The Morning Rounds

I awoke early on Christmas morning and went for a walk to explore Goronyo. It wouldn’t take very long. As I walked through the town I knew that I was being closely observed. When I’ve visited remote parts of Kenya or Zambia I was always openly and warming received and I got a sense of what it must feel like to be a rock star. Nigeria feels more like being George Bush in a book store – they look at me like they know who I am but they can’t comprehend where I came from and what I’m doing there.

People were friendly in a reserved kind of way. As I got more comfortable in my surroundings I would wave at some and say good morning to others. Eventually I pulled-out my camera and found that people were happy to have their picture taken (although I didn’t try asking if they were too intimidating looking). I came across some young girls, nicely dressed, walking on the side of the road. I took their photo and was startled when the oldest one said in quite good English, “you should dress nice, it’s Christmas.” She had me there.

It was still fairly early when I returned to the expat compound, and Sabina, a young German doctor, was about to leave for her morning rounds at the hospital. I jumped at the invitation to join her. One of MSF’s focuses in Nigeria is maternal and child health, so our rounds were of the maternity and pediatrics wards (areas which are of growing interest to me). It will be one of those days that I will always remember with great clarity and it helped to remind me of why I’m proud to work for MSF.

Doing the rounds was quite interesting and even entertaining. Sabina was able to make a seamless connection with the women and their babies, despite the language and cultural divide. She would brief me on their ailments, with malaria and malnourishment being the most regular.

I was hoping to take some photographs and was pleased to find that not only were people happy to have their picture taken, but that it would have been an insult not to photograph everyone and their baby. This was also true of the MSF run nutrition feeding centre that I later visited. After taking the photo I would show the result on the camera’s display to the ladies and their neighbors and they would cackle with delight. It was a great way to connect with the people and a memorable way to finish the morning rounds.