DANCING WITH THE COBRA

Or how I landed in a Ghanaian hospital for ten days and accomplished something that no one in my village had ever done before: I survived a poisonous snake bite.

Of course that title is intended to pique your interest; however, you’ll need to wade awhile before you get into that deep water. First, I offer my most sincere apologies for taking so long to write. In the past, I’ve used writing as a form of discovery and an accounting of the days, at least the highlights, but somehow the flow had stopped and even though some of you nudged, I couldn’t get going for awhile. That being said, don’t think for a moment that I’ve forgotten anyone or anything

Nonetheless, it has been so long since I wrote a blog entry that I don’t know where to start—ok, I’ll start with some good stuff. The single best news is Moon House. I can barely believe that I’m living in a house with that name, it makes me giggle. Although, I’ve been there nearly four months, it still feels like only a few days. I am shocked by the comfort, like the deep pleasure of breathing for the first time after a long dive underwater. Moon house is simply the most serene place I have lived while in Ghana and perhaps ever—the place just has good mojo. (check out the cool pictures at: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dxebird7/my_photos , but bear in mind it might take a day or two). The rains have returned and I’m planning a modest vegetable and flower garden. Also, the JSS3 boys are coming to build a bamboo fence to keep the “lawn-mowers” at bay, honestly I don’t know why the goats and sheep won’t eat anything you really want them to prune, but that’s how it goes out here on the open range of the rainforest….

In hindsight, I now know that I was suffering from what Maslow might insist is a basic human need, namely, “shelter.” Silly me, I only thought of shelter as walls, or protection from the elements, a woefully inadequate definition. The elements, noise and bad energy, were beating me as surely as a cold rain. Once moved, I realized how tightly I was wound (is that the same spelling as “wound,” wind vs. wound, what you do to a clock vs. a knife injury?, now that’s a typical tangent). When I first moved, there wasn’t electricity at the house, which meant that I didn’t have all the conveniences of the earlier house: no lights, no refrigerator, no iron and worse yet, NO CEILING FANS. Yet, I was happier and not surprising, more productive.


The lack of electricity meant that my days were a lot like camping, sans the nightly fire. Why no fire? Because, it’s always too hot for a fire; hell, it’s nearly too hot for light bulbs. Candles are just fine for me, but that light is insufficient for reading. While I was hand-twisting about the electricity, the Wildlife boys offered me a room in their nearby quarters with an electrical outlet (more on the Wildlife boys in a bit). Thus, I moved frig, iron, camera charger, etc. into their house about 100 yards away from Moon house and that arrangement was ok, although I really, really wanted electricity.

Beginning back in August, I started the process of getting electricity to the house, long before I ever moved. The builder/architect had already wired the place and they had powered it with a gas-chugging-loud-as-a-jackhammer generator (happily long gone). Even with electrical service, power outages are a common event here in Ghana, land of power shortages/outages (do you really want to know about the politics of energy in a developing country??). The Electric Co. of Ghana is a little like the ol’ Lilly Tomlin-Laugh-In skits about the telephone company—they’re not only omnipotent, but they’re also on the-take.

I knew getting electricity would take a lot of money and I was prepared, but I wasn’t prepared for the ordeal. Getting electricity required 9 months and 28 trips to the local district capital, a town 20 kilometers north and costing 14,000 cedis roundtrip. In addition, the prelude required much smiling and nice-making with the BIG BOYS, never mind the “palm” money paid up and above the actual fees for the service. Oh yeah, there was a pole involved and the community cheerfully donated that, but the Electric Company vacillated back and forth on the pole’s viability—pole ok, pole not ok, pole tall enough, pole not tall enough?? We might as well, just roll the dice. Somehow, I decided that having electricity in the house was worth about 10 therapy sessions and that is just about what it cost (you won’t be surprised to know that I still need the 10 sessions!!!!).

Finally, in early May, the men and the truck arrived. They installed the pole, ran the wire, and lit-up the house. My village neighbors still praise my patience and resolve, of course they didn’t see the logs that I chewed through to maintain an exterior calm and single-minded purpose. Since Moon House ostensibly belongs to the community, they provided nearly constant support for the effort, which included several members of the local political structure visiting the Electric Co. and the neighboring district administrators. They also came and cleared the small trees and brush necessary for the wire to be unrolled on the ground. My electricity was a sort of “lightening rod” for the village, even community members that I barely knew would talk and laugh about the electrical vicissitudes—it provided a forum to discuss the various village problems—lack of electricity, inadequate wells, paltry medical services, etc. Overall, I felt the experience became an empowering drama, although a bit heavy on the drama.

