A visit to a medical facility in Kigali

Hi again,

Time to continue my story! So this is, with a few weeks of delay, the story of my first night and second day in Rwanda.

Midnight had passed, so this event occurred on August 9th. Eric walked me back to the centre pastoral Saint Paul, shit happened upon arrival. It was dark and I was quite tired so I was just following. Suddenly I was bleeding in the bottom of a hole which was actually the deepest part of a water evacuation channel. I scratched my legs and my lip was bleeding as hell. I didn’t dare to look at first so I washed my other wounds first. . He said yes, so I dared look. I never saw a lip so huge but my teeth where straight. So I went straight to bed and woke up several times with my mouth full of blood. Chill nice first night in Rwanda.

I was not sure if I would be able to stay a second night at the pastoral center of Saint Paul but I didn’t really have much courage left to move. So at 8 am I went to ask the nun if it was possible for another night even though the day before she told me it wouldn’t. She was choked when she saw how I looked… She told me she thought it was not possible but that I should come back at 10 am and that I should go to the hospital next door also. I went back to my room to pack (not easy with one hand) and it took me until 10am! At 10 I heard good news: I could book the room for an extra night. I went straight to the hospital thinking they would just disinfect the thing and it would be over!

Critical error. I saw a first nice doctor who spoke enough French to communicate, who told me I would first see one doctor for my leg and then the dentist for my mouth. The helper took me to the first doctor but this one was the worse fool ever. Instead of looking at my leg he just pushed me down and start stitching my lip. Out of the 3 anesthesia pricks he gave me not one was right so he just started sewing which felt as if he was going straight through my nerves. After minutes of pain he stopped and send me to another doctor cause I was a problem and he couldn’t fix it.

After some administrative fuss and walking around the polyclinique a few times I finally managed to meet the –english speaking- specialist I was supposed to meet. She looked at me and told me I needed stiches! I was very astonished, I told het I already got some but she couldn’t find them. That crazy fool really messed up : het hurt me and then took everything out. I got a 4^th shot of anesthesia and turned out the previous guy did it all wrong. This time it didn’t hurt and the sewing was done in a few minutes. !

The stiches went loose after a long week and after 10 days they just fell out. Anyway, I still spend the next two week eating a lot of bananas and yogourt cause I was forbidden of any non-soft food but everything seemed to heal well. This story is not over though, the dentist promises me huge problems in either a week or 5 years.

This is what I fell in !