Disability in Ghana and our First Torrential Downpour- June 6

Tuesday June 6 

Our driver to the hospital today was very talkative and when we answered him that we live in America, he said “America is the strongest. Except in football”. He stopped to get gas on the way, said that he admired one of us, and went an unusual way but we arrived around 8:40 and went in. 

Today physiotherapy was for young kids with developmental delays or birth injuries that have affected their limb use. There were kids with partially paralyzed arms and one 1yo with Down syndrome (who had a ton of hair!). They did lots of strengthening exercises, sometimes wrapping one arm to their side so they are forced to use their weaker arm. They’d be encouraged to do different motor exercises like putting toys through holes in a cardboard box or grabbing things. Of course, there was lots of crying. The mothers would sit right by them and be just as involved as the doctor or nurse. Today I was a little more involved than yesterday and helped hold some toys. Sometimes the moms put on Cocomelon tiktok videos on their phones to distract the babies or get them to look in a certain direction to strengthen their neck. There were usually a total of 4 kids in the room at a time with their mothers and maybe 10 total cycled through. 

At the end, the doctor talked to us about the ward. It’s been in the hospital for 12 years. The patients usually start coming to it when they’re seeing someone else in the hospital for a sickness or other condition, then the doctor notices their disability or developmental delay and refers them. Insurance won’t cover it unless they are referred. 

He talked to us about disability in Ghana and said there is a huge stigma. If a baby is born with a disability, people can think it is because the mom cheated or she did something bad and it’s a curse. Fathers will even leave or not be as involved and other mothers might keep their kids away because they think it will spread. So, mothers of disabled children can live very isolated lives and be very fearful of what their children will have to go through. Often, the mother’s first time seeing someone with a disability is their own child.

He said that the phys ward is almost just as much for the mothers as for the child. Coming to the clinic, they get to leave hard home lives (domestic abuse can be common) and be with people who aren’t afraid to talk to them and value their child. The doctors and nurses make an effort to be taking and laughing with the moms the whole time; it’s a very social clinic and they will chat about the news or whatever someone brings up (at one point I caught the names America and Biden but I’m not sure what they were saying). Sometimes the moms even stick around a bit after their kid is done just to talk more. The doctor said that for many of them, this is the only place they can relax and be social. 

He also said it’s important to give them a reason to come back- even though insurance should cover visits, transportation can be expensive (some come from far away) and weekly appointments can be hard to make. Some who are supposed to come weekly cannot afford to, so they come biweekly, but some stop coming all together. 

He said that they split by age group (younger kids earlier in the week and older kids later) so moms don’t get discouraged by seeing older kids with the same condition their child has and seeing that the older kid still can’t walk. If they see that and know that the therapy might not make huge improvements like being able to walk, they might stop coming. But, if they’re around the same age group, they might see that a kid who has been coming for 6 months is already able to sit up by themselves and that is encouraging. 

He said that it is a very important job (especially because disability services are so few and far between here) but that it can be very hard, such as when mothers ask if their kids will ever be able to fully walk and function on their own. He also said that kids will be coming for several years and it can be hard to see the same kid still struggling after seeing them weekly for 5+ years. He said the worst is when they get calls that a patient has died after years of working with them, and he said in the past month they had two patients die. 

Apparently, a few weeks ago CFHI (my program organization) and the hospital had a grant to do disability education in schools which included speaking at them and holding a disability knowledge trivia contest between schools which was very successful. I think the ward also received some money but I’m not sure (there aren’t many physical things to upgrade in the ward, it is basic play mats and toys). These posters are all around the hospital and were part of the disability education.

Tomorrow (Wed) will be the assessment day when new patients come in. We were done around noon today and walked around the hospital a bit then had lunch (fried rice and chicken) and waited for the others. The girls in the outpatient department don’t get done until after 2 because it’s so busy. The outpatient ward acts as an urgent care where kids come in with fevers and other illnesses (they said patients with scabies and seizures were also there today). 

Then we took a Bolt back to the house and hung out for a bit then went to get some groceries at a store called ShopRite. It was supposed to only take 20-30 min to get there but it took closer to 50 because it started pouring rain! Here is a picture of the beach we saw on our way there. The store was past the Jamestown area.

We were driving around while school was getting out so we saw tons of students in probably about 8 different uniforms all corresponding to different schools.  Everyone on the street started running when it was dumping rain to find a dry place! We finally made it there and it was in a several stories high shopping complex. The store was very similar to a US grocery store and I bought some juice and yogurts. Some fruit like strawberries were really expensive but everything else was pretty cheap. I did notice that in the toy section, all the dolls or people toys had white skin.

The way home took over an hour and some streets were almost completely flooded and traffic was horrible. There were still lots of people out in the streets selling things. Here is a picture of a flooded street and the clouds before it poured. It was still pretty warm but we were grateful for clouds and not direct sun!

 

Then, when we got home we tried to order dinner on a delivery app called Bolt food but it wasn’t working for any of my roommates despite trying both cash, credit, entering our Ghana phone number, etc. so then we downloaded a different one and ordered food. I had chicken stir fry noodles which was like typical Chinese takeout. I then paid Roland for our future cape coast trip and for our bedroom AC unit power (only 100 cedis each, so less than 10 US dollars).