Hippo Hunt?

We intended to post yesterday, but after a big thunderstorm, we were experiencing technical difficulties. It has been an exciting few days. From a work perspective, Paeds 1 has become a NICU. A woman came via bus from a village several hours away with a baby that was supposedly "6 months gestation". According to our Ballard score (hooray for Cincinnati pediatricians!), the baby is approximately 29 weeks gestation and was amazingly breathing on its own. It's oxygen saturations weren't the greatest though, so we pulled out the CPAP machine (thanks Dr. Schubert!). On Thursday, Michelle, one of the awesome missionary nurses here, and I were casually walking into the ward when we were greeted by a frantic nurse who told us the baby stopped breathing for 10 minutes. Although I'm sure this was an exaggeration, the baby definitely was not breathing and was looking dusky. By the time we reached him, his pulse was in the 50s, so I started doing chest compressions while Michelle tried to find a bag valve mask that actually worked. Miraculously, the baby started to breathe again on his own after about 3 mins of resuscitation and seems to be doing okay. Needless to say, we're going to do a neonatal resuscitation lecture next week so that everyone knows what to do next time rather than panic and leave the ward looking for help rather than actually take care of the baby. Since my previous post was so depressing, I thought I'd also share a few pictures of kids who get better after treatment for malnutrition. There's nothing quite like watching a child on the brink of dying from starvation perk up and start singing and playing. It definitely makes the frustrations and feelings of helplessness all worthwhile.

In addition to work adventures, we've also had some interesting encounters with the people who live in the surrounding villages. Several women come to our door selling us vegetables and we bought the biggest cucumber we've ever seen! It was quite delicious. There was also a man who attempted to sell us bush meat...warthog to be exact. Jeremy & I couldn't quite picture eating Pumbaa and didn't know the best way to prepare warthog (we can't even fix popcorn!), so we respectfully declined. Plus, I think it may have been poached rather than legal. Today, Jeremy was also invited to go on a hippo hunt. Apparently, a hippo swam up the river nearby and is now destroying many families' gardens, so the people are getting permission from the government to shoot it. The meat is going to be used to feed people here at the hospital. And you thought our cafeteria food was bad.... The local residents claim that hippo meat is really good, but the missionaries here say that it's very tough so I think we'll pass on that one too. Not to be snobby Americans though, we are going to try Nshima tomorrow for lunch, which is the local staple. It doesn't look that appetizing as it's basically cornmeal mush/porridge, but we'd be remiss not to at least try it once.

Have a great weekend everyone!