Back to Conakry

I was supposed to move into my village, but instead I bought out the backseat of a taxi and returned to the capital. The next morning I was checked into the hospital there and put on IV antibiotics. It was a "nice" clinic for wealthy Guineans and expats. That being said, I was definitely still in Guinea. Random male "nurses" would wander into my room at all times to ask me if I was married, and pretend to inspect the air conditioning unit (which clearly did not work). I was pretty used to Guinean male behavior towards white women, but being stuck in a hospital bed with nowhere to retreat to was frustrating. There wasn't a phone or tv in the room, so I would just lay there and if I needed something from a nurse I would have to yell. And I mean yell, multiple times. I only had a few changes of clothes, and couldn't shower so I was just wearing the same sarong stuck to me in sweat. A few days later I had surgery to remove the infected tissue in my leg, with a Peace Corps volunteer in the operating room taking digital pictures. When I woke up the next morning, the Peace Corps Medical Officer warned me that my leg looked like I had been bitten by a shark. Too bad it wasn't really a hot surfing wound :)

After the surgery, redness continued to move up my leg towards my hip. This showed that the infection was still spreading and I needed to get additional care. