Henna Day!

Today, we started at the hospital in maternity. We got to watch another live birth. It was a lot less shocking today, and actually pretty amazing to see. It’s a lot of waiting in that ward and the actual birth only ever takes a couple of minutes. We also tried to go see a C-section, but they told us to come back tomorrow. Hopefully I get to see one before the week is done! I also spent some time in Minor, where I cleaned and dressed wounds and got to remove my first sutures. That was a little intimidating, but everything went okay. There really wasn’t anything too exciting happening today, except that we had to do a dressing change on a prisoner. When we do anything on a prisoner, there are always several armed guards in the room at the same time. It’s a little scary because these are not small hand guns, they are big automatic weapons.

The room that they give birth in. It's not big on comfort and there are no monitors.

Yesterday, I had the genius idea that we should all get henna tattoos before we left here. We talked to one of the doctors who had a bunch of henna on her and she recommended a lady (her aunt) who lived close to the hospital that we could go to. So, this afternoon, 8 of us went and got our henna tattoos. They are very intricate and beautiful. We talked to the lady about her culture, she’s Hindu, and when they usually get tattoos. She told us they do it once a year on a special holiday that was last Friday and then the girls do it for their wedding day. The brides are usually pretty much covered in henna for their weddings. I think that is a very pretty tradition.  Her daughter was also around and very cute. She brought home a kitten today that she found, so her mom wasn’t very happy but she loved it.

 

Tonight we are just hanging out at Café Mocha again. Everything is winding down this week and we are trying to find enough time to do everything.

I’m sorry, but that’s really all I have for today!