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Diary Entry of a Medical Student in Ghana
I woke up at around 5 o’clock this morning because my neighbour had decided to play some love song loudly and repeatedly, damn him! A cockerel crowed an hour later and my roommate woke up and switched on the lights, unnecessarily though, as the first rays of the sun were already seeping through the window. Groggily and reluctantly I sat up in my bed. As usual, I had rolled out from under my mosquito net, but at least the repellent I had put on the night before had worked. Following a cold shower, I recovered a crumbled shirt from the foot of my bed and started dressing for hospital, my white coat will thankfully cover up my disheveled attire. Out in my balcony, several young doctors were already on their way to hospital, and Rose, the woman who sells bread gave me a toothy grin and shouted my name as a hello. “See you soon!” I called back. It’s an African tradition to shake people’s hands as a good morning, so around 6 handshakes later I was out of the hostel and had bought my bread and cheese and doughnut for breakfast, watered down with my daily anti-malaria tablets. My firm had surgical outpatients today, and the professor gave me a new case file and instructed me to clerk and examine the patient and report back to him: A breast lump. Up in the ward, the student group leader suggested I clerk one of the new in-patients so I could present him the next day during the teaching ward round. In Ghana, they don’t have coffeehabits, or staff canteens, so I had to make do without my mid-morning coffee. I had lunch at Yaa’s Place, a room-turned-shop at the hostel, with some of the other exchange students whose hospital duties for the day had finished. We discussed the following weekend’s travel plans to the west coast over fried chicken with rice and fried plantae (banana-like fruit). I had some washing to do, since the washing-lady hadn’t appeared for around two days; using a bucket and washing powder is the norm here. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing poker, however it gets dark by 6pm and that’s when the mosquitoes start biting – and we start applying repellent. After having a fried-egg in a sandwich for dinner from the ‘egg-sandwich lady’ in the main street, we went for some drinks at Container; which is literally a container turned bottle-shop and drinking hovel. To get a taxi back home we had to, as usual, haggle for the price, however it always helps to have a Ghanaian haggle for you :)
Sam
16