Health Care

I cut my thumb in October. This was no routine paper-cut style scratch but a gash worthy of several stitches. On the positive side, I know that when people point to my scar and ask me where I got it, I can reply "Africa" with a certain air of masculinity that leaves the listener in awe. On the negative side, the story behind it is not nearly as romantic. I was opening a can of peas, and the can opener missed two spots directly opposite each other. Being the incredibly bright individual that I am, gifted with the mental capacity to graduate from an institution such as the University of Michigan, I thought to myself, "Well, I'll just push the lid open with my thumbs!" Five minutes later I was on my last piece of gauze from the medical kit the Peace Corps had provided me, calling my postmate who was at the Peace Corps office, to tell her to bring me some more gauze when she came back the following day.

"Well, do you need stitches?" she asked. I hadn't thought of that.

"I don't know, probably they'd stitch it up in the US but I can't really see it because it's dark," I replied through a mouthful of peas cooked in Type O positive blood.

"Well, you might have to go to Parakou tomorrow," she said, referring to the big city two hours away with a decent hospital.

I slept fitfully that night, my hand bleeding through cloths I had wrapped around it and my arm raised above my head. In the morning, I decided to try out Ouesse's little medical clinic. I arrived and asked two men where the doctor was.

"Why?" asked one. I told him I'd cut my thumb.
"I can take a look at it," he said. I followed him hesitantly into a room where he slowly put on a shirt. The room was furnished with a blood-stained wooden table and a cart with medical supplies. He told me to put my hand on the table, which looked as though it had been previously owned by some goat-slaughtering voodoo fetishers. He then carefully unwrapped my bandages with tweezers treated with what he said was "sanitizer." I got my first daylight look at my injury, and knew immediately that I needed stitches.

The prospect of dealing with a white person's lesion must have aroused the curiosity of this man, who had never actually admitted to being a doctor or told me where the real doctor was. He started poking and prodding the cut with the tweezers until it started gushing blood again, after which he said that it was worse than he had thought.

"Yeah, I think I need stitches," I replied.
"No, you know what we're going to do," he said, taking surgical scissors and placing them around the front half of my thumb which was falling off; "we're going to cut this off and let it heal a l'aire." This was a little too much for me to handle; after all, I have enjoyed playing guitar for the last ten years. I stopped him in time and told him I was going to go to the hospital in Parakou instead to get stitches. He looked hurt, but I think he understood.

The doctor in Parakou, I was told, is regarded as one of the best surgeons in Benin. He took one look at the cut and told me he'd stitch it up. I told him what the man in Ouesse had wanted to do and he gasped. He then gave me several shots of anesthetic and I waited a minute for the anesthetic to work its magic. It didn't.

He approached with a thread that looked thick enough to use as a ropeswing, so I told him that maybe we should wait another minute until the anesthetic started kicking in.

"It hasn't yet?" he asked, surprised.
"Nope."

He thought for a moment and then proceeded. Every time I winced in pain as the needle pierced my thumb and the gigantic thread was pulled through, he would ask incredulously if it hurt. As if the procedure wasn't painful enough, now he had to put my manhood into question. I lied and told him it didn't. He finished and I headed off to find lunch after thanking him.

The cut healed well; I'm actually somewhat disappointed that the scar isn't nastier. Nevertheless, it was a memorable experience that gave me a first-hand look at the Beninese health-care system.