Monday 27th August
Today I started médecine internale, which I had assumed would be the equivalent of general medicine in the UK. How wrong I was. In fact, it seems to be shorthand for neurology / cardiology / whateverthehellshowsupology. Which is fun - and it's quite a relief seeing signs again which aren't just you pinching their tummies and watching the skin fold staying up for about forty minutes because they're so dehydrated. You will be relieved to hear that I pinched not one adult's tummy during today's proceedings.
They have a lot of stroke patients, oddly enough - one tetraplegic who cheerily responded "very well" to the three doctors who asked how he was - and a woman who was in the middle of what I will bet good money was a pretty hefty pulmonary embolism; I will find out tomorrow, I suppose. The head honcho here being a cardiologist, there were also lots of ECGs and a doctor on the ward round who was great at teaching me as we want round, and I think my ECG expertise impressed him at least a bit. It certainly impressed me - I successfully spotted the reverse tick sign of digoxin therapy. Although I was only able to explain this with the aid of diagrams, as I wasn't sure of the French for anything needed to explain it bar 'digoxin' and 'ECG'.
Today was also the day I finally had it with the people here. I've got used to the kids whose only English is "Donne-moi un cadeau!"; I now just go for a curt "non" and then walk briskly off swearing to myself in English and wondering why they feel that tu-toyer-ing me is a good idea in this situation. This afternoon, though, some guy wanders up to me and asks if I remember him. Thinking he might be some shopkeeper I hadn't recalled talking to, I admitted I didn't, and he said oh, I work with you at the hospital! So this is fine, and we get chatting as I'm walking home. Then he drops in that his bike is broken and is at the workshop - and could he borrow 1,000 Central African Francs (CFA) to pay the mechanic. There follows a long and involved discussion of how he lives a long way away and will bring the money to the hospital tomorrow; I show him that I'm only carrying 2000 CFA and say I need them tonight, blah blah blah. I'm obviously reluctant to lend him the money, so he gets a bit shrill - "ah, if you need all this money to eat tonight, then you can't help me now I've broken down". I get a bit pissed off at this point and suggest he ask the mechanic if he can bring the money back to him. He says he doesn't think so. I say, well let's go and see the mechanic. He says, okay.
But then we get ten yards down the road and he changes his mind - perhaps he can borrow a motorbike from one of his friends and go home for the money.
Perhaps you can, sunshine.
The kids are one thing - they've grown up in an environment where looking sweet and asking for presents is, by and large, financially rewarding. They don't, by and large, know any better, and actually the Western governments which pour money into aid work which doesn't attempt to help them work - and probably I'm including a lot of medical aid work in this category - and the tourists who hand out pens and books and candy, are at least as blameworthy as the kids. Adults who lie to you, though, are a different breed.
So still not all sweetness and light, but I had four of Peace Corps lot round for dinner on saturday which was fun. Not exactly haute cuisine, but an interesting bunch - an Iraq vet who's off to NYC to talk about agriculture at a veterans' convention, two vegetarians who'd been living on a commune in Virginia before coming out here, and the last called Lulu - and cooking made the place feel quite homely. And I think the medicine's going to be easier and more varied from here on in...
Showing posts with label fraudster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fraudster. Show all posts
Monday, 27 August 2007
Thursday, 2 August 2007
Conference II, 419 scams, and French names
Thursday 2nd August
Halfway through, and I'm quite bored. I can't decide whether the week wasted out of hospital is worth the fact that this is a ready-made elective portfolio; on balance I don't think so. However, the leather conference bag is pretty good, as are the heated arguments which break out after every other session and insert inexcusable delays before tea or lunch.
It's not that the data being presented isn't interesting - it's just that it seems fundamentally pointless to be addressing it. 700 maternal deaths per 100,000 and a 25% infant mortality are shockingly high, but unless you change the culture (in which contraception use runs at 5%) and the economy (it's something like the poorest country in the world and is hit by famines every couple of years) you'll just be worsening the imbalance between food supply and demand, and the people you "save" will end up starving to death. Upshot - you have to wonder if you were addressing the right question.
But enough of that – I met my first nutter last night in a taxi. I got in outside the Canadian embassy and was en route to a swanky French restaurant (called, in classic Gallic fashion, Thabakady), and evidently my fellow passenger sniffed an opportunity.
"Hello my friend!" he began, ignoring the fact I had asked for my destination in French. "What is your name?"
"Nicolas," I told him, feeling that his reaching out through the window of a moving vehicle to shake hands was a little excessive. "I'm Womo," (I'm not sure of the name – his English wasn't great, ok?) "and I have come here from Liberia."
I nodded politely, thinking that it was an awfully long way to have come and not the most obvious destination. "I came here because the fighting in Liberia was too much for me, and I have a problem which you can help with! I have come with lots of dollars - I was very lucky to be able to bring them with me."
