blondevoyagebyabean-blog

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Now posting my blog on wordpress!! Follow me if you like!

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Death by my laptop

This morning Amy, Hannah, and I went to the War Memorial Hospital. It’s right up the street. We went to the vaccination clinic there. Amy and Hannah wanted to go because Amy is doing her project on postpartum depression and Hannah is doing her project on exclusive breastfeeding. They wanted to get some general information from the nurses and doctors there to help prepare their research proposal. I wanted to go to see some little babes! We learned about the vaccination process from the nurses and got to watch babies get weighed and have their vaccinations given to them. The nurses and mothers were all so open and did not mind us just popping in and hanging out for a few hours. That would deff not fly in the US. We would need like a hundred forms to allow us to shadow people for like an hour. Everyone is very chill here. Very West Coast Vibe, ya feel? Anyways, one baby was screaming bloody murder when having his vaccinations given to him. It made me think of South Africa days working with the little babes there. This was this one boy, Daniel, who I would give his medicine too and he HATED it. He would scream bloody murder; run around in his crib to avoid me, and literally two people had to hold him down to give him his oral medication. He was so cute though.

Also at the vaccination clinic this morning, one baby was getting weighed (they put the babies in like a tote bag and hang the bag on scale to weight them) and he ended peeing everyone. Luckily we were all sitting right next to the scale and were in the splash zone! Gotta love babies. After that visitation was over, it was back to our little room to do more research! Right before lunch my track pad on my laptop decided to stop working. It’s happened before so all I did was reset my computer and it went back to working! Yay.

For lunch I had yams and Groundnut soup made by our favorite cook Irene. Groundnut soup is pretty much a peanut sauce with a lot of spice. It was good. After lunch I went back to my room to take a nap because I didn’t sleep well the night before because the power went out and I was reading a book about an insane asylum in the 1930s and I realized that I am really afraid of insane asylums. Like no thank you. Anyways so with the power out and the insane asylum in my head, there were so many noises that they freaked me out so I did not sleep peacefully. So a nap was needed. When I got to my room I remembered I had to send Dr. Depbuur my updates from my proposal so I pulled out my laptop and my track pad was not working once again. Great. I headed out to look for Bernard who is the IT guy and after 30 minutes of looking for him (he was still at lunch) and freaking out in my head I found him and he gave me a computer mouse to hook up to my computer! I went and hooked it up and it worked perfectly! No problems at all with the mouse anymore.BUTTTTT, Now. My. Keyboard. Isn’t. Working. LOL. Things just can’t be easy can they? So I decided to update the software on my computer and see if that works. Nope it doesn’t. So now I’m really frustrated and crying. Because, like, of course, my computer decides to crap out when I’m in a lower-middle income country. Like why couldn’t this happen when I could easily walk to an apple store. Welcome to my life. Since I had nothing to do really because I sent my edits to Dr. Depbuur and am just waiting for his responses, I take my nap instead of continuing to worry about my laptop.

After my nap and some reading I head back to the room with my computer in tow. I am hoping that it just needed some time alone to decide to work again. I open up my laptop and…yeah the keyboard still isn’t working. I can’t even get into my computer because I can’t enter my password to login. So I turn my computer off completely and leave it alone until this morning. Luckily Ali brought her laptop and her Ipad (I also have an Ipad, but did not think I would need both apple products with me in rural Ghana). She let me use her Ipad and told me I could use it for the rest of the trip if my computer still hated me. God bless her.

 Tensions were high when I went to bed last night. I sent good vibes to my computer and slept like a log. When I woke up this morning, I was afraid to see if my computer worked. Should I have been afraid? Yes because my keyboard still was not working. How did I deal with it? Put Drake on repeat #takecarealbum. I start googling on my phone how to fix my keyboard and one said a Bluetooth keyboard. I did not have a Bluetooth keyboard but maybe Bernard had a random keyboard with USB connectivity! I went to bother him again (he’s deff sick of seeing me) and he didn’t have a keyboard. Just when I was ready to give up, I head to system preferences to look at the keyboard option and everything looks fine. Then I click on the mouse option and decided to unplug my USB mouse and OUT. OF. NOWHERE!! Everything started working. My track pad was working. My keyboard was working. I am happily typing all of this with ease on my laptop! I am so relieved but also like confused because what happened? I don’t want it to happen again so fingers crossed it doesn’t!

