Monday - I miss my Washing Maching

To say the least, Monday was a frustrating day. We were up at 7am to be ready and headed to the hospital by 8. Monday’s are usually very busy because people wait until Monday morning to go in for things. First thing, we had two re-dressings that took a while. Half way through the second, Alexa comes back to the room to inform me that there “is no more sterile gauze.” Just so we are on the same page, it’s nearly impossible to finish what we are doing without the gauze. The patient was very understanding as we explained to him that he had to wait for a nurse to get back with more gauze. More than a half hour later we are officially informed that there “is no more sterile gauze” …..”until tomorrow.” TOMORROW?! Yep, that’s for real. The nurse went out and turned away every patient waiting to have their wounds redressed and told them to come back tomorrow. I was shocked and once again reminded that we are so lucky in the United States to have such simple things readily available. With no more supplies there was little left to do in Minor, so we headed back to the compound a little early.

            As frustrated as I was, I had the feeling that I would have a productive afternoon doing laundry. I gathered all my dirty clothes, thinking to myself that this could be interesting since here, we do laundry by hand in little wash bins. I had quite the stack since I have already been gone for two weeks. I filled my little tub and added my soap (special “hand-washing” soap that is) and then filled a bucket to rinse. I started and immediately had a newfound respect for my wash machine at home. I absolutely despise hand-washing clothing. It was taking me forever and my arms were aching from attempting to ring things out. I started throwing things out that I really didn’t want to wear again anyway and just putting them back in the dirty clothes bag. When it was still taking too long, I started skipping the rinse cycle. A little dried soap never hurt anyone, right? I must have really looked like I was struggling, because eventually Yvonne, who works at the compound, came over and helped me. Thank God for her! I never would have finished!

            When the laundry was all done, I decided that I was going to reload my Internet modem with time. I had just gone to the Market to buy 500 shillings worth of more Internet time last night. As I’m looking around for the little paper card with the numbers on it, I realize that I had placed the card in my back pocket of the shorts that I was wearing last night….the shorts that were just vigorously hand-washed. Yep, gone! That’s when I gave up; I put on my swimsuit and stayed at the pool until dinnertime.

            We are all hanging out at Café Mocha now (I’m here for the free WiFi since I have no Internet). A few people are going to head back to the hospital this evening for a while, but I’m not sure if I’ll go or just call it a day.