So, now I’m electrified—it’s a little irrational exuberance, but I’m pleased, especially about the ability to read at night (remember its dark from 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.). Due to growing demand for electricity and questionable government deals with neighboring countries, Ghana now has an inadequate domestic electrical supply, which means we have rolling blackouts every three days that last for 12 hours and that is just long enough to spoil all the sensitive items in the refrigerator. I still keep candles on-hand as well as a rechargeable flashlight. That pretty much sums-up my electrical drama, but of course there are other dramas….

The next drama was more like a disappointing overly-hyped film, namely my switch from the NGO boys to the Wildlife clan (I can’t honestly say “boys” anymore about the Wildlife gang since nearly half their staff is female, however, their senior mgmt. is all male and they get their umph from military training, sorta the equivalent to our law enforcement arm of the National Parks). I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but the NGO boys and the Wildlife Division co-manage the park. The NGO runs the visitor’s center, commissions the café and the gift shop, and provides all the maintenance and repair of the visitor’s center and the canopy walkway. The Wildlife Division is a governmental agency and they provide tour guides for all visitors, protect the flora and fauna of the park (that includes armed surveillance and anti-poaching teams) and maintain cordial relations with all the 400+ communities surrounding the park. I’m still unclear about what I’m doing with this new bunch, but I do know that they’re friendlier and overall, far more humane with their staff and more business-oriented in their approach to the work. I nearly cried when I learned that they have quarterly goals (by contrast the management of the NGO has no plans and any and all proposals seemed to threaten them somehow).

You might correctly suspect that the relationship between the NGO and the Wildlife Division is uneven at best and territorial at worst. Really, I’m hoping to bridge the gap for the sake of the park and the many lovely stakeholders. The Peace Corps really pushed the move forward, especially once my supervisor started to get the same run-around that I had gotten for the past year and a half. Make no mistake, it is a serious slap for Peace Corps to remove a volunteer from an organization, after all Peace Corps’ mission is to support development and that approach must honor those early, nascent steps toward greater human/organizational capacity development. The evil-NGO-boys had no redeeming capacity and I’m so happy to be away from them. I hadn’t even realized the frustration until it was gone and I noticed how sore my head was from hitting the proverbial wall…. Enough said on this topic since I don’t know what will unfold, but I’m thrilled with the possibilities ahead.

Hmmm, now what to do?? While waiting for a clearer vision of the near future, I’ll continue to teach and help the community with their plans to do something. Helping them define what needs to be done is as important as accomplishing the actual thing--maybe it’s a new water pump, maybe an early childhood educational building, perhaps adult education, who knows?? Also, I really enjoy my basic business advising work. Last week I worked with an electrician who wants to expand his business—mostly what he needs is a better location (remember that ol’ adage—location, location, location….). Next week I hope to help with a basic business seminar in the district capital. Basic business skills are so necessary here, often people have no idea about basic accounting—are they making a profit?? If you ask most small-scale business people, they don’t know. These are skills that can be taught and Peace Corps has a ton of resources to help.

What else?? Oh yeah, my dog. Adom had her second litter. The puppies are almost a month old. What an ordeal…. First, there’s that miserable courtship zaniness, dogs urinating snarling and growling all day and night for a whole week. Then there’s the poutiness of pregnancy and finally the big dance. Fortunately, we were both better prepared to be parents. I heard squeals at 4 a.m. and thought there was a new bird species in the vicinity—ha!! It wasn’t until 7 a.m. that I discovered Adom curled into a corner with 3 little ones. Three more came later and one was born dead. Presently, my little mother has 3 females and 2 males, but one of the females is not thriving even though she gets hand-fed, I don’t expect she’s long for this world. The other four are robust and a tumbly-bumbly clump of fur. By the way, Adom’s first pup, Wisdom, went to live with one of my favorite students, Sammy. Now and again, he appears like a ghost and pokes his nose around the place, then disappears. I don’t think Adom even notices, but I smile.

