Different Yet the Same

I work in a hospital. It is like an American hospital yet it is so very different. Let me explain. I'm going to use my Papa as an example. (So glad you are out of the hospital and doing fine, Papa!)

When you walk into an American hospital you are actually inside a building. It has wards and elevators and many levels. There is a reception desk and nurses stations.

When you walk into my hospital, you are still outside. It is set up like an outdoor school. Everything is one floor. There are wards, labeled on the outside of the buildings. You've got the pharmacy, maternity, internal medicine, surgery, etc. There is no reception - still making me question how people coming here for the first time know where to begin. There are no nurses' stations but they do have offices that they operate out of.

So when my Papa went into the hospital he would be placed in a hospital room, at the very most placed with one other person with a curtain separating them. In Rwanda you only get a private room if you can afford it. The rest of the people are split into two large rooms - one for men, one for women - with about 40 beds in each.

Each meal time my Papa would be brought food, or in the case of some hospitals that are changing over - he would order over the phone and food would be delivered to his hospital room at any hour of the day. In Rwanda, well first you don't have telephones in the room. Second, there is no food service offered to the patients unless you are in the national hospital in Kigali. (I've seen pictures of it on TV and it looks like America.) Family members or friends arrive multiple times a day with food and tea or other drinks. I still haven't figured out what families do if they live very far from the hospital. This is the only hospital in the district and people could be traveling over an hour (by car) to get here.

If Papa needed to go to the bathroom, he would just cross his room to the private bathroom. In Rwanda there are no private bathrooms. The hospital has community bathrooms that patients have to trek to. Papa would wash his hands in the bathroom. In Rwanda, there are sinks in the rooms but the running water doesn't work 90% of the time.

Papa was probably forced to wear a hospital gown. No such thing here. Everyone just wear whatever they arrived in.

If Papa didn't have health insurance he would still be treated but would have to some serious hospital bills to deal with later. In Rwanda, they also have health insurance, a couple different varieties. I'm not sure whether they can refuse care if you don't have insurance but I do know that in terms of the mental health office they can turn patients away from a consultation if the patient doesn't have insurance.

The longer I am here, the more normal everything here seems. That being said, there are a million other differences that I can't even think to point out at the moment.