Day three
Day three of the campaign was another good but unpredictable one. We started off at the Red Cross Society in Cape, and found very few vaccinations taking place. Chatting with the nurses there we found out that the first two days often (at least in their experiences) see the majority of kids and they said Cape Coast was around 2/3 or 3/4 of the way to the goal.
We interviewed a Red Cross employee we’d spent the afternoon with the other day and then departed for the town hall fixed vaccination site. We found the site empty — just a table with syringes, no kids, no vaccinators. The same was true of our site in Siwdu. Again, we didn’t see kids, so perhaps “no harm, no foul” applies, but it was odd to think that 2 days in the campaign is seemingly over, at least for Cape Coast.
We split to Lady Heike Nursery, near Akatekyiwa, to try to do a “everyone hold up their purple finger” shot, as well as to make sure any kids who didn’t have purple fingers got vaccinated tomorrow … but the school was closed. On Fridays in Akatekyiwa the parents don’t go to the fields, which I guess means school doesn’t happen either.
Miranda and I then taxied to Baobab clinic, another 6km east, and met up with Elizabeth. We filmed her vaccinating a few kids (note the rooster wandering through the clinic, pictured at right), tried a Ghanaian bread dish called Baofruit 
(that is basically like a non-sugared plain donut, it’s close to Hawaiian bread as far as its sweetness), and then departed with the district supervisors to do a random check of a village to see how many kids were yet to be vaccinated.
The random village was Asafora, the place where I took the dark photo of the chief a few days ago 
whilst sitting on a bench with Elizabeth in a tiny mud hut at dawn. Most of the kids we found were indeed vaccinated, with only a couple of stragglers (whom the supervisors vaccinated on the spot), and we passed a mobile vaccinator headed in as we were leaving, which is a good sign.
This post is going to be short as I have gear to prep before bed — the fourth and final day of the campaign is tomorrow and we intend to spend the bulk of it filming at Baobab Clinic in Biriwa. The midwife there we have been working with, Elizabeth, is simply amazing. She is a hard to describe combination of gruffness and compassion. 
I’ve watched her tenderly vaccinate kids who don’t even flinch while she injects them, yet she remonstrates me if I so much as try to carry my own bag after the day is done (she must carry it for me, nevermind that I’m 6’2″ and twice her weight).
She is basically my African surrogate mom, which will probably make my own mom (and Miranda’s) feel good to know there is a mother-hen type here watching over us, feeding us. Yesterday she brought us kenkey and hardboiled eggs. Today she brought us pineapples. I basically can’t show up without her bringing us water and sodas, and later admonishing us to wash our hands as she appears with some new Ghanaian dish. And of course I can’t say no — it would be rude, and frankly I don’t think she’d let me, so Miranda and I just go with it.
I asked her today as we were getting in the trotro, how many children she had delivered, and she told me this year alone she has done 300. Three hundred!
Anyway, suffice to say that every time we see Elizabeth she gives us a giant hug and I like her a little bit more.
