Things that would be strange in the US are totally normal here. I notice it daily, but thought I would jot down a few instances.
I'm walking through the hospital and a nurse pulls me over, "I need you to meet someone." I think it's a patient's family or one of her friends. Instead, she leads me to a white person (a rarity). She says, "Hello I'm Paula. I'm a cardiologist from Italy." She asks if I mind if she gives some recommendations about one of our admitted patients: a 50 year old woman who came in with blood pressure of 240/120 who had been on IV antihypertensives combined with triple oral antihypertensive therapy for 3 days without any effect. What a perfect consult for a roaming cardiologist!
"I hear a mitral valve regurgitation murmur, have you considered lasix?" Firstly, I have no idea how she heard that with the nurse's stethoscope. Secondly, in this country I'm always happy to have a second opinion from any non-witchdoctor. Because I frequently want to have a cardiologist around, I ask "How long are you in Waterloo for?" She casually replies, "Oh, probably another 4 hours." I wonder if she could see the disappointment on my face. Unfortunately I didn't have another consult for her within 4 hours, but I certainly did within 12. Either way, both me and the patient were blessed by the roaming cardiologist.
A few weeks ago, right as the coronavirus fears were really picking up, we had a Chinese man walk into our hospital. He asked how many masks he would be allowed to buy. Now normally we don't sell medical supplies. But we have thousands of masks that it'll take us years to use and since we struggle to make payroll, for the right price you can have almost anything. After he made the purchase and left, Dr. Kabba noted, "I hope he doesn't know a coronavirus patient."
The next day he came back, wanting several hundred more masks. Then rumors started flying around the hospital. Is he hiding a coronavirus patient from the government? Is he trying to protect himself and his compound without telling anyone? Well, we're desperate for money so we sold him the masks. But when he arrived back on the 3rd day in a row, enough was enough.
Dr. Kabba notified the Ministry of Health, who called Immigration, who requested backup from local police. Soon the hospital was swarming with uniforms. Any man in a uniform is instantly interested by an Apoto (white person), and it's not always for good reasons. So Dr. Kabba recommended that Rachel and I make ourselves scarce. In the end, they discovered that he was just a shrewd businessman making a pretty profit in China. There was no risk of exposure. But with all the police around, they needed something to do. So they accused the hospital of selling government supplies. Dr. Kabba, Mr. Fobbie the business manager, Augustine the clinical supervisor, and Danquah the chaplain all got hauled to the police station. For several hours they were held and asked multiple times about exactly which staff member did the selling and where the masks came from. Once they learned it wasn't government cheese being sold, they still wanted to arrest a staff member. Dr. Kabba said, "If you want to arrest someone for alerting the Ministry of Health for the good of the country, you can arrest me. I was the one who gave the ok to sell the masks. I'm sure the news will find this story interesting." Needless to say, nobody was arrested. But I saw a lot fewer patients visiting the hospital that afternoon. I'm starting to believe the local version of "No good deed goes unpunished" is actually translated: "No one who calls the police in Africa goes un-harassed."
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