September 9, 2007

The nurse is back today, and it’s much better now. (The nurse had been sick for a little while).

Here’s a funny story: I saw a weird thing flopping on the ground, and I thought it was a snake, but it was a weird shape and it had no head. I looked closer and it looked to me like a lizard tail. It was!!! I guess I stepped on a lizard without knowing it. So, then I start freaking out because I thought it must be dead, so I looked around for it, and I found the lizard a few feet away, without his tail! I just couldn’t handle it! I was screaming! I thought I would have to kill it to put it out of its misery, but Uncle Alan came and told me that they lose their tails all the time—it’s a defense. If someone steps on it, they just drop off their tail. So I felt better. The tail flops around for a long time to distract the “predator”. That was so gross! We also accidentally slammed a lizard in our door. It’s been like four days and it’s still stuck to it because we think it’s gross and we won’t touch it to throw it away!

They were pulling teeth in the clinic today. I peeked in the room through a crack in the door and saw three people holding down a boy while the nurse’s husband who is also a nurse, tried to inject a needle into his gums. The poor boy was screaming and yelling so loud. It was awful. I felt like Christy in those movies when she first arrives at the mission and they are doing surgery on Alt’s head. I felt like a real missionary. But it was awful.

My official job now that things are back to normal at the clinic is to fill prescriptions. I’m basically a pharmacist. They examine the patients, decide what they need, give me the paper, I go to my little room full of drugs and count the pills out and put them into little baggies and then I give them to the receptionist and she gives them to the patients and they pay her.

Did I tell you I have been sick? We went into Lusaka last Tuesday and there is a Subway there. I ate a sub-sandwich. It’s not the same as Subway back home, though, and it made me feel queasy after. So, until today, I haven’t really been able to eat much. The thought of food makes me want to barf, and the smell of the food in the cafeteria made me feel really sick.