Our 2 weeks in Kaleo

We (Brianne, Flora, Diana, Lindsay) have just returned from Kaleo which is just outside of Wa. We stayed at the clinic in the nursing residences. We had the support of Sister Edith, an amazing nurse who looked after us, Linda, our amazing chef, and Osman, our amazing driver! We had a great varied experience. We worked in the Kaleo clinic, the hospital in Jirapa, and did health talks for 4 different schools. We spoke about oral and personal hygiene to the primary students, HIV/AIDS to the junior and senior high schools, and nursing assessments to midwifery students at the college in Jirapa. The students love to participate and asked lots of questions. The only thing we wished was that we'd have had more resources (internet, textbooks) to get to know the subjects better. After the HIV/AIDS talks one of the nurses from the clinic offered free HIV testing, which was surprisingly quite popular with the students. Overall the talks all turned out great. We also took part in two healthy births at the clinic, both on the birthdays of our group members! A baby girl on Flora's birthday and a boy on Brianne's. On the other days we joined in on the annual mother to mother support group party and visited an orphanage.

On the weekend we went to Wechiau, to visit the hippo sanctuary. We left Friday afternoon and planned to spend the night on the roof of a very cute little lodge. All was going well, until at about 2am, we had a HUGE rainfall. It was amazing! We all went into a frenzy, throwing our mattresses off the roof and trying to find cover. Quite an experience! Early the next morning we left for the river, met our tour guides and got in our canoes. We were lucky and only a few minutes later we found the group of hippos hanging out in the water. Our tour guides got out of the boat and threw sticks at them. That was a little scary. We got lots of great pictures and enjoyed the change of scenery!

We are now back in Tamale and looking forward to the new experiences we will have working the hospital.