the hospital.

Visiting hospitals is something we did during training. We visited two different health centers and compared the services available. We talked about how many people were waiting to be seen and how many resources we would have expected to see were just not available. Both of the health centers we visited were small, local health centers. Granted, these “small health centers” serve hundreds of thousands of Mozambican residents a year, but they are not the big, fancy district hospitals.

Last week I visited Beira’s central hospital. I walked onto a huge campus that overlooks a beach. With four different buildings including an entire maternity ward, I was impressed. To get in, I had to pass through a gate and talk to a guard (well, he really just said hello to me, but in Mozambique, as a white person, that is what most guards to do me when I walk into a buildings, one of the perks). Once inside, however, the fancy aspects of the hospital seemed to disappear.

I was there to visit Adelina. Adelina became sick about two weeks ago and last week took a turn for the worst. Catassefo took her to the hospital last Monday and as she was still in the hospital on Friday and I had decided to visit her. I walked into the main medical building and there was no formal registry of the patients. There were two women sitting at an “information” table who seemed annoyed to have to answer my questions, but told me a person with her symptoms would be on the third floor.

I walked upstairs (despite the fact that it was not visiting hours, another perk of being a well dressed foreigner) and entered the women’s ward. The man standing at the doorway did not know which room Adelina would be in, but he told me I could just walk down the hall until I found her (the idea of patient privacy does not at all exist in this country). I walked down the hallways and peered into rooms full of emaciated women sitting or sleeping on beds close together in the hot hospital. Each room had about six beds and one sink. There was one bathroom in the entire hall and at the end of the hall there was an employee room. After peering into all of the rooms (two of which were labeled “private rooms” but had three beds in each), I did not see Adelina. I went back and asked the man if he by chance could look on a registry for her name and he seemed uninterested. He told me she might be in the building next door.

The next thirty minutes consisted of me walking through most of the buildings of the hospital asking for my friend. Each hospital worker seemed as uninterested in helping me as the last and I finally gave up. I called Adelina’s sister and told her I would be waiting outside when she arrived.

Soon her sister found me and we walked back into the first building and down the same first hallway I had walked down. At the end of the hallway was Adelina. I had not recognized her. She had lost a lot of weight and her arms were extremely boney. Usually a sarcastic and fun person, she could barely talk with us at all. I sat with her for about an hour and she just kept asking me why, if she had not eaten anything in days, was her stomach so big and painful. I had no idea how to respond.

It was one of the hardest hospital visits I have ever made, and I have made quite a few. The doctors were doing nothing her Adelina, she was not receiving fluids or even any medicine. I decided to use my foreigner card one more time and marched up to the doctors’ table and asked why she was not receiving any medication and why her family still did not have any results from any tests. The doctor told me he had done a test a few days ago, but it being Friday, was unsure when he would receive any results. He told me they did not have any more fluids to give her at the time. Frustrated, I went back to her room and rubbed her back. I think she appreciated that I was not afraid to sit with her. I do not know the culture of caring for the sick here, but her brother and sister also appreciated that I sat with her for so long and tried to make her feel better. I just felt like there was not a thing I could do to help, and it was horrible to realize that is the way the system here is.

But that is the way the system here is. This week it affects my friend, but everyday it affects Mozambicans. There are no resources. There are not enough doctors or lab techs or cleaning products. There is no privacy. The walls are not painted bright colors and there are no tvs to watch Jeopardy during the day. There is no call button for when your pain increases because there are no pain meds to make you feel better. I was told to be prepared to realize these things, but it does not make it any easier when you have a sick friend. I have sat for hours wondering whether it is even worth it for her to be in the big, fancy central hospital, or if she should not just be at home, in a private bed, with a fan and clean sheets and her son at her side. And I still don’t know the answer.