Arriving at our destination we made a number of trips out to health facilities, but the stand out will be the Comunity-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) which we travelled for a number of kms off made roads and into the wilderness into what felt like a remote village with a single health clinic that provides service for villages miles around. These villages are mud and grass hut villages, the real deal. If someone is really ill and can't walk to the clinic, they have a motorbike they use to deliver supplies, and if it's more serious, they strap the patient to the rider of the bike, and motorbike them to the clinic. Forget ambulances, they couldn't get out here anyway! They have one small fridge out here to house certain medications, i.e. vaccines, powered by a gas cylinder. Outside that, no electricity and water comes from a manual hand pump. We were served water in little plastic pillows, which is filtered, easier to transport and less waste out here - no bottled water here folks. Mobile coverage is available, but has a habit of dropping out from 1 week to a month at a time. In those situations, when supplies need to be ordered they jump on the motorbike to take written orders into the district centre. You can see pics of all this on the "More Pics" Blog entry. I can't get the iPhone and iPad to sync photos on the blog app reliably, so I'm just uploading them separately. It's better than nothing though. The trip to the CHPS centre was a humbling experience.
I didn't know we were going out here or I would have brought lots of chuppa-chumps, as it is I handed the two I had over the the head nurse to do with what she pleased.
From here we headed back to the district health centre which you can see here:
The district Health centre in the Volta region
We managed to grab lunch at 4pm, so it became dinner as well, and was worth the wait for the views over the Volta region at the Sky Plus hotel and resort. Sky Plus sits on top of one of the taller hills where we were, hence the views and welcome breeze. See the 'More Pics' blog entry for a pic.
By 5.30pm we had finished our rounds, and it was time to start the journey home, once dusk settled and night came on, things got rather exciting, in part because there are no street or road lights out here, not even reflectors on the road. So when I say dark, I mean invisible! Excitement covered everything from the normal avoiding goats and chickens, to people just appearing in the middle of the road, walking home, or a broken down truck blocking our lane and requiring heavy breaking and swerving from us. But, the most exciting was the games of chicken! Maybe it's because they drive on the RHS of the road here, or that they drive in the middle of the road often to avoid pot holes, but I still have fingernails in the dash from watching a set of headlights coming straight at us, to only veer to the side in the last minute before contact. And believe me, we were hurtling down the road. Thank goodness one of our team members, Adaeze, made plenty of light conversation which was a welcome distraction from the high speed assault on the highway.
There are surprisingly few accidents on Ghanaian roads, and they are very tolerant drivers. The beeping of horns is used as a form of hello more often than a warning, and rarely (if ever) out of frustration. In fact, since being here I havn't seen anyone argue - maybe it's the heat, it's too hot to argue :)
We made it home by 9pm, phew, what a day! No one can complain we are not busy :)
- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.
Location:Volta Region, Ghana
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