Day 4

After a semi-late night working on project proposals and also still not completely adjusted to the time zone, we were looking forward to sleeping in a little and getting to the office at 10:20. However, Haleigh was abruptly awoken at 9 am by a phone call from the front desk, which she was going to ignore but it kept ringing. With two missed phone calls from our HEI team, the front desk informed her Mayowa was waiting outside and our meeting had been moved to 10 am. Aayush would like it to go on record that he was already awake and answered when Mayowa called him. And Haleigh would like it to go on record that she was downstairs and ready five minutes before Aayush, and also ate breakfast. Aayush claims he will be starting his “breakfast era” tomorrow.

At the HEI office, we met Paschall’s two twin sons and learned he is the second oldest of seven siblings. He was surprised to learn we both only had one other sibling. Also, Haleigh is always asked if she’s sweating every time she walks into the office, but it’s really just her doused being in bug spray.

We then drove to the National Orthopaedic Hospital Igbobi with Pascal and Mayowa, where we met Dr. Francis Nwachukwu and his coworker Victoria to discuss HEI and LFR programming. Unfortunately, most of the doctors in Nigeria have been on strike for unfair wages for two weeks so we are finding it difficult to find clinicians for our interviews, but we support their cause!

We are very impressed with the whole team’s dedication to Nigeria and their cause. Paschall had the opportunity to live in Canada many years ago, but wanted to serve his home of Nigeria and all the people needing his help here. Mayowa, Vivian, and some other HEI employees. some other staff members have participated in Nigeria’s youth service program, where they join the Nigerian military and then work on service projects for a year. Those chose HEI as their service project, and receive a small government stipend, but for the most part do it as a way to give back to their community.

On the way back to the office, we stopped for some bananas and ground nuts, which were delicious and a staple of Nigerian snacks. Less fun was the dull screeching sound our brakes made whenever we tried to stop - luckily we made it back ok and Paschall is going to get the brake pads checked today.

After doing some more work preparing some interview questions, we stopped back at our hotel for a quick lunch. Aayush claims he’s not sick of his noodles and eggs yet (give it a few more days) and Haleigh was persuaded to get the noodles and chicken, which was very good. Haleigh is gaslighting herself into thinking we’re not paying for any of the food because they never ask for our room number, but Aayush thinks they just know us by now and still charge it to our room.

We did some more work at the office the rest of the day, including copying interview questions into an online software that’s available without internet, helpful for the field. Another one of our research goals in Nigeria is to interview a portion of the lay first responders we trained in the past. For each patient they care for, they are supposed to turn in incident report forms, but we haven’t been receiving any and want to see how we can make it easier for them to complete. We’re asking the amount of times they’ve performed certain interventions, such as spinal immobilization, fracture splinting, and bleeding control, their confidence completing each of these, and any difficulties they’ve encountered while being an LFR. We hope this will help inform our future programs!

The HEI staff was busy the entire day so we weren’t able to do the first interview until 4:30. We would have loved to do the interviews in person, but there are too many logistical challenges to meeting up with each person so electing for phone calls. We also need to record the interviews, and tried to find an app to record phone calls, but every option Haleigh could find had very low reviews with people that had spent $500 on the app so we stuck with our audio message app on another device and hoped for the best.

We wanted to call our “super-responders” (the ones that respond to the most incidents) first, in hopes they would be extra willing to talk with us, but the first four didn’t pick up the phone Chika was using. On the fifth, we were finally able to introduce ourselves, also Chika told Haleigh people wouldn’t understand her voice and they might understand Aayush’s better. Does that count as a compliment of the day for Aayush?

The interview lasted 22 minutes, during which we learned the phone’s calls over what’s app could only last 15 minutes before hanging up, and then 20 minutes before running out of data, but Chika graciously lent us her phone for the last 2 minutes. We had anticipated it would take a while and wanted to pilot the questions before cutting them down. Back at the hotel, we got it down from 45 to 22 questions and hopefully it’s a lot clearer for the participants. We also might have Chika conduct the interview and us just takes notes, for increased clarity.

Our internet at the hotel has mysteriously stopped working and keeps saying we have the wrong password, but they claimed they didn’t change the password. Regardless, it took Haleigh an hour to upload these pictures to a draft at the office today and she will not be spending any more time on it so if anything else interesting happens tonight, you will hear about it in the morning.

In other exciting news, Aayush got shouted out on the world’s top college football podcast, “Late Kick from Josh Pate” for watching the show from Nigeria. LFR International is officially #PateState material

The entrance to the hospital, again taken against the window of a shaky van

There was another version of this picture that made Haleigh look even paler, if you can believe it

The orthopedic hospital offered so many care options. Spine surgery is particularly hard to come by in Nigeria, according to Mayowa. Also featuring the 10 minute downpour outside

Sorry for the half eaten banana picture, Haleigh forgot to take a picture until halfway through

Haleigh is too scared to get anything else on the menu that might be too spicy, Aayush will be working on his posture for upcoming photo ops

Aayush wanted to explore the “open bar” of the restaurant, and we quickly learned the open referred to being outside and not free as the manager came in immediately and asked if we wanted anything as we approached the fridge while looking around