FANS!!!!

yes, we got fans and suddenly all is well with the world. sort of. mostly.

today i was planning to write only about the things that i love here to balance out the huge amounts of reality i subject you guys to and, with one exception, that's what i'm going to do.

so aside from the whole rageful anger towards the nomads, the ride home yesterday was beautiful. adil pointed out such things as the huge termite mounds that dotted the land alongside the road. they look like those sandcastles you make as a child, where you let the watery sand slip through your fingers and pile on the ground- only huge, red and full of termites. he also showed me the trees that have leaves that are instantly fatal to any donkey who takes a bite. at one point during the ride i won a contest that sarah and courtney had in afghanistan to see the youngest camel. the mother camel was just standing up when we came upon it, and the newborn's fur was still wet- what i would give to be a camel's midwife :) herds of camels, goats, cows, roamed freely, munching on whatever green they came across. the landscape, while still mostly dry and cracked, has random patches of green from the recent rainstorms that show up in very distinct places. you'll be driving along and everything is brown, brown, brown, brown, then green. it reminded me a bit of duck, duck, goose- you just never know when it's going to happen. apparently the whole countryside becomes green and lush come "rainy season", although i still maintain that this promise of cooler weather in this supposedly coming "rainy season" has been but a cruel joke. every time you ask a local when rainy season is supposed to start, they say "fifteen days". they've been saying that since mid-may. i'm actually glad that i got here when i did, as i get the chance to see the two sides of darfur. part of the year green and beautiful, part of the year sandy and desolate. adil asked me a question at one point that was so odd, yet so interesting. he asked me if my country was "sand or soil". that kind of sums up the difference between our two countries- mine is soil, his is sand. hey, has anyone else noticed that if you take the word "sand", mix the letters up and throw in a u, you get "sudan"? coincidence? i think not. the "road" is two tire tracks in the dirt though the middle of the wilderness and i have absolutely no idea how anyone can figure out how to get between the villages (especially once it rains and the tire tracks are washed away). there were definitely times where i felt that my driver was just making it up as he went along. he knew the road pretty well and managed to fly between the bumps and mostly slow down in time to hit them. mostly. i sat in the back, amidst the huge boxes of supplies we were bringing back with us, trying to shift around and find a comfortable position in the sliver of space i was alotted. with that and the 8th time i had to hear "caribbean queen" the idea of getting carjacked started to sound more and more appealing. at least the walk home would have been quiet and i could have stretched my legs out :)

i got called to the hospital at 3am today and found a woman who was miscarrying and hemorrhaging. my first instinct was "crap, call the doctor", only to remember that when it comes to obstetrical emergencies, i'm the "doctor" and the last resort. so i did my first solo D&C, made possible only because hil let me do one once in afghanistan (THANK YOU HIL!!!!). i definitely patted myself on the back when it was done :)

i have two labours right now, which could mean another night of wakefulness, or it could mean nothing of the sort. the women here have this insane ability to reach something like 7 or 8cm dilation and then decide to go to sleep for the night and get up and pick up where they left off in the morning. it's so nothing i've ever seen before. speaking of things i've never seen before... today i had my tba's simulate a delivery in the tukuls to give me an idea of how they do things. most of it was great, but then after the "delivery" one of the tba's puts a cup to the mouth of the tba who had just pretended to catch the baby, and she took a huge mouthful of water and fully spat it at the woman who was simulating having just given birth. i was so surprised and they all just howled at my reaction. they told me that it's to wake the mom up after having given birth, and to make the baby cry so everyone will know that the delivery is finished and the baby has arrived. it's definitely one of those practices that isn't harmful, so i just laughed. one part of the birth process that i love here is that once the delivery is done, the mom is stable and getting into bed, the baby is wrapped up and everyone is about to come in and meet the baby, the tba makes a motion of handing the baby to the mother and she asks "who gave you this baby?" and the mother puts her hands to her chest and says "God did", they repeat the motions and the question two more times, "who gave you this baby?" "God did", "who gave you this baby?" "God did", and then, depending on the sex of the baby, the mom chooses which breast to feed from first (left for boys, right for girls, i think).

and the part of the email that sucks... we have had a little girl here who has been in and out of our hospital repeatedly. she's 2 1/2 and has diabetes and our hospital doesn't have the resources to provide insulin so she comes in in really bad shape, gets treated until she's stable, then goes home to repeat the cycle. we knew she would die of complications eventually. well, she wasn't given the chance to die of complications. her family decided to circumsize her and she died 2 days later of complications related to that.

i hear my radio, gotta jet.