lands of
Brazil! Where they speak Portuguese and no English. She speaks a few
words of English but it is literally about 5 words and I never
imagined how difficult it is! I think I'm a pretty patient person, I
can sit with a child going over and over something for hours. But
when you're trying to communicate with someone who doesn't even have
a basic grasp of the language, its really frustrating. We were trying
to ask her if she wanted to heat up her plate of food so we said “Do
you want to make your food warm?” and she didn't understand so we
simplified “Make food hot?” still nothing so we cut down to one
word “hot?” and when even that didn't get a response we pointed
at the microwave and made microwave noises. And still we got nothing.
In the end, we just put her food in the microwave and hoped she
didn't mind. But I can't help but feel as annoying as it is for us
trying to talk to her, it must be so isolating. Luckily there is an
American guy here called Thor who's father is Cuban so he speaks
Spanish and understands Portuguese and the new roomie speaks
Portuguese and understands Spanish so together they've made it work!
A lot of people are leaving at the
moment. Most volunteers arrive in batches so loads of people arrive
in July/August (end of the academic year in most if not all of the
northern hemisphere) and they either stay for 6 or 12 months. If they
stay for 6 months then they leave around February which is where we
are now. So many volunteers are leaving they're throwing a party for
them all. I'm doing something, unexpected, with another volunteer and
we're basically musical gods with what we've come up with and it
works! I can't actually write down yet what's happening in case one
of the leavers reads it, it's all a massive secret. But I will write
something on Monday :)
And finally, Sarah's feet. Again. Sarah
has yet again managed to contract something from one of her kids.
I've just realised the way I'm writing this is like she had a choice
or it's her fault she caught what she's got. It really isn't and I
feel for her. Her foot has swollen up so much and she's in so much
pain with it. But she has mastered the art of hopping! She has
Impetigo. And poisoning in her lymph. Impetigo is (and I quote from
Sarah) a skin condition that leads to blood poisoning. In SA you have
to pay for medical treatment (As much as it may have its flaws, the
NHS has never looked so good to us!) so one of the medical treatment
options we volunteers go for is wait it out. It rarely works, usually
folk just have to pay more because they waited and it got worse, but
Sarah thought what is there to lose why not wait until Monday. At
that point her foot was just swollen and a fair few weeping blisters
but it didn't look as bad as when she had foot and mouth so she just
left it. But then she got a red rash thing on the bottom of her foot
that seemed to follow her veins and when someone mentioned blood
poisoning we googled symptoms and given that she had a fair few of
them we thought maybe she should go to the doctors. Then there was a
brief moment where she thought maybe it was Deep Vein Thrombosis but
that was quickly shot down. When she went to the medi-clinic they
said it was Impetigo and if it had gotten any worse it would've
become full on blood poisoning. So now she has had an IV full of
antibiotics and 2 creams to put on lots of times a day as well as a
salt water wash thing and antibiotic pills for about a week and she
gets off work until Wednesday!
No comments:
Post a Comment