Many tears

This blog may very well have reached its end.  Even the relatively rosy representations here scare those close to me into silence.  I wonder if people in comfy America really want to hear how it is here.  I wonder if I were truly honest instead optimistic if the people reading would get it or if they would still think I was "doing great work" or doing some noble learning exercise.  Would social studies teachers still use the blog to enhance their classes?  

This society is corrupt beyond comprehension.  Jonathan is working at a clinic on the highway, a horrible dirt road the government doesn't care enough to fix.  Just repairing that road would change Liberia forever.  It would improve the economy, the health care system, education, everything.  But I digress.  At Jonathan's clinic a 30 yo woman with six kids came in for a birth control implant.  Reasonable and responsible.  The midwife who is also the officer in charge at the clinic told the woman the implant is free but the procedure to put it in is not.  Total lie.  He found out she had $250 LD but that wasn't enough for him.  To get more he said the lidocaine at the clinic was expired so she had to pay for the gas for him to go get some.  She didn't have the money.  Jonathan took him outside and offered to pay the gas money.  Jonathan figured the man had to go to the next town so he prepared to continue to see patients while the guy was gone.  Five minutes later he returned.  Turns out he went 200 yards to his own home to retrieve lidocaine he had stolen from the clinic to resell to women who are just trying to keep from breeding like rabbits in a society in which men satisfying their sexual drive is a right but women trying to support a family in which many of the men don't work is a complete struggle.  So one could say what could the guy do?  His pay is not always delivered on time and when it is he gets only 180 USD per month.  All well and good until you do the math.  His housing cost is about 3% of his pay.  That's it.  The man has money relatively speaking.  So why the stealing, the conniving for more money?  This is just one such story.  There are many.

The chief's son was never brought in for medical help.  He will die of malnutrition.  He doesn't have a chance.  Maybe he has a wasting disease that can't be treated here, but he was never given a chance.  The chief's wife brought him to town on market day.  She brought me a chicken, but she didn't bother to bring him to the clinc or the hospital.  His bones looked like fish bones poking through his skin.  He had sores in his mouth.  He was listless.  He was almost two but didn't have the strength to stand.  His mother is pregnant agan.  Maybe he has HIV.  Maybe he has something else.  Apparently it is possible the family just doesn't feed him enough.  The rest of the family eats.  The boy will die.  Maybe he would die anyway but I am deeply saddened by the fact that no one in his family cares enough to give him a chance.  What kind of society does that?  

The PA at the hospital was seen ducking out the back door to avoid having to that a patient brought in by ambulance.  A child in severe respiratory distress was brought to the hospital and not treated until morning.  

There is one doctor in the county.  He is the only one who can do a C section.  He was called in the morning about a pregnant patient at the hospital who had been in labor for over 15 hours and the baby had not dropped at all.  One of our docs looked at her and thought probably the pregnancy was ok, certainly the fetus was alive with good heart tones, but she had a tiny pelvis.  The doctor was called again and he did not want the patient transferred or to leave.  He wanted to see her.  He never came.  A dead baby was delivered the next morning.  I was at the health center where he works while the patient was waiting at the hospital.  That doctor was in his air conditioned office all day.  

These are just a few of the stories.  There are many more.  These are not rumors but are witnessed accounts.   We all have stories like them, so to say we are doing good work?  No we aren't.  Maybe one or two patients will get more treatment than they otherwise would.  Maybe one or two won't die from pneumonia because Dr. Joe brought some antibiotics from home and gives them freely.  Maybe a solar panel bought by Chrissy will allow vaccines to be chilled in a clnic 2 1/2 hours away, but that will be the extent of it.  Everything else is just pissing in a cold, corrupt ocean.  There will be no sustainable change made.  None.