Now Ruth has been into the kitchen and shown them how to make our porridge ( we are the only breakfast guests) the day starts well! Our day started with a trip to the market with Hawa to buy rice , flour etc for our home visit. The lady was a victim of the genocide losing all her family and being put out to prostitution by a step mother where she contracted HIV, she is now in social housing ( government provided) she gets a genocide allowance of 7000RWF per month for her and her 3 children , our shopping for her was 7000RWF (=£7). the 14 year old son is the main carer but lost his business of buying choc and sweets and re selling when his mother was in hospital and he had to pay up front for care (we are not sure if we she should give him re start up costs of £20 as he should be trying to go to school. The 6 minth old baby has been in foster care but the care was not good so she is home now and a benefactor gives the family 500ml of cows milk per day for the baby = 5 x 3oz day feeds for a 6 mth old !! although the 4 year old is delighted to have the baby back home and was playing peek a boo with her behind the curtain. There do not seem to be any toys around anywhere here and you will see the 2 children in the picture loved playing with the zips on my ruck sack , until one bit the other as he wanted it all for himself! It was a heart rending visit
This afternoon we helped Dr Hermon and Hawa discuss with son and daughter about taking their terminally ill mother home to die and removing the NG feed tube and IV. The family cannot afford to keep her in hosp any longer and I am sure it is better for the mother to die at home but the medical staff are not use to discharging people home to die ,they have both been on pall care trainimg but have never been brave enough to put it into practice. we then had to go over it all again with the ward staff
Quite an exhausting day all round
Tomorrow we present our presentation on pain assessment at 7 am to the whole hospital again !
We had the usual torrential down pour but at least it was dry for our visit as we walked there