Sicky (no I don’t have malaria)

Tuesday, August 17

I woke up to cloudy, rainy-looking skies. About a half an hour before we loaded up the van to head out to the clinic, it started drizzling. By the time we arrived and got all set up, it was pouring. As we waited for the mothers to arrive we all sat around chatting. The field workers who are working on this project along with me are all girls about the same age as me. It was such fun to sit around and chat and laugh with them. They are all very interesting, intelligent and funny young women. One of our funnier conversations was about baby carrying. I mentioned how comfortable the babies look sitting on their mother’s backs, it’s like they’re sitting in a chair. One of the girls said that it is because of how African women are shaped, and she made a sort of “S” shaped motion with her hand. I replied that with my lack of a backside, a baby would probably slide right off my back! The gals thought this was hilarious! You can tell that these girls have formed some great friendships while all living at the study house during the weekdays and it is so fun to be included in their banter.

Around 10:00am Anna got a call saying that the clinics where we recruit the women from are closed today and that we would not be able to get any study participants. We had to pack up everything and return back to the house. Because the other field workers had already gone out, I could not join them to observe some of the other aspects of the study. This left me with some time on my hands.

As I was thinking up another plan for the rest of the day, I started feeling a little queasy and just generally not well. I think I took on the Ghanaian food a little too quickly, because I ended up spending the rest of the evening in bed, feeling ill L Before I went to bed I took some over-the-counter medicine I had brought along with me, which seems to have worked wonders.