I felt like I was in a movie. A low budget, confusing, irritating
movie, but a movie none the less. Here is how the story begins. I had planned on checking in on the
VHWs (village health workers) in Nakayot and dropping august's meds off to them
but after spending the night in Lormoruchbae listening to it rain for hours I
knew my plan might be changing. I packed up the truck and headed out with
several guys from the village to just see if it was possible to get out there
anyway. Well... we made it 2/3 of the way before I miscalculated and slid down
into some bad ruts where the mud was just too deep. After more than an hour of
slogging around in the mud, sweating, digging it out from around the tires,
cutting branches and piling stones and a lot of good natured pushing we got
unstuck. After a brief discussion the decision was made to continue on. It was
mid morning and the sun looked like it was going to really dry things out so
we'd head on to Nakoyot, spend a few hours there and then we should be able to make
it back through later in the day. That was the plan at least. Until we got
stuck again 5 minutes later. Two guys headed into the bush at a jog and
it was explained to me that Nakayot was only a few km "through the
bush" (translation: as the crow flies) so they were going to recruit more
man power. They came back with several more guys. At this point I suggested we
just unload the meds, and they carry them into the village and we just leave
the vehicle until the mud was less muddy but no one except me seemed to think
this was a good plan. And as I wasn't the one pushing I didn't fight with them.
They pushed the truck out a lot faster than the first mud hole and it was
smooth sailing the rest of the way. After we got into the village I set off to
the home of one of the VHWs but had not even gotten there when some women came
running up to me. There was a woman in labor and would I take them to the
hospital? (But if you are still trying to picture this as a movie you need to have in your mind several women yelling at me in a language I don't
really understand in the middle of a very remote village, covered in mud,
struggling to figure out what their crisis was.) They led me to the home
where in a dark, smokey hut a woman girl
was laying on the ground. At this point one of the VHWs found me (but they
don't do birth as they are all men and that is NOT a man's thing here) and
translated for me that she'd been in labor for three days and the women were
sure something was wrong. The girl looked exhausted, pale and was clearly
dehydrated. After listening for fetal heart tones and getting numbers
persistently 180+ I decided that was all the exam I needed to do and we were
going to brave the terrible road about 6 hours earlier than I wanted to. The
patient, her mother, mother-in-law, sister and daughters to the sister all
piled back into my truck together with a basin, blankets, a jug of sour milk
and 10 kg of sorghum (to pay the hospital fees) and we set off again. Very
shortly we got to the place in the road where we'd been stuck before. I got out
and walked it first to see if there was a better way through. But the road was
just too slippery and I couldn't keep the wheels out of the deep mud. The women
all hopped out. I did have to give them a lesson on how we needed to rock the
vehicle but once they got that I had to just shake my head that the women were
clearly far stronger then the men that had been pushing 30 minutes before. We
made it though quickly and everyone scrapped the mud off their bare feet and
legs and piled back in and we set off once more. I was trying to watch the
patient and had to ask "Is she pushing?!". “Of course” is the answer
I got back. “You tell her to stop pushing!” It was at this point that we hit
the initial muddy place where we'd been stuck so long before. I had been
praying pretty hard by this point and there were all the branches and stones
we'd already put there and the sun had been drying things out for a bit and
these women took their vehicle pushing very seriously so we managed that .2km
in less than 25 minutes! I did take a few minutes when we were stopped the
second time to throw in a line and hang some NS as the patient wasn't even
keeping down sips of water (or sips of the sour milk which is what the
mother-in-law kept insisting on but I over ruled and told them they had to use
water instead) but then we were on our way to the hospital and got there in
less than 2 hours. And by 6 pm she had a little girl. It was determined the
mother had a bad case of malaria and there was a lot of meconium at birth so I'm
really glad for the sake of both the mother and baby we made it to the
hospital. And by 10 am the following day she was already back at home.
And they all lived happily ever after. The end.It was at the point where I was leaning out the
window yelling “push!!” and then looking over my shoulder into the back seat
saying “But not you. Don’t you push!” that I felt like it was the script for a bad
comedy. All we needed was a sound track.
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