Now that I’m rolling, there’s so much else to say, but I better start on the cobra story—it requires serious pulp. Well, at 3:15 a.m. on Saturday, June 9th, I got out of bed and padded barefooted out to my toilet, which is separated from the living room and bedroom of my house by a concrete breezeway that is about 20 feet long. I didn’t really NEED to go to the toilet, but due to the past five months of nearly constant urinary tract infections, I decided to go anyway. After sitting on the toilet, exiting the room and closing the door behind me, I stepped on something—something that wiggled and hurt me like a bee sting, it also seemed to wind around my foot, so naturally I kicked it forward like a ball. All this happened within seconds and in complete darkness, even the moon was absent. Oddly enough, the breezeway light had died just the week before, not that I really ever turned it on when visiting the toilet at night or for any other reason to be outdoors at night—moon, stars, or odd sounds. Anyway, without moving a step forward I reviewed the stinging options. In Ghana there are biting scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, spiders and lizards, just to start the list. I thought I should look at the thing to know how to proceed and by turning on the toilet light I determined that I had kicked a snake, at least that is what the coiled mass under the chair looked like.

When I got back into the house I could see blood oozing from my top of my right foot. Immediately, I began reading the Peace Corps Health Handbook (yup, I’m ridiculously logical in an emergency). The book said to “seek immediate medical attention” and not spend time searching for the snake. I knew from the park tour guide’s schpiel (is that a word?) that the locally prevalent green mamba’s venom could kill in about 30 minutes; thus, I decided I needed to know if I had 30 minutes or a little longer. Back outside I limped, this time armed with a flashlight (yes, for a short minute I wanted a gun, but I don’t really believe in killing anything). What I saw wasn’t the bright lime green colors of the green mamba, but rather a mossy-green-gray tail end of a snake as it crossed a short wall to the courtyard. I happily skipped thinking about who I’d try to call in thirty minutes, what would I say, or what I’d try to write (probably the happiest moment of my life to see that snake wasn’t bright green….).

Hurriedly, I got into clothes and hobbled to the Wildlife quarters, where after banging on two doors I roused one of the senior staff members. He quickly rode his motorcycle into Abrafo, about 1/3 kilometer away, and fetched Ken Asare, he is Alice’s father (my student-watergirl-friend), he works at the park and he owns a taxi (cars are uncommon in most rural villages, although Abrafo probably has 8-10 vehicles). Within a few minutes Ken arrived with his car and he sped toward Cape Coast. Within 15 minutes my foot was already swollen and painful. We arrived at Cape Coast’s relatively new hospital by 4 a.m. and then nothing much happened. They hooked me up to a saline drip and let me sit while they sent for the pharmacist to unlock the drugs—the anti-venom. Well, I don’t know what the pharmacist was doing, but when he finally arrived about 2 hours later he discovered that there wasn’t any anti-venom in the hospital’s pharmacy.

Somehow time wobbled, by 8 a.m. I still didn’t have anti-venom, although all the staff seemed to agree that was what I needed. Finally, my friend Sam was sent by taxi around to various Cape Coast pharmacies to find anti-venom. The husband of a Peace Corps nurse who lives nearby was similarly sent searching for the same. The whole affair was getting mythical and if I hadn’t been on a hospital bed, I would have laughed. The venom was spreading up my right leg and I was swelling inch by inch. I had read all the symptoms of venomous snakes at home, so when I began getting nauseous, clammy and having difficulty breathing, I knew time was getting short. Miraculously, the anti-venom arrived, shot into my saline bag and within minutes I could feel the easing of my panic.

The lack of treatment continued all day, mostly the staff just ignored me and the Peace Corps nurses were so unhappy with my treatment that they decided I needed to be in the nearly first-world hospitals of Accra. They arrived at 7 p.m. and whisked me away. Instantly I felt safer in their possession; the language barrier alone made matters miserable. Once back in Accra, their first choice hospital declined my care, stating that they were incapable of caring for a snake bite victim. The Peace Corps nurse Cynthia was so mad I thought she was going to throw a chair or something. Indeed, earlier that day via phone, they had said they could admit me.

Onward to hospital #2, 37 Military Hospital, where at 2 a.m., I was finally on a bed. Before the bed, they rolled me into the emergency room; I followed what must have been a multi-vehicle-passenger traffic accident. Everywhere—on every bed, on every chair, lined up against every wall and sprawled on every part of the floor--were bleeding, moaning, and screaming people. Somehow, our little Peace Corps entourage was swept past all that in a slow-motion sequence by a sharp-witted female doctor. It is almost always true that a “white” gets preferential treatment here and the hospitals make that statement louder than anyone else I’ve encountered (too sadly true….).

