Afterward, Connor went with manu to discuss some projects for the school and I went with Dr. Lenka (aka Biku) to see patients. What that involves is sitting in a room by the entrance and waiting for patients to show up. There is a more senior doctor here who takes most of the patients and we saw 4 patients. Two with upper respiratory infections, one with a large cut on his leg and a girl who had something dropped on her foot and had to have her big toenail removed. I watched that procedure and as far as I could tell, they used no numbing agent at all. It looked awful. They also didn't use gloves when removing the nail. I said something to Biku and he said that gloves are expensive and they use them for the surgeries.
After the extraction, we spent some time going through the medical text books together while waiting for patients to teach me about the more common conditions the hospital sees.
After a little while with that, I started teaching Biku Spanish and he helped me work on my Odia. I'm learning a bunch of common phrases and can sometimes make basic thoughts understood. We ate lunch and then went to the school with the frisbee. There were about 30 people there today and we got a 4v4 tournament going. It's amazing how much they all low the game and love to win. Watching them fight over the points is vastly more entertaining than the game itself. My team obviously on the tournament. We came back when it got dark and I think some of them want to play later when the full moon is out.
I'm going to see a few more patients now with Biku and then we'll see about later. Doekiba-means "we'll see" and it's a very common phrase here.
There is a big festival tonight and all the girls have beautiful colorful dresses. That's all that I've learned about it so far. And that we can hear loud chants from our roof early in the morning and through the night.
I just took half and shower and was in the middle of washing some clothes when the power died. It's out at least 10-15 times a day for anywhere from a couple minutes to a few hours.
After seeing another couple of patients that showed up around 7, we went to meet a group of people that had only been here for the festival and were leaving the next day. We went down by the river and met the about 15 of them who were there. They took us on their bikes around in a loop around the river and through the center of Juanga. The roads varied from dirt trail to something that could pass for a backroad back home. Huge bales of dried rice stalks lined segments of the road and was often 6 inches thick across the entire road. We passed the broken down bus to Juanga and honked every time we'd pass or turn or do anything else. Riding through the village was spectacular. They were playing super loud music for the festival and there were arches with blinding LED designs that we rode through. There were also groups of villagers praying around the town center for the moon festival. When we got back to the road by the river, someone started playing music and we had an impromptu dance off. I mad far as I can tell, the crazier your dance moves are, the better you dance. Connor was actually a spectacular dancer and they all loved it. They decided to stay an extra day and have a feast for myself and Connor. They say we'll have to dance for everyone so I'll have to work on my moves today.. Maybe I'll do the worm.
We ate dinner at 10:30 and had a short Odia lesson with Biku before bed. I'm about to go see some patients with him before breakfast. I'm really looking forward to thursday. In addition to having a general surgeon, There are vastly more patients. Surgeries are scheduled on Thursday Friday Sunday's and there are at least 3 tomorrow.
-AB
Rode motorcycles
An impromptu dance party
Don't you tell my mom
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