to walk...er...somewhere near a place that has power and a computer!?????!!!
I've not been near a computer in weeks and when I have the e-mail has been
so slow I considered carrier pigeon. Hence it's been such a long time since
I've written, sorry one and all. I hope some of you are still checking this
site, more to follow promise.
"You must be kidding!"
"No way, rubbish, I've never heard that before"
"No, no he might be right"
"Right that's it we are going to buy one tomorrow and see if it works"
Barely twenty-four hours after this conversation I found myself knelt on the
ground drawing a straight line in the sand. Resting at the start of my line
was a beak. The beak was attached to a chicken. And it was hypnotised.
We had arrived at this particular outreach site with not just the usual
suspects. (i.e. me and another poor soul) but also a medical co-ordinator
and a logistician. A huge team by outreach standards.
In honesty, and for reasons so oft repeated it's boring, we had not visited
this clinic (nor the clinic we moved on to) often enough. It wasn't that
they were doing badly but they were (as an NHS manager might put it) 'in
need of input'. More of this later, back to the chicken.
Sitting round a camp fire (containing large amounts of out rubbish that I'd
forgotten to burn the last time!! Whoops!) That night we got into a
discussion about hypnotism and naturally (work with me here) the
conversation moved on to whether it was possible to place animals under
hypnosis. One of our number suggested the method and the following night we
performed a controlled test, of sorts. And it works!!!! For those of you
with access to chicken, and perhaps it's best if you chose a reasonably
docile one, please feel free to conduct a similar experiment along the
following lines.
Take one chicken, lie it on the ground and point it's head to the floor. If
another person slowly draws a line in the sand with their finger in a line
from the beak, about two feet, outwards, the chicken should remain
motionless…indefinitely!!!
Pushing back the knowledge of an outreach team one night, awesome casserole
the next. We had brought the chicken to late to eat that night and were not
overly thrilled with the prospect of the thing squawking for hours. So this
did have a practical purpose too. Not a peep, all night.
Things were going relatively well clinic wise. The contracts were signed
with only one amusing question.
Marcus: So your contracted hours are 40
Staff Member: What …… a day????
Marcus: Err… no…(Completely thrown by this question) a month. …Err. I mean
week. Sorry did you just say a day?
This story would be slightly less worrying had this question not come from
the man in charge of counting the stock!!!
It had been decided to make this town the new county town, what was wrong
with the last one hasn't been properly explained to me. Anyway, the town was
awash with people building and busying themselves. Hundreds of young men
have moved in to work for the various offices of local government, making
the town almost completely young and male. I'm not sure the long-standing
inhabitants quite know what has hit them.
Within a week we had fixed a fence and been able to do some very rudimentary
training with the staff. Often the process involves high amounts of damage
limitation. It's almost about making sure the staff do no harm and then
getting them to do things well. Having said that people like the wound
dresser continue to improve.
Another success was the lady we employ to give the first dose of the
medicine to the children. In many cases (unlike the UK where children are
brought up on a diet of antibiotics) this is the first time the children
will have taken any type of medicine and the mothers are understandably
clueless about the best method of administration.
On previous visits I'd observed out medicine lady using a combination of
face grabbing and overwhelming force. Rather like a patient with aggressive
psychosis the children would be pinned to the ground by an army of mothers
and bystanders. Arms and legs flailing, medicine spat and crying as if limbs
were being pulled off. The whole spectacle resembled a horror film.
This led to some very big questions from my bosses about why it was that our
clinics were using double the number of drugs they should have been. With
the number of children this lady made vomit I'm surprised the number was so
low!
Changing the behaviour has been long and laborious. Starting with, O.K. lets
sit the child up and THEN grab his face to finally, on this visit, lets get
the child to take it off a spoon calmly. I'm sure on occasion the urge to do
things the old way is still strong, and I've no idea what they do when we
are not there. But at least I've tried!
Onto the next clinic. This very calm and tranquil little village had had the
impressive joy of having a borehole and water pump fitted the month before.
This great news had turned very sour as the pump had spluttered water for a
whole day and then produced nothing more impressive than sand and sludge.
A team of engineers were on site when we arrived, swelling our numbers to
seven. Sadly the pump needed a very specific part, and had probably been dug
in the wrong place anyway… so the wait for clean water in this area goes on…
A very very very hot walk in six hours of baking sun back to base. The
temperature was fifty degrees for two hours of the walk. It was also across
open country so shade was limited indeed. All not much fun. Walked into base
with more than a passing resemblance to a raisin.
A quick shower and a beer and then on a flight to the next outreach site.
But more of that in a few days.