The next day, I was seen by the resident snake specialist, Dr. Akotoo. He said they should have continued giving me anti-venom until the swelling had ceased. Ultimately, the swelling had stopped at mid-thigh. My foot was so swollen that I couldn’t move the ankle joint or my toes. The anti-venom was sufficient, but just barely. Now, they grew concerned about the possibility of bacteria and infection, which is exactly what was happened. By Monday afternoon, by foot was hot and turning red—really red, carmine, angry red, blood-blood red and moving up over my ankle. Cellulitis, which is a deep tissue bacterial infection, became my new nemesis, scarier somehow than the snake, and it was actively altering my cellular construction. Only massive, broad-spectrum antibiotics could stop and hopefully reverse the trend. On Tuesday, I was convinced I would lose my foot. Even though I was glad to be alive, I cried and cried over my scary foot. Let me add that the swelling was intense, mid-foot was 2 inches larger, mid-calf was 3 ½ inches larger and mid-thigh (not that my thighs aren’t already big enough) was 5 inches larger. I felt like a monster….

Luckily, PCVs came to visit and made me laugh; they brought levity and treats. The Peace Corps nurses came too and brought me every treat and trinket I could name—juice, books, etc., but frankly I had no appetite. The nurses supported me in everyway possible, especially the basics. In Ghanaian hospitals you don’t get toilet paper, or towels, or even flatware for your meals—you’re supposed to bring that from home (I didn’t know….). I received parallel great treatment from the Ghanaian nurses and doctors. By Wednesday afternoon the infection was subsiding and the angry-red was reducing rather then increasing. While my foot and leg were better, my hands were swollen, bruised and sore from the multiple, large-dose antibiotics they were pumping into me day and night.

After a full week and a day, on Monday, June18th, they released me to the Peace Corps nurses, who promptly took me to the Peace Corps compound and propped me up in one of the medical-unit rooms. They have a great medical ward here, but they can’t administer the kinds of meds the hospital could, nor are they capable of 24-hour monitoring, which is what I needed at first. Incidentally, the med rooms are rather spartan, but comfortable with a bed, shelves and air conditioning. The compound contains all the administrative offices, plus a library, a computer room, toilet/shower facilities and a lounge with a TV and DVD player for volunteers to enjoy when in town. However, PCVs can’t overnight at the Peace Corps office unless they’re admitted to the medical unit; they can only stay from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

So, that’s nearly the end of it. I’ve been out of the hospital for 2 days and I’m still at the med unit in Accra. Happily, I’m off the IVs, but I’m still taking oral antibiotics and walking is moderately tough. Generally, I feel a little wobbly. My foot is still slightly swollen, but reducing by the day. Honestly, I expect a fang to pop out of that foot some day. If so, I’ll have it made into a necklace or something….

I may return to Abrafo on Friday, although I’m not sure—maybe next Monday. I don’t need to push anything. Rest is my only agenda.

So, my dear friends and family that’s my story for today. Please forgive my long absence from new words and know most certainly that I think of you more often than you’ll know. This work continues to be the hardest job I’ve ever loved. There’s never any rest, but I don’t think I really want any, I want to absorb it all, let it nourish me in a way that staying comfortable can’t….

Know too that your letters and goodies are treasured, but Deb Bussard takes the cake by sending dog food and puppy chow via the mail (Kathy Shrum in on that too). Thanks to all for the Christmas goodies—wow!! The kids especially love the goodies that come their way.

Also, because some of you asked, the balance of the bicycles, 120 more, should arrive in Abrafo in September (for info on the Village Bicycle Project, see their website at: http://www.pcei.org/vbp/

Healing energy to Jen and Shari’s folks….


Xoxoo…dxe


Ps. I’m lost on the b’day folks, I think I had gotten up through March?? Sorry, if I’ve missed you, but know that I always remember—belated to birders--Becky L., Lynn; Deb Bussard, Mom, Mylinda, Jena, MSH, Annie Barker, Miss Daisy (Tammara-did I spell that wrong??) and Rebecca, down there in the holler. Advance greetings to the fabulous cancers—Mary Byrne (a million times), Dino and amazing Amy Benckart. Miss you all….

Pss. In my spare time I’ve been thinking about reverse alchemy and the miracle of rain (vs. drought). Also, how to teach my student’s to type without computers or typewriters. Next time, I’ll write about my student's taking their national tests, my experience getting stuck in the water tank and any other absurdities that have crept into the day….