 I’ve had this laptop since freshman year in college. Since 2012. We have been in a 5-year relationship (thats like 80 years in apple product time). Relationships are hard ya know. You gotta work through some stuff. There are hard times and good times. This was a hard time, but we made it through. I think our relationship is stronger because of it. I also think that when I’m back in the states, our relationship may need to re-evaluated (aka look into a new laptop, jkay not ready to drop $1000), but I deff can’t go through that stress again. Keep us in your prayers and send positive vibes to my computer for the rest of this trip because IT NEEDS IT. Alright, I sound crazy so it’s time to stop writing this blog.

My life is never not entertaining. At least not in my eyes!

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

All of the things for 7 cedis (minus the phone),  Sept 10, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Organic

Yesterday, Sunday, Amy and I went to the market! We wanted to take a break from writing our research proposal and to get out of ‘office’ because it is a draining environment. As we were walking to the market I hear a dog barking like crazy! I look around and I realize that another dog was being tied up by someone. Tied at his front legs and back legs and his jaw was tied shut. It looked like a pig ready for cooking. It was really sad to see. As we are walking, all of the taxis keep asking us if we need a ride but we reply that were fine. They keep stopping to ask becasue Amy and I are dripping in sweat. We walked literally 10 feet and sweat is pouring off our faces. It was about 95 degrees yesterday and we were in direct sunlight. Everyone must've thought we were going to pass out on the side of the rode.

The market is the same old. A lot of stands selling vegetables, beans, rice, yams, bras, shoes, tshirts, matches, bowls etc. Its all pretty random lol. I ended up getting some green peppers, tomatoes, and eggs at the market. This time my eggs were chicken eggs! #holla Guess how much I spent for all of that. 7 Cedis! Which is like $2. Unreal. I got 4 green peppers, a million tomatoes, and 5 eggs just for $2. And all of it is actually organic! America needs to figure out their organic pricing on food items becasue it should not be costing as much as it does. If I bought the same thing in the states, it would like $12 or probably more. I don't really know. I never bought a lot of produce because it was expensive!! Look out for the picture of the food just because I am so hyped about it!

As we were walking back to our house, I notice that dog that was being tied up earlier (This is gonna be so sad sorry everyone) was grilled and charred. They cooked a dog. UNREAL. I wanted to cry and vomit at the same time. I will never eat meat here. I haven't yet, but that whole situation just reinforced that x100. I want to say all these stray dogs but I know one of them will probably give me rabies, or ringworm or something. Poor little pups. #sad

On a personal, happier note, I have finished writing my proposal! I am currently just working on edits and should be sending it in on Wednesday to IRB. #wootwoot

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Dinner at The Provision Spot, Sept 9, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Bike ride, Sept 9, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

The kids love Amy, Sept 9, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Our first bike ride in Navrongo, Sept 9, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Ali crying becasue she misses cheese, Sept 9, 2017 (tip: avoid all food videos on any social media so that you don’t get sad)

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Saturdaze

Today the majority of the morning was spent working on my research protocol. I want to have this done by the beginning of the week so that I can submit it for IRB approval ASAP. I have the logistics of the research all figured out but now I just have to write the background information about the problem aka the NCD problem. I will hopefully get that all done tomorrow! Woo!

Around 5 o’clock we all decided to ride our bikes (YAH! we have bikes now!) to get food for dinner. We wanted to head to that noodle stand we went to last weekend with Esmond but we had no idea where it was so we were just aimlessly biking around the town. We realized that we headed out to early to get food, so the noodle stand was not set up yet. We left so early because we are all too afraid to ride our bikes in the dark (well at least I am, I cant speak for anyone else lol). Biking back and forth through town was a lot of fun. The wind was in my hair, the red dust was all in my face, and my brakes didn't really work! Also I am really bad at stopping on a bike and then starting up again. This became a problem when a motor bike literally just cut me off to drop off his friend. I had to quickly brake and almost fell to the side. I wanted to get around the motor bike fast but because I have problems starting the bike ride it took me what felt like an hour to get up and going on my bike. People just stared. My face became bright red with embarrassment. Just a day in the life you know!! #livinthedream

We ended up getting food at The Provision Spot, at least I think its called that. It also happened to be right across to the entrance to the research center #convenient. We headed inside and we were told that they had Banku or just plain rice for dinner. We all ended up getting Banku. Banku is a signature Ghanaian dish that is a mixture of fermented corn and dough. It turns into a paste when mixed together and they served it with Ocra stew. You are suppose to use your hands to eat this dish. You take the Banku and dip it in the stew. It reminded me of Ethiopian food. The dinner was good though! Very interesting, so I can’t really explain the taste unless you’ve had it. After we just rode back home and now Amy and I are back in the office pretending like were doing real work, but we’re not.

