Day 9
We had a lovely morning sleeping in and getting to the office at 10 am. Haleigh forgot to take her malaria pill which Aayush was all high and mighty about until he had to ask Haleigh to borrow her water because he ran out last night.
We had a debrief and preparation meeting with Paschall, Chika, and Mary this morning to reflect on the trainings last week and discuss what needs to be done this week and before we leave. HEI wants to establish infrastructure for assessing clinical outcomes of the prehospital programs. We explained this is very hard to do even in the US, but made preliminary plans to create monitoring and evaluation software that will automate some of the process.
The rest of the morning was spent on data analysis with grading our pre/post tests from last week to assess percent increases and any deficits in knowledge.
Our next meeting was with the Chief Medical Officer of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (much better than Lagos State Teaching Hospital, according to him). We discussed our usual collaborative partnerships, planned to conduct clinician interviews on Wednesday this week and established a line of connection for future research projects. We had a meeting right afterwards with the Chief Medical Officer of the Surulere government, who had previously collaborate on a pediatric malnutrition project with HEI and thought our projects were great for the community.
We learned today that Paschall tries to go to church every day (very impressive with his packed schedule) and almost became a monk after graduating university.
In other news, Haleigh traveled all the way here just to request we get Coldstone for dessert. Aayush made fun of her for this before she pointed out the milk in the ice cream would be the most protein he’s had in a while. This was confirmed with 100 g of plantains (his main source of protein) having 1.3 g of protein. Aayush beat Haleigh by four seconds again in the crossword (4-2) :)))))) :((((((
Back at the office, we did more data analysis and work on spreadsheets and interviews. We had wanted lunch at 3 pm, but thought we had a meeting scheduled soon, so delayed it. And then it was 4:50 with no meeting, but we were planning on calling some responders we trained last year to interview as a follow-up. However, we tried calling like six people and they either didn’t pick up or were driving and asked to call back later. Because most of our demographic is transportation drivers, they are often working when we try to call them around 4:30 pm. We can’t call them later because we need Chika’s phone, so we have one scheduled at 7:30 am tomorrow, and hopefully we can get some more done before trainings start at 10. We were very impressed that people actually pick up their phones here though and agreed we literally never pick up unknown numbers on our phones.
We finally ate around 6 pm, where Mayowa took us walking around to find a place. We settled on Red Hot Pepe’s (that name is definitely butchered), which was a pizza and grill place. Aayush got a large veggie pizza which he expertly consumed almost all of, and Haleigh got a chicken shawarma wrap and the cutest little Margherita pizza. We were reminded again by Mayowa how our appetite pales in comparison to the average Nigerian’s. We also had an interesting conversation with Mayowa about expenses in Nigeria. We learned that minimum wage here is a little over a dollar a day, HEI pays $990 in rent per year (less than Haleigh’s rent per month in St. Louis), and the government only pays $9 a year per person for health insurance. We were also shocked to find out a monthly gym membership can range from $27 to $55 a month.
Back at the hotel, Mayowa helped negotiate our hotel payment, Aayush learned he could watch the Manchester United soccer game in his room, and Haleigh was sad to learn they could not give her an extra blanket because she entirely hogs the blanket in her sleep so preemptive apologies to Mary, who is coming tonight and we’ll introduce her tomorrow!
The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (we didn’t have many good photo ops today so pulling off limited options here people)
Yes these are the same pants Haleigh wore yesterday and we’re starting a competition between Paschall and Aayush for who has the best smile
We told you… limited. There was a happy birthday banner for the chief government official on the side of the building though
We weren’t even trying to be creative with pictures anymore, it’s not even pretty data tbh
Aayush caught in an angel-devil situation with Chika telling him he must go help the women with the first aid kits and Mayowa telling him absolutely not, they can do it by themselves (he ended up graciously helping them, probably partially to not be chastised by Chika)
This pizza looks larger here but it was so tiny and adorable, Haleigh greatly enjoyed