Under a Baobab Tree

What an amazing week at work - I just returned to Accra after spending the week in some of the most remote areas in Ghana.  The MoTeCH team and I went around to rural health outreach clinics to sign up pregnant women and children under 5 for the MoTeCH service.  By the end of the week, we had registered around 700 women and kids - all via inputting the basic personal and health data into a simple mobile phone.  It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.  The clinics are held anywhere the community gathers - most of the ones I attended were literally under the local baobab tree.  The nurse would drive up on a motorcycle, benches would appear, a baby scale would be hung by one of the branches of the tree and the next thing you know, women and children are showing up from all over the village.  Each baby has it's own "sack" to be weighed in.  The babies are hung on the hook on the scale in the tree and their weight is charted in a health book the mom is responsible for.  That's the only health record the kids have and by the time a child is 5 or so, those little books are in pretty shabby condition.  Vaccinations, vitamin A, dewormers and basic health information was given out.  There were a few newborns and this constituted their first "well baby" check since the first check at birth.  Amazing. 

I totally enjoyed being out in the villages, watching how the moms interact, how the toddlers kept themselves amused with dirt and a pair of flip-flops and how old men hung out under the tree, ready to help with whatever was needed.  Some babies had "medicine" around their necks - little pouches of various concotions or skins that were the local, traditional medicine for one ailment or another.  Kids peed wherever they needed to, moms sat around on benches waiting for the nurses to log the kids' information in their health book and get it back to them, nurses shamed mothers for the condition of the books, goats bleated and men plowed the fields nearby and generally it was just life....under the baobab tree.  I just kept thinking how very different a child health clinic would look in the US - stressed moms who needed to get back to work, big strollers and well-packed diaper bags, toys and a sterile, confidential environment for receiving health care. 

Despite missing the kids desperately, it was a really great week at work and reminded me of exactly why I am here. 

A rural health clinic under the baobab treeA baby being weighed