IBV's Last day in Kumasi
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Kumasi,
Ghana
Monday, July 21, 2008
Today was the last day that the IBV team was going to spend
in the Komfo Anokye hospital. We decided
to split up into two groups. Mitch would
go with the IBV team to the hospital and Cory and Marcy were going to go to the
IPS office to check the status of the MOU and try to set up the recruiting
event. We were also going to be traveling
to Accra today so we could meet up with the IBM team. They were in Accra at the moment so we
decided that we could travel there and stay with Nana's family, it would also
give us the chance to explore Accra a little while we were here.
After Mitch, Sam, Brook, and Liz got a ride to the hospital
they called Dr. Ankobea to see if he had time to talk about what IBV had
discovered about the Infant Heart Monitor.
After waiting for a short period of time Dr. Ankobea met the students at
his office. He was very sorry to hear
the heart monitor did not function as well as we had hoped. He still seemed very interested in continuing
the project in future years. After a
brief conversation about what the IBV students accomplished at the Sunyani
hospital, the IBV team asked if someone could show them around the labor
wards. Even without being approved for
being student researchers and the IRB, Dr. Ankobea was more than happy to have
someone show they around the wards. He
made a few phone calls and it was time for the tour.
Mitch, Sam, Brook and Liz all got a very detailed tour of
how the newborns are taken care of. It
was especially informational for Mitch because he got to see the side of the
project that the Pavlis students have not seen before. It was amazing to see how the babies were
taken care of. The IBV team explained to
Mitch some of the differences between the U.S. and this hospital. One of the main problems seemed to be the
lack of people to fix broken equipment.
There was a lot of modern equipment, such as: ventilators, blood testing
machines, and incubators, that were not being used just because they could not
fix them.
They IBV team got a lot of useful information about their
project and for future projects. After
about four hours in the hospital it was time to head back to the dorms to see
how Marcy and Cory were doing.
Unfortunately their meeting did not go as well as the trip
to the hospital. The MOU was still not
completed. They promised that it would
be done by Thursday so Cory and Marcie set a meeting for Thursday morning. The people at the IPS office said they would
set up meetings with all of the deans of the different schools so we could talk
to them about recruiting students for Michigan Tech.
After we all met up at the dorms we finished packing our
bags for the trip to Accra. It was very
sad because this was the last time the IBV students would be seeing
Kumasi. After packing all our stuff, we
started walking towards the taxi station.
Of course now that we had all the IBV teams' luggage we were not able to
get a ride there and had to walk the whole way!
It was also very hot out of course.
After a short ride to the STC bus station it was time to buy
our tickets. The STC busses are very
similar to greyhounds in the U.S. We arrived
at the station at 3:25; the bus was leaving at 3:30! Mitch quickly went to the station and bought
tickets for everyone. We made sure that
the rest of us got to where the bus was loading. They measured the weight of the bags while
Mitch finished up with the tickets. We
didn't really stop to think that busses were on Ghana time as well, but they
were. They bus hadn't even start loading
people on yet, they were just finishing putting the bigger bags onto the
bus. After a ten minute wait we were all
on the bus to Accra. After a very, very,
long ride on a bus that was passing many cars at a time, while going uphill,
while going around a corner we arrived in Accra. We were very happy to get off of the bus when
we arrived in Accra. Nana's uncle was
there to pick us up and bring us to his Mother's house.
It was a beautiful home in the middle of a small
neighborhood just outside of the city.
His mother owned a bar and we all sat down and enjoyed a few cokes
before we went to bed. We were all very
tired from the trip and turned in early.
We had a meeting with IBM the next day and we wanted to explore the city
as well.
