Geoff and Charlotte's Zambian Hospital Adventure: Our Christmas day activities...

[I've put photos at the bottom because I'm too frustrated with the Blogger software to try and weave them in today]
Geoff has already written about the impact of Christmas on the busyness of the hospital and I was tasked with writing about what we did on the day. I was going to do it a few days ago but my present from Geoff this year was a hideous case of man flu - I could have died.

Thankfully I pulled through, with some assistance from Dr Rory who informed me last night "This is the first time I've ever had to prescribe someone drugs for a cold...". Probably so and it's the first time I've not been able to go to the Chemist to buy them myself :p

Anyway, on Christmas morning Geoff got up as usual and headed into the hospital to do his ward round. That done, he and Gemma came back for a short while to get all Christmassed up. This involved putting on the hats that Geoff's parents had sent over and collecting the gifts for the children. I was in charge of photography.

We started on Mukasa - the female and child surgical ward - things did not begin as expected. Gemma approached the first child who promptly burst into tears and grabbed onto its mum to hide its face. This was repeated a lot. Tigger is very scary, apparently, and colouring books are confusing. Not a single child smiled on receipt of the gift, although the parents invariably looked pleased!

However, after a time, when they thought we weren't looking anymore, we could see them starting to play with the toys, even Tigger. The ones that went down best were the small cuddly toys for the two toddlers in traction (see the photo). They were busy throwing their toys around and generally having as much fun as you can when you are suspended by your legs :)

The older children on Kizito (so, boys) were a little more responsive but it struck me that perhaps colouring books and crayons aren't common around here and many weren't sure why they were being given what they were. The little toy cars with internal mechanisms were easier to understand.

Once all the surgical children had been seen to, we moved to the Paediatrics ward with the remainder of the presents. It was a similar experience with the mums and children eyeing us with some suspicion. I made a little crown out of pipe cleaners, which I put on the head of the first child that came within reach - his face was a picture "What on earth has the silly woman done to me?"

We soon returned to Kizito to serve the lunch of chicken and rice. Each patient was also given a bar of soap, some salt and some sugar. I asked the Social Worker about the salt and sugar and she just said it had been like that when she took over. Our best guess is that these are things the patients will actually use and therefore they make good presents - the African equivalent of socks!!!

That done we headed home for a break to grab a small snack and chat to people on Skype. All hands were needed on deck from about 4pm to prepare the Christmas meal in the Mess. When I told one of the current students that we were cooking in the Mess her only response was "You know that it's filthy, right?". Yes, I did - see previous posts on the subject.

Many hands make light work and things were well on their way in under an hour. This gave me a chance to boil all the cloths available (which we'd had to pin down with knives given their propensity to move of their own accord) and spray the entire place with fly spray (it felt like genocide). I regretted the decision to Dettol the metal counter top when I saw how black the previously white cloth became! After the meal the game switched to trying to kill the massive cockroaches that were now crawling over everything.

We did our best to make the meal as traditional as possible - there were crackers and hats, mulled wine (even though it was a hot night) and enough leftovers to feed the students for lunch the next day. Everyone seemed to have a really good time.

That said, I'm already looking forward to the Christmas lunch that my Mum is going to prepare for us when we get back....... mmmmmmm yummy and no food hygiene concerns either!