My feelings today....

What should I do? This is a question I make myself millions of time a day for the last month. Stay here or go back to the USA or find another place to be.  Africa has changed my heart forever. It is very hard to accept the disparities in our world. Why some are born in Europa, USA and have education, jobs, a house, time for leisure. What happen that some are born in Africa and suffer? Women here die like flies during childbirth because they cannot afford prenatal care, good hospitals, cannot buy medication, do not have enough physicians to take care of them.  Where is God? Why He who is the Mighty, the Savior, the Holy can let these sufferings happen?  Why it is so easy to be in a church in the USA and sing and praise God and think He is awesome and it is so hard for me living in Africa and seeing all the suffering find God?  Why he let people suffer so much and live miserable lives?  My heart cries weekly when I sit at the Maternal and Mortality conference every Thursday and hear about all the women who lost their lives giving birth. Sometimes because there is not enough blood to cure their bleeding and anemia, sometimes because the medical staff is so tired and overworked that they do not attend properly to all patients. Sometimes because there is no medication, no shower to clean the patient’s tired and dirty bodies prior to a cesarean section and they died slowly over the weeks because of their infected wounds.

Here there is no epidural for pain, no narcotics no nothing!!!! No medication for vomiting. You must deal with the pain. You can suffer days and then deliver a dead baby because your family sold you to the old man when you are only 13  ( they desperately need the money to feed your younger siblings) and your body cannot afford a pregnancy and much less a  vaginal delivery. You then suffer and your body expels a dead baby. You cannot hold your urine anymore and will be cast off your family, your village. You will suffer alone and you will die from the complications of a VVF. 

Most women in the USA have no idea about the lives of the African women. I now do and I want to escape, to leave, to not see more of Lydia Esmeraldas and Pascoas died of very easily treatable problems elsewhere but not here.  But I cannot leave, I cannot abandon these women. I need to be here to treat them, to teach the students how to care for them, how to show love, to help patients deal with their miserable lives.  It is very hard to wait days to have a simple CBC back, to not even have acetaminophen for your pain and much less antibiotic for your infection. A mother died of HIV, malaria and she leaves behind 4 orphans, who will not have anybody to love them, to tell them that they are loved, to teach them their homework. Where is God????

The hospital is dirty, the roaches reach everywhere. There are no sheets. Bob and I have donated 80 sheets but most of them disappear.  Today a patient “called” me to her room to show me her baby. It was hard to get to her bed since there are 10 beds in her room. She is 39 years old, mute and deaf and this is her first baby. I told her a week ago that she was going to have a baby boy and she was astounded that I was right.  (Ultrasound makes wonders around here). Her baby was only 2400 gm., but is doing well. The twin brother had died in her uterus weeks prior. Her baby had no diapers, no baby clothes. He was only wrapped in a “ capulana” the material the women use here for skirts. She was luck she had a good doctor taking care of her. He is a Mozambican doctor who cares about his patients. A lot of them do. But it is so hard to practice Medicine when you do not have labs and studies to help the diagnosis. You do not have the meds or the nurses to take care of your patients. You see then die all the time.   Here the babies stay with their mothers, not in little cribs but in the same bed. Last weeks 3 babies died. Were they suffocated by their mother’s tired body? Who knows? Again I ask myself where is God?  

I came here to Africa to help, but I am so overwhelmed with all that I have seen that I want to escape.  I never imagine so much poverty would exist.  I was told the city is good, I should see the interior….. I currently live in the second largest city in the country and teach at the tertiary care hospital and it is a disaster. So far I do not want to go to the interior, I could not take it… Bob was there and he told me that he was shocked. You know Bob, very few things can shock him in life….

I am sorry my friends I dumped on you.  I need to find strength to not abandon this place.  I want to find God again in my life to guide me, teach me the steps to walk to Him and find peace in my heart to continue teaching the students and to pass to them the love I have for my profession and for the patients……