My Weekend in Tema

The display is for Heinekens selling for about 2 Ghana Cedis which is less than a $1.50 :)

Accra Shopping Mall

Our feast (after the fufu)

Lunch at Imperial Pekking Chinese Food (Left to Right: Kofi, Reggie, Thomas, Wesley and my Auntie Agatha)

My Auntie Theresa pounding fufu

Reggie and Wesley

Welcome to Tema

Thomas, Kofi and Wesley

Fufu

Sorry about the long, long delay! I have been without internet for over 2 weeks now! I have SO much to update! About my first day in surgery....it was incredible! I didn't get to scrub in during my first day in surgery (however I did get to eventually! :D) but it was an amazing experience. Sorry for those who aren't interested in blood and guts but I was just a few feet away from the operating table and it was the coolest thing I've ever seen. Even if I don't get into medical school and do not become a doctor it will always be the coolest thing I have ever seen. I mostly observed myomectomies - which is the removal of uterine fibroids and hysterectomies - the removal of the entire uterus, and what I like most about surgery is that although we have so much technology now, the art of medicine and surgery is centuries old and the mechanisms are still almost the exact same. In North America now a lot of surgeries are done through your belly button (like the removal of your appendix) to avoid unecessary scarring but in Ghana they're still done with a simple cut, dabbing away of blood, reaching in to take out the fibroid or uterus and sewing everything back up. It was so simple and practical yet very impressive since it took such fine motor skills to neatly sew everything back up. However, consistent with the theme throughout the hospital, there is a serious lack of doctors and technology even in their operating rooms! There are only so many anaesthesiologists so only so many can be performed in one day. The machines that let you know the patient's vitals during surgery are scarce. In the gynaecology theater there were only two machines, so only 2 surgeries at a time could be performed. Then one machine broke down so what they were doing was they would perform surgery in one theater and then prep a patient in the other, and wheel the machine over to that theater to use while they cleaned the first one, to be most efficient. However in wheeling the machine back and forth the cords were becoming loose...I'm not sure exactly why but what started happening was the machine would turn on and off during surgery! So they stopped performing surgeries unless in case of a life threatening emergency - I actually missed my last day of rotation in the theater because it was closed. It was all over the Ghana news that Korle Bu is supposed to be the biggest hospital in Ghana and they can't perform surgery for those who need it but are not dying. It's quite disturbing but it's the reality they face.
So my first day in theater was Friday the 13th, on Saturday my Auntie Agatha picked up Kofi and I to spend the weekend with her in Tema. Tema is a city less than an hour east of Accra. We met her kids for the first time, my cousins Thomas (7 years old), Reginald (4 years old) and my Auntie Theresa's son Wesley (4 years old- they all live together). She showed us around Accra a bit and took us to the Accra Shopping Mall, and treated us to Chinese food. Then the next day my Aunties prepared us this delicious feast with jollof rice, grilled chicken and fish and fufu - which  is a Ghanaian staple. It's kind of hard to describe but to make fufu you pound cassava (yams) and plantain together (it's tough work) and then you put it in a bowl with soup - either groundnut soup (which is peanut butter soup) or palmnut soup which is a native nut to Ghana, or goat meat soup etc. Then you add chicken or beef or fish and eat it with your hands. It's delicious but I tried fufu for the first time when I was about 6 years old, so I'm sure it is an acquired taste. They sell this fufu mixture you can cook with water on the stove top - for those Ghanians away from home that don't have a special spot in their backyard to pound fufu with their fufu-pounding-stick. It was a terrific weekend.