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Working hard in the office or hardly working, Sept 7, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Weekly check in (2)

Week 2 is coming to a close so here are my takeaways!

- when the kids come knocking at your door at 7 in the morning, or at anytime for that matter, don't move a muscle or make a sound so that they think you're asleep or not home

- put food scraps in a bag in the fridge so that there are no bugs in the kitchen #compost

- pour your boiled tap water into an empty water bottle so that you can save yourself from carrying home a new case of water every week

- embrace African time or at least try to

- lean in close when listening to someone speak so that you can hear while simultaneously making them feel uncomfortable #sorrynotsorry #selectivehearing

- make sure the eggs you buy are chicken eggs and not ginnyfowl eggs

- make sure you have a sense of humor because it will be the only way to get through daily situations

- people aren't lying when they say people from Ghana are the nicest

- when you are in a bad mood you can't avoid saying hello to people so just plaster a smile on and wave

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

*Breathe In* *Breathe Out*

Alright ya’ll, today has been hella stressful and its only 1:00 pm.  We met with IRB approval and we were told about what we needed to include in our research proposal. That was pretty straightforward which I was happy about. We did a project last semester where we wrote up a whole research proposal and the IRB proposal format is just the same! So I can totally get that done.

After we talked with Dr. Debpuur and decided on our research topics. Remember how I said I wanted to look at school based sex education and contraceptive use in adolescents? Yeah well I am not going to do that anymore #lol #sick. I wanted that to be a quantitative study but it will be too hard to get the numbers, as well as, consent from the schools and the parents in the time frame I will have left after IRB approval (at least that’s what the Doc said). So! My project is now on looking at the hospitals and health centers healthcare workers ability to handle the care of NCDs (non-communicable diseases). NCDs are on the rise here in Sub-Saharan Africa so it is important to assess whether these health centers are able to provide the correct quality of care to their patients. In most cases, these health centers are used to caring and treating for communicable diseases, such as infectious diseases, and not caring for non-communicable disease, like diabetes or hypertension.  I want to assess healthcare workers knowledge as well as the protocol that the facility has in place to screen for NCDs. It will be a qualitative study. I will be going to 8 health centers and interviewing 2 health workers from each. I will have a total of 16 interviews to perform. At least thats the plan.

I am stressed out because I have no control about the logistics. I am a very scheduled person especially when it comes to my schoolwork. I need things to work efficiently. My problem here is I don’t have control over how efficient my data collection will go. In my mind, once I receive approval from IRB, I can conduct all 18 interviews in one week. But Dr. Debpuur is not so sure about that ‘logistically’. Arghhh. I just need to relax. I need to calm down my Northeast attitude and mindset and just let things fall as they may. I keep telling myself that things will get done because they have too! #fingerscrossed

I will be spending all weekend fretting over my proposal and not having a stress free minute until I hand it in to IRB. Sorry I should’ve told everyone what IRB stands for. It’s the International Review Board they have at the center. The board is put in place to ensure that each study is ethical and will cause no harm to the participants involved.

Also if you want to know more about my project just ask and I will also probably be posting my research proposal once it gets approved so that you all feel involved!

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Rotations: Day 4

Today was the last day of rotations for us! Whew! I found myself at the National Health And Demographic Surveillance System with William, Jamel, and Enos. This branch of the research center has all of the data. They go out into the field every three months to constantly update the demographic information of the region. This information gets updated every 2 years but field workers are constantly putting in information into their database. The main events that field workers have to report on are marriages, pregnancies, migration in, migration out, births, and deaths. They want to make sure that they have every person accounted for. This information is useful to everyone here doing any kind of research. Research requires participants. In order to find those participants, people can come to the NHDSS and have inclusion and exclusion criteria for their population. Then they will perform their selected form of sampling and voilà, they have their sample population and can begin data collection. The NHDSS has been collecting demographic information from this region since 1993. The area being looked at is divided into 5 zones, 247 clusters, 32,500 households in 140 villages. They have 180 key informants that help obtain the information needed from each household. 

I learned about this information twice. Jamel explained it to me earlier in the day but then William also felt the need to explain it to me as well. Lucky me! They explained about capturing the ‘events’ in a community. They showed me all of the forms that need to be filled out and how many times they double check the registers information about people in each compound. Its, again, a lot of checks and balances which is never a bad thing! It is also very tedious work but I think its cool because it is pretty much the backbone of a lot of the research done here.

Tomorrow we all head to the IRB office to hear about the requirements for our research proposal. That will be stressful. Tomorrow will also be stressful because we are talking to Dr. Debpuur about research topics and finally we can finalize them. So I hope our research ideas get accepted so that we can begin writing our proposal!

