Life isn't predictable in Africa. My tour guide used the acronym - T.I.A. for This is Africa... no hot water? T.I.A. The power could go out at any time, hence needing to keep a headlamp close by; hot showers were never a given, I managed a decent system for showering in cold water to minimise time under it, lost track of the number of showers I had in the dark - perhaps a blessing not to see the other creepy crawlies in their with me; toilets may be just a hole or may have an actual toilet bowl, it was luxury to have toilet paper and soap; people didn't have change - I was given a postcard instead, or a masai family statue, or "I owe you" written on a receipt at the hotel, or just a sorry - no change today; had a lady put a mat down on the ferry in the aisle and lie down to sleep so people had to walk over her to get by today; half the things on the menu at restaurants are usually unavailable (then again I guess I'm lucky enough to have money to pay for food at restaurants); buses don't have a schedule - they stop when they see someone on the road they think might need a ride, we also drove around for over an hour to collect enough people to fill the bus before taking a longer bus ride so you never know when the "3hr" bus ride starts; traffic rules seem to be only a suggestion; city celebrations didn't have a time to start - ppl guessed that it's "sometime in the morning, perhaps around lunch" so you go and wait and watch, the cost of things are always negotiable - it's tiring to keep paying foreigner prices and having to try to bargain down to a more reasonable price; people relieve themselves anywhere; my plane on the way home was delayed because a car ran into it. It gives new meaning to the motto Hakuna Matata - it means no worries! (We sang this a lot on the safari)
It appears that the country's social paradigm, or way of viewing the world is that they can't control life - things just happen and you accept it the way it is. In contrast, studies on the factors that affect a person's happiness/satisfaction at work in Canada revealed that it was a sense of autonomy and control which was most important versus money and other factors I can't remember. Perhaps a lack of perceived control leads to a lack of drive to change things and progress. In Canada, we've created structure and organization so that things can be predictable and try to regulate things all the time. For example, infection control at the hospital notices that superbugs are spreading and decide that handwashing is the issue. Hence, they develop an education module and mandate that all employees complete it in hopes that after the module - handwashing will be improved and thus decrease the spread of infection. Of course, issues are not always as simple. I was speaking with a dutch physiotherapist in Gondar. She's been there for 7 months and has 3 months left. She spoke of how she felt she should try to implement more change at the hospital because there were so many things that could be improved, yet at the same time she felt like none of it would "stick" because people just didn't care. Hopefully she won't give up. I met a medical student at the airport who had just finished an internship in southern Ethiopia. She told me a story of a patient who had a wound on his arm. The doctor's order was that the dressings be changed 3x/day to keep the wound dry. Apparently the nurses only changed the dressings every 2-3 days. When asked why, they calmly said they don't have a lot of dressings so they couldn't change it so many times. The result? The man's arm had to be amputated. That's preposterous! Apparently the supplies were there - perhaps they would have needed to prioritise so some one else's wound might not get changed as frequently and thus heal slower, but I would think a person's arm would be worth it? So many things that could be improved. How to go about doing it? It seems to me that a paradigm shift is needed...
It appears that the country's social paradigm, or way of viewing the world is that they can't control life - things just happen and you accept it the way it is. In contrast, studies on the factors that affect a person's happiness/satisfaction at work in Canada revealed that it was a sense of autonomy and control which was most important versus money and other factors I can't remember. Perhaps a lack of perceived control leads to a lack of drive to change things and progress. In Canada, we've created structure and organization so that things can be predictable and try to regulate things all the time. For example, infection control at the hospital notices that superbugs are spreading and decide that handwashing is the issue. Hence, they develop an education module and mandate that all employees complete it in hopes that after the module - handwashing will be improved and thus decrease the spread of infection. Of course, issues are not always as simple. I was speaking with a dutch physiotherapist in Gondar. She's been there for 7 months and has 3 months left. She spoke of how she felt she should try to implement more change at the hospital because there were so many things that could be improved, yet at the same time she felt like none of it would "stick" because people just didn't care. Hopefully she won't give up. I met a medical student at the airport who had just finished an internship in southern Ethiopia. She told me a story of a patient who had a wound on his arm. The doctor's order was that the dressings be changed 3x/day to keep the wound dry. Apparently the nurses only changed the dressings every 2-3 days. When asked why, they calmly said they don't have a lot of dressings so they couldn't change it so many times. The result? The man's arm had to be amputated. That's preposterous! Apparently the supplies were there - perhaps they would have needed to prioritise so some one else's wound might not get changed as frequently and thus heal slower, but I would think a person's arm would be worth it? So many things that could be improved. How to go about doing it? It seems to me that a paradigm shift is needed...
No comments:
Post a Comment