Itipini

With all my writing about the fun places I’m visiting and the pictures I’m posting, you may be starting to wonder if I do any work around here at all…To prove that I’m not just bring a tourist, I figured it was about time to start writing about my job at Itipini! Going to work for me is similar to your lives of going to your jobs each day, which is maybe the reason why I haven’t written about my job yet—it has become very much of a routine, and since it’s my typical day-to-day life, much of what I do doesn’t seem all that exciting to write about. But I must remember that you are not here to see what I do, so I’ll try to walk you through a typical day at Itipini:
As I’ve mentioned before, each morning we all (employees, volunteers, and community members) gather for song and prayer. Some of the tunes are starting to become familiar to me, and even though I don’t know the words to be able to sing, I at least try to participate with the clapping and can sometimes hum along. Afterwards, the kids go into the preschool, single mothers and those who are pregnant, have TB or are HIV positive line up for food, and others come and wait to get into the clinic. To be seen and treated at the clinic, a person must live in Itipini. The initial clinic rush each morning is sometimes a bit oberwhelming—especially on Tuesdays when the baby clinic is held and there are crying babies and mobs of people waiting their turn, and multiple people telling me their name so I can find them their medical card. It is during times like this that I need to remind myself that there really is no rush in getting to everyone quickly—no matter how fast I get the medical cards handed out, the time they wait to see one of the nurses will still be the same. Throughout the day I continue finding people’s medical cards as they come into the clinic, but this is interspersed with other jobs. I spend some of my time recording patient information into a book and re-filing their card after they have been seen by the nurse. We have about a dozen patients who have tuberculosis (TB) and come in everyday to get their medication (some of whom should be coming in, but do not). From my understanding, these people need to take pills everyday for at least 6 months, so it sure is not a desirable disease! We just found out that one of our patients now tested negative for TB after 7 months of treatment and is now healthy and able to stop taking pills, so that is great news and an encouragement that sticking with the program really does work. I enjoy our TB patients the most because they are the ones I get to see on a regular basis as I hand out their pills to them. They are the ones I can recognize and know most of their names. I’ve especially taken a liking to one man who comes in everyday not only for TB pills, but also an injection. He was previously on TB meds and defaulted (stopped taking his pills) and now that he has recommitted to being on the medication he needs to have 40 streptomycin shots to prevent resistance to the pills. He was my guinea pig in learning how to give an injection, and I was scared at first to stab in the needle, but now I quite enjoy my daily visits with Nondoda. I’ve never seen anyone so cheerful about coming everyday to take pills and get pricked with a needle! I also have been bandaging wounds and have another patient who comes in about once a week to get the dressing changed on his leg ulcers. He’s a person I’ve come to feel sorry for—he’s in is 20’s and looks quite healthy, but because he is HIV positive his immune system is severely compromised and his sores will not heal (cells that help for healing are killed off by the HIV virus). He has already lost one leg and has a prosthesis, and now his good leg is not looking very good at all. Having perpetual wounds must be such a frustrating situation to live with, and I wish I could do more to help him. I very much take for granted my body’s ability to heal itself. It’s easy for me to forget that the majority of our patients are HIV positive, and am only beginning to understand some of the implications of living with such a horrible disease. A couple of other tasks that I do around the clinic are weighing patients, filling perscriptions (eg. cough syrup, Tylenol, etc.) and replenishing pill supplies (counting out the right number into individual bags). At the end of the day we clean the clinic so it’s ready to go for tomorrow, and are usually ready to go home around 2:30. So there you have a day in the life of Claire. It’s always a challenge to pick and choose which stories to share with you, so I hope this small sampling helps you understand Itipini clinic a little bit better.