Zambia was very different from the
United States. I expected it to be different, but I was still surprised at how
unlike the States it was.
One of the big things that I noticed
in regards to the health care setting was the lack of supplies. Panadol (aka
Tylenol) was the medicine of choice for every patient. When there were patients from a car accident, I could not believe that all they had
received upon their arrival and stay, including those with multiple broken
bones, was Tylenol. Any open wounds received extra care by being covered with
gauze, from covering cuts or an amputated leg, to binding plaster of paris to
form a splint. It also surprised me that the damp dusting was done with gauze
because of the limited supply of rags.
Another shocking comparison was the
availability (or lack thereof) of doctors in the hospital. Most of the time if
we needed a doctor in the ward we had to hunt down the one doctor that was
working in the hospital for the day. I did not witness many emergencies, but if
there had been more than one urgent problem at a time, I do not know what would
have happened to the patients that were in critical need. It is very possible
that one or both patients could have died.
The nursing school was also
different in Zambia than what I have observed in the U.S.A. One big thing that
was unusual to me was the fact that all but three students were first year
students. When I asked Precious, the student I was shadowing, about this, she told me that the school only
had enough funding to allow new student entry every three years. Talk about
different than the states!
The format for lectures and
clinicals there was also strange to me. Doing class work for three months and
then clinicals for three months seemed odd. After I thought about it, I realized
that it was not all that strange, and seems to be working well for the
students. We get our core science classes done in the first two years, similar
to the way that they do them in the first three months. I prefer the way that
the U.S. mixes clinical experience with classroom learning, but the nursing
school in Zambia has a system that works just fine.
Lastly, there were two obvious
dissimilarities in the way that I worshiped in Zambia and the way that I
worship at home. First of all, after the service there was an interaction time
between an elder and the audience regarding the sermon. The elder would ask the
crowd questions to make sure that they had been paying attention and understood
the message. My church does not have interaction like that. Questions and comments
are accepted if someone wants to initiate it, but there is not a set time for
discussion. Secondly, a big difference was the way that the Zambians worshiped
with dancing. As a girl with Baptist roots, I have never experienced dancing in
worship like they did. Anyone can clap their hands, but much more than that is most of the time frowned upon. Personally, I loved it!
During the whole time I experienced
Zambia, I learned so much about the bigness of the world and the smallness of
how I view things. People every day do things differently from the way I am
used to, and it amazes me how that works.
