"I'm Listening..."

We’ve had quite a restful weekend. We’d planned to give an interdepartmental presentation again on Saturday but had to postpone due to lack of a venue. There are really only two options: one is the main conference hall which is hosting a 4 week long Obs and Gynae course, the other is the lecture theatres in the school of nursing which are currently hosting exams.

One of the Comboni activities is the running of the Catholic Radio station here in Juba, which sometimes runs programmes on health related issues, so one of the Brothers invited David and I to make a guest appearance. So we went on their radio show for an hour and talked about some things. Often questions from the interviewer were slightly vague, such as “Any comments on first aid?” and “what do you have to say about drug prescriptions?” but we had fun nonetheless, usually working back to importance of hand washing, anti-mosquito measures, take your drugs as instructed, the importance of crash helmets for motorcyclists etc. We also had some live phone-in callers which was novel!

Otherwise, things are ticking over without much to report: Ward rounds are ward rounds, acute abdomens are acute abdomens and jobs are jobs - we’ve actually been quite light on admissions in surgery for the past couple of days which is a nice break. Other work is progressing slowly – I reckon you probably need to schedule at least 3 meetings which won’t happen before you get one that does: a process which may well take several days.  Teaching attempts are often frustrated by people not turning up which is a little annoying. Having said that, a few times today I’ve been stopped around the hospital by various house officers asking when the next tutorial is because they’re very helpful. So there we are – take we just take the encouragement, hold on to the good and ignore the rest.

James