Needle sticks in Nigeria are not a big deal.

Let me first apologize for any grammar or spelling errors in these posts. Most of the time I'm writing them in 10 minutes and my brain is thinking too fast for my fingers to type!
After a week of orientation, parties, and getting familiar with the area I was getting a little restless to start contributing something myself. The pace of life here is definitely different. I didn't realize how fast American life moved until I felt how slow Nigerian life is. Anyways, I started off the week helping paint classrooms at Gyero (I'll try to upload pictures sometime). A guy here, Dustin, has been working on this project for awhile and it seemed like an easy way to get my feet wet. It's crazy to see how much a difference those cartoon characters on the wall can make to kids. I guess when you don't have much a little color goes a long way. Painting was also a good choice because it gave me the opportunity to get to know some of the Nigerian kids and adults better. Plus, they've been helping me practice my Hausa, the native language, which I won't even try to spell here.
Two of the days I also did assessments on the kids at Gyero with Kelly, an SIM nurse working out here. There were about 50 children to go through each and we managed to do all of them in about 2.5 hours. I gave a bunch of immunizations and Hep B and HIV tests. At one point I stuck myself with a needle and stopped for a moment because I didn't know what to do. In America you'd have to go to the ER and get treated immediately. Here there really isn't the option plus I didn't get a ton of vaccinations for nothing so I just kept going. It's funny to see all the unnecessary things you can sacrifice when you don't have the option. Kelly would prescribe kids medications, too. Out here if you're a nurse you're considered a doctor...for real, I've had people call me a doctor already! Since resources and technologies are limited, medicine is more trial and error. For the most part the ailments they suffer are fairly easy to figure out, like worms or malaria. Of course, in acting like a family physician Kelly's gotten a good intuition. She knows when to refer someone to the local hospital, which I have yet to venture to but I heard is a sight to see. I like going around with Kelly, she always has a lot of energy and crazy stories. Like for example, this girl broke her femur in 2 places. Her family took her to be treated with traditional medicine. The man took out her femur, washed it, and put it back in...all without anesthia or pain killers of course. Can you even imagine that?! Seriously, just try and think about it. Well, of course she got a massive infection and they had to take her to the local hospital. Her femur is pretty much rotted away so they had no choice but to take it out and hope the bones will grow together eventually. Coming from America's healthcare system, that story just blows my mind...completely.
Weekends are always a nice change of pace. To American standards, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself working extremely hard. I've usually got a lot of downtime away from working but here relationships are so important to the culture. You spend a lot of energy and time in building those up. Plus the whole cross-cultural issue makes it more challenging. Weekends you can kind of retreat and lay low if you want. Every Saturday there's ultimate frisbee in the mornings, a little familiarity in a world of difference. This past Saturday all the single's went out to eat for George's birthday. For his present they got a duck. I thought a fun but odd present, however, a good point was made. What else can you really get someone out here? We should've made a leash to go with it because the next day we were chasing it around the parking lot. We actually caught it but it was gone again the following day. My hypothesis is that it's already made it's way to someone's dinner table. No sense in having a perfectly good duck as a pet when you could be eating it.