uninvited guests

one of the things that i love the most about living overseas is the fact that every once in awhile you are assured an experience that is completely foreign to the life you generally lead. while each day often contains 23 hours and 55 minutes ranging from complete discomfort to mind-numbing boredom, you can almost always count on having at least 5 minutes that you can look back at and think "now THAT was new". i was called to a birth the other day and it was proceeding relatively uneventfully. i was standing at the back of the room, leaning against a supply table, when something in the corner of the room caught my eye. i look more closely and it appears to be a stuffed toy of some sort. it's roundish, about the size of my hand, grey, and covered in spikes. i prod it with the antenna from my radio and i jump back a bit when it hisses at me. "what the...?". there, in my delivery room, is a freaking hedgehog! a hedgehog. he's not disturbing anyone, in fact he appears to be in the midst of a siesta, but the midwives are all walking around in flip-flops and i don't think anyone would appreciate walking into our cross, spiky little friend by accident. i take our apgar chart and start to shoo him across the room, out the door and into the courtyard. he hisses at me the whole way, as i ask him to please not take it personally but i have just implemented a no hedgehogs in the delivery room rule. once we're outside i stare at him more closely. yup, you're really a hedgehog. random. the birth proceeds and the woman delivers. she is in the kneeling position on the table, the placenta is out, and i am watching leimona with the baby, leaving joyce, one of our most experienced midwives, to help the tba with the mom. i go to check on them and i find that joyce has walked away to do who knows what, and the tba is standing there continually cleaning the continual stream of blood that is trickling out of our patient and onto the plastic sheet. the puddle of blood that she is trying to wipe up just keeps being replenished, and she hasn't thought to lift her head and wonder what the source of it might be. i say "uh, ladies? i think it's time for a lesson on observational skills". after everything has been taken care of, we are transferring the mom to a bed and the tba is just about to hand the mom her new babe, and all of a sudden i look up at the wall and jump back about 3 feet (which is as far as i can go before i hit the other wall- it's a small room- or i would have jumped further). as i jump back i'm pointing at the wall and saying "holy shit! look!". the women all look to where i'm pointing and they all have the same reaction. no, not a spider.... a huge scorpion. our patient is right under it, and i grab her bed and pull it away from the wall. someone goes running for one of the guards, who comes in wearing thick rubber gloves and carrying a large stick. he slays the beast, but not before i got a picture of it. once it's over we're all outside and people are chatting excitedly about it. everyone wants to see my picture so i turn on my camera and they pass it around. zainab, one of our nurses, walks by and i say "hey zainab, want to see who decided to join us in the delivery room just now?" (of which she probably understood "hey zainab" and nothing more). she looks at the picture, jumps out of her skin, starts yelling excitedly in arabic, pointing to the picture of the scorpion, pointing to her foot, making expressions of pain and suffering... for about 5 minutes. finally someone turns to me and translates "she was stung on the foot once". i say "so i gathered".


upon discovering that my room is reknown for being an oven at night, i started sleeping outside in the courtyard under the tree. this means that i've taken the 5 minutes of the day that were my absolute sanity, and i have extended it to become my favourite hour or two of the day. the best part of my day prior to this was always those last few minutes of light before our generator was turned off. i would grab my toothbrush and head out into the courtyard to brush my teeth at our water source. as i stood in the courtyard, alone in the dark, looking up at the huge, starry sky, the words of a paul simon song would always play in my head. "joseph's face was black as the night. the pale yellow moon shone in his eyes. his path was marked by the stars of the southern hemisphere, and he walked his days under african skies". every night it played in my head, and every night i would stand there in awe, remembering that i was standing under african skies. now each night i set up my bed outside. my mosquito net falls around me, and i slip into my safe little cocoon. i lay on my back and stare at the moon through the branches of the tree, and that song plays in my head. my mosquito net ripples with each breeze, and it shimmers under the light of the moon. whether or not i sleep, i love to just lie out there and feel the cool night air on my skin, and i pray and i think and i lie there in awe of the fact that i'm in africa. it's a time of complete peace and comfort....most of the time. one of the first nights i was lying in bed and i had a moment of wondering what i would do if one of those spiders got in and was caught with me inside of the net. as anyone who knows me can attest to, even the thought of large spiders puts my startle-reflex on overdrive. as i was lying there contemplating what i would do in that circumstance i felt something on my forehead and, i kid you not, i almost wet my bed. the funny part, the part that i laughed my head off at as soon as my heart started again, was that what i had thought was a spider was actually my own hand- i had flung it over my head earlier.