Saturday morning began at 12 am when Dr. Alexander called Meg and Laura in for an emergency C-section. It was Laura’s first time scrubbing for a surgery – ever. Dr. Alexander said she might as well go all in rather than observe in the corner. But observe she did. The surgical team had Laura stand right up at the operating table to assist Dr. Alexander and within 2 minutes, she had to take a seat in the corner. She tried to stand back up again and again, but within a couple of minutes she had to sit. She tried not to be too hard on herself – it was about 100 degrees in there and they were dressed head to toe in caps and gowns. Mosquitoes were buzzing around their heads and Dr. Alexander wasn’t wearing shoes.
Meg stayed to help with baby resuscitation (and perhaps to make sure Laura didn’t fall over) and it’s a good thing she did because right after the first was born, a second baby was delivered in the Maternity ward and a third was scheduled for an emergency C-section.
In between Cesareans, Laura and Dr. Alexander quickly went to suture a nasty gash from a late night Boda Boda (motorcycle) accident. It was now well past 1 am.
The second C section went much better for Laura. In fact, by the end her stomach let her stand long enough to help the surgeon stitch everything up! Now 3 am and 3 babies later, they finally went home to get a couple hours of sleep.
Our kitchen with Meg & Northe getting ready for a night on the town.
Saturday night
When hiking up the backdrop of Mutomo last week, we met two Swedish who are doing a research project on technology use in the schools here. They invited us to go to a hotel/bar called Stress Free on Saturday night. Since Meg and Laura’s morning was quite full of stress, the three mzungu’s thought it might be nice to enjoy dinner there as well. It was amazing. Roasted goat, roasted potatoes, rice, chicken – and it fact dinner at Stress-free also turned out to be Soy-free! (Laura is allergic to Soya).
The night proceeded to get more and more interesting after a mistaken bottle service (the waitress brought the three of us a liter of gin, which we returned of course) and a crowd of celebrities (really just a man who goes by David Beckham). When Northe was introducing himself to the new friends, Richard was mistaken for ‘Mr. Fishwood’ and Meg was mistaken for I don’t even know what. The three mzungu’s learned that when someone asks you to go for a ‘Quickie’ they really mean a quick dance on the dance floor and phrase ‘Thanks a million’ never gets old. As the night grew to morning again, the manager of the bar insisted the we be escorted home. And so he had Joshua, a colleague of Northe’s on the maintenance crew, escort them back to their home in exchange for a beer.
Good thing we ate our sukuma wiki – we for sure extended the week.
Sophie says, "I like the picture of Anutie Meggie and Uncle Northe. Is that what you wore when you went out? Did Laura go out with you? It is kinda cool that you got three babies on one night. Was it all the same Mommy? Too bad they couldn't wait until Mother's Day."
ReplyDeleteWhat do people wear during the day? Is there an implied dress code that you are expected to follow not to offend?