Part 5: 3rd week
This week (Monday-Thursday) Chloe and I spent most of our time in the female ward as, although we wanted to be back in paediatrics it was encouraged we went there instead.
The female ward has bays of 7, 8 and 10 beds and sees a wide variety of patients. Example diagnoses we saw were malaria, stroke, cellulitis, sickle cell related complications, heart failure etc. We found it interesting that so many patients with heart failure were aged 40-60 when in the UK you would expect patients to be much older when presenting with this for the first time. The answer given seemed to be related to patients typically stopping their medications (given for risk factors for heart failure like high blood pressure) when they ‘felt better’.
We were quizzed a lot. The staff here seem to have a much better physiology and textbook knowledge than we do. On Wednesday we joined another medical student teaching, but this time as more of a tutorial setting. The doctor leading the discussions had a habit of going on tangents and she started with checking the students knowledge of current football news and after some teaching on epilepsy, went into a discussion of religion, immigration and culture.
Chloe and I also went to the ICU (intensive care unit) on Thursday as we had been told to check it out, however there were no patients. The nurse said they get few patients and last month only had 2. The ward did have 3 beds and seemed to have good monitoring equipment.
After this we checked out ED (emergency department) instead. This was much less chaotic than the UK. They have 8 beds and at the time of being there they only had 6 patients (and one was just coming back for follow-up). The conditions here were mainly heart failure or stroke.
We were also told that although they do have an ambulance service in Nsawam, it has not been running for the past 2-3 years. The hospital can call an ambulance from elsewhere for patients to go get imaging or to be taken to a different hospital etc but it seems a patient here could not call one themselves.
We spent some of our lunches in the canteen and some at the house with homecooked alternatives.
Friday:
We took a trotro from Nsawam to Accra and then from Accra to Afienya (but stopped off at Apolonia junction). There we texted our hotel (Sleepeaze) to come pick us up. The hotel was nice but food took a long time to come. This has been the case elsewhere as often food is made fresh but because we’d been travelling we were extra hungry.
We spent most of the rest of the day relaxing.
Saturday:
We woke up with a plan to arrive at Shai Hills Resource Reserve as soon as they open so we had the best chance of seeing some animals. This changed, however, because of Ghanaian time obviously being different haha. We had an agreement to be picked up and taken at about 7:30 but this actually happened an hour later.
Our driver stayed with us for our time at Shai Hills and we were also joined by some other visitors. We got to pick between a one hour or a two hour tour and we chose the latter. We started off with a look at some ostriches and zebras that were brought up from South Africa as possibly part of a conservation programme. The other guests asked lots of questions including whether they could eat/keep the meat of an ostrich and whether they could ride an ostrich, which I found funny. (The answer to both was of course no)
We then went to the Shai Hills museum, which was really a couple of open rooms with displays of animal skins, bones, paintings and manmade objects from the people who used to live in the area. I also found it funny that the tour guide clarified that all the objects on the tables were bones except for a small wooden elephant haha.
After this stop we drove to the bottom of Mogo Hill. We saw antelope as we drove through and baboons on the side of the road.
We then climbed to the top of the hill using ropes that had been installed. The view from the top was amazing. It was way more impressive than can be captured in a photo.
We then were taken back to Afienya station and we took a trotro to Tema. We then took a trotro to somewhere else and then a taxi. We had booked this trip to Ada Foah very last minute as we hadn’t known Monday was a holiday until Thursday so had to ask lots of people where to go.
We were then taken to a boat and took the boat to Maranatha Beach Camp where we stayed 2 nights.
This place was on a small island, which was lovely. It had lots of palm trees and roaming dogs, goats and chickens. Our rooms however were not quite what we had expected. They had stand up fans rather than ceiling fans and one of the rooms didn’t lock properly. This meant the night became hot and sweaty as we couldn’t properly cool off.
Sunday:
We went on a boat tour this morning with the gentleman who took us to the island yesterday. We went to see the estuary, the mangroves and the crocodile island (which was actually a little zoo on one of the islands). There are 24 islands in total.
The food here had also been very tasty but similarly to Friday night, we had to wait a long time to eat. Last night we had to wait 2 and a half hours to eat, which was the longest so far. In particular the chicken had been cooked really well and the food hasn’t been very spicy at all! (They must have seen us and not put any in haha)
We went for a swim in the river in the afternoon and a walk in the evening. We tried to catch the sunset but unfortunately it was too cloudy to really see it.
After dinner we had some conversations with men who were proposing to us again. We have experienced this previously but it has not been at all this bad. I am grateful that I am married as they do seem to respect that and move on but for the others, the men are quite persistent and after saying no, want phone numbers or contact information.
Monday:
We ordered our breakfast and had a swim in the river while we waited. The sea was lovely but the current did feel very strong. We also seemed all to have gotten burnt yesterday so I didn’t stay in direct sunlight for very long.
We then packed up and made our way back to Nsawam. This time a boat drop off, taxi, trotro to Accra, then another to Accra circle (the main station), then another to Nsawam was how we made it back.
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