Mbeya Adventures

Abasi and his friends had a few days off with, as ever, some interesting twists…

“Last weekend, which was a long weekend, we organised a trip of 12 of us. We had three cars and everyone contributed for fuel except the car owners. We started by going to Matema lake shore (lake Nyasa) which was so beautiful. We swam, did a boat trip to see coloured fish, saw old caves and finally we went to a water fall near the lake. It was amazing. In the evening we had karaoke and live singing, as I took my keyboard and subwoofer. We were cooking our own food as everyone had contributed and we bought everything we needed at Mbeya before we left. We also had geography and general knowledge quizzes and I was surprise to find that I was better than most of them in general knowledge to a point where almost all question ended up being answered by me. The others Googled my answers to check if I was wrong only to find out that I was right! The were wondering how I managed to know how to do a lot of things and still remain good at the hospital. I was teaching most of them to swim, I could play keyboard, cook, dance and I was a champion at table top football table!

On our way home a few minutes from the beach shore one of the cars has a puncture and they didn’t know how to change it. I was in front so they called me back. I was suprised to find that they were trying to lift the car by hand so that their driver could put a jack to lift the car up. I took my cars jack, lifted their car, changed the tyre in few minutes and soon we were in our way back.

We went to the Malawi border and we decided to pass by God’s bridge on our way to back to Mbeya city. Unfortunately the same car that had a puncture got into an accident near one of the bridges that had a sharp corner. He was trying to avoid a minor hole in the road while he was going fast so his car went into the bridges side guards, scratched the car, broke the steering rack and wheel. He managed to stop on the other side of the road but in the process he injured a pedestrian, hitting his leg though it was not a severe wound.

Because I was in front again, they called us for help. Luckily no one was injured in the car so we gave first aid to the injured pedestrian from the first aid box that was in my car and later I took him to the district hospital nearby. I showed my Id and helped to treat some of the patients as there was only one doctor on call that holiday and he had a lot of patients. The doctor had a little to drink too so he was super slow.

After my introduction, I helped him with a couple of patients at the outpatient clinic then we managed our patient together. We took him to the minor theatre where we cleaned the wound well and dressed it nicely. It was a soft tissue injury without complications or fracture. It was 3cm by 0.3cm and was not bleeding much.
I thanked the doctor who then took me to see around their hospital and we covered all the medical bills as the pedestrian had no health insurance. We took him and his brothers to their home, gave them medications and also little money for antibiotics and pain killers. We left our contacts and drove back to the accident site.
The car was towed to the nearest garage. We hired another car and by 11pm we arrived back at Mbeya safely.

After three days of adventure, I am the first on call again and I am writing this email while waiting for any patient that might show up. I’ve had two admissions so far. Lucky day. One more on-call to do before I am done with paediatrics. I’ve been coming in for regular calls and have been covering for calls that some doctors would not show up for. I never understand some internship doctors, full of excuses and because I am the chief intern its my duty to fill their places or find someone who can. They think that they are favouring themselves without realising that I am gaining more experience than them. The head of department knows that I have no problems coming in to fill in when anything happens and I do it always with joy.

I enjoy every moment of my internship as I get to be a better doctor everyday and every time I get to touch people’s lives in one way or another. I also gain many contacts from parents and people with different careers who ask for my contact details after helping them.”

Says it all really.