And bang! I was in a real-life version of one of those Nigerian 419 scams which are proof that the internet, like life, dislikes the stupid.
"I'm pleased you managed to leave Liberia with so many dollars!" I rejoined.
"Ah, but my friend - it is difficult for me here," (presumably because of the exchange rate?) "The people here, they are Muslims, you see, and I am a Christian." He paused nervously, not realising that he hadn't got any chances to blow by 'being' the wrong religion. "They are not kind, these people. I am not telling them about my prblems - you are in fact the only person I've told, and I'm glad you're going to help me."
"I'm afraid I'm not from America, so I don't think I can really help you with these dollars."
"Ah, but my friend, I am very fortunate to have met you! What I'm saying to you is, strike while the iron is hot!" (He had lost me here as well, although not in the way he hoped)
"Um - yes. I still don't see exactly what you want me to do." (And by 'what' I mean 'how', and by 'you want me to do' I mean 'how you plan to fleece me of large sums of foreign currency')
"Ah! Well, when I came here they kept my bags! So, all I need is for you to come with me to the Red Cross office and ask them for my bag." (Hm. Although this sounds unlikely, I don't see how it could involve my getting robbed...perhaps he's genuine after-)
"We cannot go now - but we must arrange a time. And then, when they give you my bag, they will give you your money back."
Notice how "your money" came out of left-field there? Me too.
At this point we reached Thabakady, I paid the taxi driver his 40p fare and leapt out. My New Friend and his hitherto silent accomplice leapt from the car to see if they could close the deal. They couldn't, but Thabakady was very good.
Halfway through, and I'm quite bored. I can't decide whether the week wasted out of hospital is worth the fact that this is a ready-made elective portfolio; on balance I don't think so. However, the leather conference bag is pretty good, as are the heated arguments which break out after every other session and insert inexcusable delays before tea or lunch.
It's not that the data being presented isn't interesting - it's just that it seems fundamentally pointless to be addressing it. 700 maternal deaths per 100,000 and a 25% infant mortality are shockingly high, but unless you change the culture (in which contraception use runs at 5%) and the economy (it's something like the poorest country in the world and is hit by famines every couple of years) you'll just be worsening the imbalance between food supply and demand, and the people you "save" will end up starving to death. Upshot - you have to wonder if you were addressing the right question.
But enough of that – I met my first nutter last night in a taxi. I got in outside the Canadian embassy and was en route to a swanky French restaurant (called, in classic Gallic fashion, Thabakady), and evidently my fellow passenger sniffed an opportunity.
"Hello my friend!" he began, ignoring the fact I had asked for my destination in French. "What is your name?"
"Nicolas," I told him, feeling that his reaching out through the window of a moving vehicle to shake hands was a little excessive. "I'm Womo," (I'm not sure of the name – his English wasn't great, ok?) "and I have come here from Liberia."
I nodded politely, thinking that it was an awfully long way to have come and not the most obvious destination. "I came here because the fighting in Liberia was too much for me, and I have a problem which you can help with! I have come with lots of dollars - I was very lucky to be able to bring them with me."
And bang! I was in a real-life version of one of those Nigerian 419 scams which are proof that the internet, like life, dislikes the stupid.
"I'm pleased you managed to leave Liberia with so many dollars!" I rejoined.
"Ah, but my friend - it is difficult for me here," (presumably because of the exchange rate?) "The people here, they are Muslims, you see, and I am a Christian." He paused nervously, not realising that he hadn't got any chances to blow by 'being' the wrong religion. "They are not kind, these people. I am not telling them about my prblems - you are in fact the only person I've told, and I'm glad you're going to help me."
"I'm afraid I'm not from America, so I don't think I can really help you with these dollars."
"Ah, but my friend, I am very fortunate to have met you! What I'm saying to you is, strike while the iron is hot!" (He had lost me here as well, although not in the way he hoped)
"Um - yes. I still don't see exactly what you want me to do." (And by 'what' I mean 'how', and by 'you want me to do' I mean 'how you plan to fleece me of large sums of foreign currency')
"Ah! Well, when I came here they kept my bags! So, all I need is for you to come with me to the Red Cross office and ask them for my bag." (Hm. Although this sounds unlikely, I don't see how it could involve my getting robbed...perhaps he's genuine after-)
"We cannot go now - but we must arrange a time. And then, when they give you my bag, they will give you your money back."
Notice how "your money" came out of left-field there? Me too.
At this point we reached Thabakady, I paid the taxi driver his 40p fare and leapt out. My New Friend and his hitherto silent accomplice leapt from the car to see if they could close the deal. They couldn't, but Thabakady was very good.
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