Call Me Doctor Sifa

July 31, 2013

  I came into Peace Corps and to my village with some ideas of what I thought would be good to try and accomplish while I was here, it is pretty safe to say I was idealistic… Not only was idealism the issue but also importance or lack of. For instance, one of the projects I wanted to start was community recycling- not to say I won’t try and do this later on, but the community would not really rally behind it since there really isn’t anything to do with the recycling once you collect it unless you can convince someone to drive across the island to the aluminum only recyling place.

      About a month ago during recess I saw one of my kids out of the corner of my eye. What made me double take and call the kid over was I saw he had about a three inch wide, and very deep hole in his arm near his elbow. Apparently, he had fallen off a horse a week prior and was just letting things work themselves out. By the time I saw it, it was already pretty infected and an unnatural yellow color. I took him to my house and cleaned it out and bandaged it with some of the medicine from my PC medkit (shhh don’t tell anyone, we aren’t really supposed to do that). I have been taking care of his arm since then and have talked to the PC Docotor to get help with what I should be doing, I even went to talk to the kid’s mom to inform her how to keep the wound clean. This not the first time I have had to put on a docotr’s cap and it won’t be the last, Tongan kids play hard and cry for about everything else but pain.

       This incident made me realize that the need for first aid knowledge at the school and in the community is pretty dire. A lot of the cuts, sores and burns could be treated with first aid skills. I am now working to bring those skills to my school and community. I guess the worse thing and the best thing about PC service is time- it takes so long to feel like you are doing anything (if ever) yet you have a lot of time to try new things and start things, the things that you have seena real need for in your community not just the things you thought would be a good idea before you lived at site.