The Clinic in the Smallest Biggest Town

I know that everyone must be quite curious about my new job, so I thought I’d write a bit detailing that. First of all, let me say that this is one of the most outlandish things I’ve done, for lack of a better word. Yes, I’ve lived in Togo most of my life. Yes, I’ve been submerged in more culture than many people ever will, even at fourteen. But still, I never really considered the idea of going to work at a clinic here in Kara, the smallest biggest town I know. I always think so many things I try are a good idea, and enjoy them at first, but eventually lose interest. I’m surprised to say that this was different. Not in the way that it was glamorous from the start- Rather the opposite. It’s grown on me. I started out working at the clinic from 7:30 to 9:30 five days a week in the morning. The first morning I got up, fixed my coffee, and felt so different. I was going to a job. I had a job. No, I am not getting paid but it is a whole lot like a job. I was rather gum-ho, arriving that morning. I had no idea what to expect, or really what I was going to do. But it was rather going to be quite fun. I’m working with a nurse named Laurent, who speaks very fast and has the worst handwriting of anyone I’ve seen. I sat down in the consultation office and just watched a bit first.

If you’re unfamiliar with the state of the clinic here, think of a sort of dingy, but almost inviting room painted a dirt-covered aquamarine. There’s a leaning shelf full of files, or dossiers, a desk, and a tiny bed. That’s it. Well, there’s also a fan that is almost never turned on. And this is the place that has saved so many lives. I can safely say that the first thing I did when I started working was cringe. Everything that I’d always thought I knew so much about- poverty, sickness, misery- was thrown in my face. I had thought I’d seen sad, emaciated people before. But doing this job made me realize how little I’d really experienced living here. A friend asked me if I was scared to see such horrible things, and my answer was a confident no. If you asked me now, I’d say I’m sufficiently terrified. This is only a small portion of the problems going on here that I’ve been exposed to, but it just hits home so much. On my first or second day, I saw a little baby that just made my heart drop into my stomach. She was only about twenty inches tall, and every bone in her body was visible. She hardly said a word. Her mother carried her, and she simply looked around and stared at me with eyes the size of her fist.

I knew it was going to be a hard job when I saw this baby. I had always considered myself so immune to being shocked anymore, but boy was I wrong. I’ve now seen looks on peoples’ faces, and looks that aren’t on peoples’ faces, that have nearly broken my heart. And I’m so thankful that I’m privileged enough to be in a place where I can feel like I’m helping. Even if I just try to smile at someone, or say thank you in their native language, you’d be surprised how a skeletal baby would react. With a smile bigger than most privileged millionaires give genuinely. Of course, as in all things, the clinic is not just full of hard things that makes you feel helpless. I’ve also noticed how much joy and humor there can be in people with a CD4 count of 34. I’ve met so many people who come in and just sit shyly in the plastic chair in front of the scale. Then I ask them how the fields are going, and they simply burst out in a slur of french complaints about this ‘horrible dry land’ and the ‘useless husband.’ Sometimes, I have no idea what people are saying, and sometimes I catch every word. I’ve reverted to the phrase ‘C’est comme ça des fois.’ (It’s just like that sometimes) One woman came in complaining about how she was gaining so much weight. She slouched in the chair, poked her stomach and asked me if this was normal. Sometimes I don’t know what to answer, and sometimes all I can think to say is ‘Do you eat too much Fufu?’ With this particular woman, the answer was a drawn out sigh. ‘Yeeeaaahhh…” She immediately followed it by a justification. “But it’s so good!’ Even if I can’t make people feel happier by being humorous, or comforting, or kind, I can do it by pretending simply not to know what’s going on.

My french is nearly fluent, and I’ve noticed that it’s not something people will expect of this tiny white girl. But if someone is sitting there, asking the nurse what the deal is with white girls and long hair, sometimes I’ll just smile and shrug. Something that there’s a lot of trouble with in corrupt countries is the educated, higher classes being seen as smarter, more successful, and untouchable. The lower classes have devised for themselves an unbreathable, unspoken principle that the educated should be treated more like royalty. That they are more valuable. But it helps to defuse that if you just pretend that your french is horrible, or you just don’t know, or you are the crazy American girl(though that’s not a complete lie). Of course, a lot of the time too, it’s not pretending. The first time I hooked up an IV, the woman I was trying to help knew how to do it better than I did. I was watching the nurse from across the room, who was working automatically and swiftly. The patient pointed to the right place to plug in the tube, and gave me a happy clap from her hospital bed after she coached me through it. I do believe that some of these patients would be better nurses than I’ve seen.

To wrap up this post, which is a bit of a ramble, I’ll say that the job has grown dearer to my heart every day. At first I had no clue, and was super stressed out about what I was supposed to do. And even though I still hate waking up at six in the morning, I’ve had the most wonderful time there. It’s been so humbling, and revealing. I’ve met wonderful people who deserve Nobel Peace Prizes for the things they do, but will probably never be known to anyone but the clinic family. In the words of Jennifer Worth, “I thought I deserved all manner of medals… And then one day I realized, I didn’t deserve any medals at all… They’re the heroes. I’m just here to help.” For further reading visit Maddie’s blog: http://maddiethebushchild.blogspot.com/