When we tell everyone working here what we are doing and how long we are here for they laugh and say, “No, no, no, you guys should be here for years to do this!” We laugh on the outside and say “oh well, we’ll see what happens!” but on the inside we are agreeing with them. Here’s to hoping for successful research!!!

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Rotations: Day 3

Today’s rotation brought Amy and I to the clinical department at the center. Amy and I decided to be together during the rotations because we feel bad having everyone have to say the same thing over and over each day. Also everyone is so busy and has many projects to manage so we don’t want to take up a lot of their time because it is very valuable!

At the clinical department, we talked with Dennis, who told us that there are 4 major projects that are happening currently and in the works. They go by the names of EPIMAL 002, EPIMAL 005, CHPS NCDs, and Malaria SP. I’ll briefly explain them all and of course I find them all very interesting so that’s a good thing considering they are some of the main topics in the world.

EPIMAL 002 and EPIMAL 005 are both related to the recent makings of the malaria vaccine.  A new malaria vaccine was put into place recently made by GSK (a pharm company) that has a 40-50% effectiveness at preventing children from getting severe malaria. Since the vaccine is new, Ghana was selected to perform a trial implementation of the vaccine to get more data and results and insight into this new vaccine. However before the actual implementation of the vaccine takes place, preliminary studies need to take place and that’s where EPIMAL 002 and 005 comes into play. I don’t actually know what the acronym stands for by the full title for 002 that Dennis gave us (and what I could hear) is, “Prospective study to estimate incidence of diseases specified as adverse events of special interest and other adverse events leading to hospitalization and of meningitis of infants and young children in Sub Saharan Africa prior to the implementation of the new malaria vaccine.” It’s a mouthful. Basically what EPIMAL 002 is working to do is to look at the areas where the malaria vaccine pilot will take place and actively and passively survey the children in the area for any adverse events (sicknesses) they may go through and record them. They want to know if children get certain sicknesses and if they get certain vaccines. This information will be useful when they administer the new malaria vaccine to see if it brings on any new adverse events in the children (sicknesses that they haven’t dealt with before or sicknesses they shouldn’t get because they have a vaccine for it). They want to know the burden of sicknesses in the children before the malaria vaccine is implemented to then have a full understanding if the malaria vaccine has any issues. I rambled a lot right there so I hope that all makes sense lol. They are actually starting this project next week so the whole clinical building was a little hectic. Now EPIMAL 005 is also prior to the malaria vaccine pilot study. This study will be looking at children fro 6-8 weeks during the peak malaria months over 9 years. They want to understand the burden of malaria and its intensities in the district. With his knowledge, they will be able to monitor the malaria vaccines effectiveness once it gets implemented.

There is one more malaria study that is being done, but it is completely separate from the EPIMAL and malaria vaccine study. It is called SP Impact. SP is the acronym for the malaria prophylaxis that people take here. Malaria prophylaxis is something that I have to take while I am here in Ghana as well. It’s an added precaution to avoid getting the infectious disease. This SP Impact study is looking at mother to child malaria transmission. Usually a pregnant woman has to take 3 doses of SP during pregnancy and when they give birth. However, this study upped the dosage to 5.  They want to determine if this higher dosage is more effective to prevent the transmission of malaria from mother to child. They monitor this by taking a woman’s placenta tissue at birth and capillary blood from the infant.

The last project they are working on is called CHPS PEN (I think its PEN but I couldn’t really understand him or hear him). CHPS is a Community based Health and Planning Service, which allows for health workers to go into the community and provide services instead of the community coming to health facilities because it is not always easily accessible. CHPS PEN is looking into shifting focus from just providing communicable disease care to including non-communicable disease care to the community. This is important because NCDs are on the rise around the world and are creating a double burden of disease. Usually the burden of disease is just that of infectious means, but now, cardiovascular issues, hypertension, diabetes etc. are coming into the picture. CHPS PEN is looking to make sure that community health workers have the education and resources to be able to help the community combat non-communicable diseases. They want to be able to empower the community health workers to screen for non-communicable diseases. Right now they are currently doing interviews with community members, community health workers, and health supervisors to see what the gaps in service for non-communicable diseases are. With that information, they hope to provide the resources necessary to close the gap and be able to screen for non-communicable diseases and provide services early on. Again I feel like I am rambling about this project so I am sorry if it is not making any sense!

If you want to know more about any of these you can ask me and I will happily answer!

#blondevoyage

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Storm clouds rolling through, Sept 3, 2017

[blondevoyagebyabean-blog]

Rainy season in Ghana, Sept 3, 2017