TIA continued. Not in Kansas...

June 3

 

Today I learned that you wouldn't believe the things people can carry on their heads. Baskets, nuts, towels stacked five feet high, bags of sand, entire palm trees, construction materials, dozens of eggs, half-empty trays of food. It's incredible.

 

What struck me today are both the incredible barriers between Sierra Leone and the simplest efficiencies of North American life. We drove to a hospital, Lakka. It was at the end of a thirty minute long, pothole stricken dirt road (still in Freetown). At no point along the road were there less than ten people in view. There were construction sites, campfires, shacks, goats, pigs, kids, adults, motorbikes, eighteen-wheelers with bumpers tied on by rope, little Volkswagon hippie vans emblazoned with religious slogans and carrying small armies of people. It was an adventure. When we arrived, we knocked on the door of the reference lab for all of Sierra Leone. They make the media for all the TB sputum test conducted in the country. There were two men working there, one of whom was just sitting at an empty desk. Dr. Barrie discussed an idea for collaboration – specifically, he had gone to the Gates Foundation to ask about upgrading the lab in Kono, and they had responded by saying they wanted to upgrade the labs everywhere. So Dr. Barrie went to the reference lab.

 

The man in charge was proud of his work. The reference lab held labs all across Sierra Leone accountable. The lab was clean, the equipment pristine albeit old, and the lone lab tech in sight was working industriously. The man in charge came across as competent and careful, fully aware of his responsibility.

 

Dr. Barrie, on the other hand, just wanted to know what the clinic lacked; where it was weak.

 

Perhaps you can see the issue? Any attempts to ask about areas where updgrades might be needed were construed as mild insinuations that his lab was insufficient in some way. At one point, Dr. Barrie asked the manager how many people worked in the lab. Before responding, he thought for a moment. Then he asked his lone worker. "Six." replied the worker. Nonetheless, the manager later maintained that all of his (six?) workers were fully trained in every possible way, and that there was probably more of a need for equipment than training from the Gates foundation.

 

Luckily Dr. Barrie was roundabout enough, and no feathers were ruffled. He left the lab manager with his number and some time to let him come up with the idea of upgrading on his own.

 

During the conversation, Dr. Barrie's phone rang. There was already a phone on the table, his, and then he took two more phones out of his pockets. You might ask why (I did, mentally. We didn't find out until later.) It turns out that there are three major cell carriers in Sierra Leone – Africell, Zain, and (I forgot). Calls work on a pay-as-you-go basis, but rates are much higher for calls between carriers as opposed to within them. Dr. Barrie gets a lot of calls. And so it saves him and his friends, coworkers, and whoever else phones him if he has a phone from each major carrier.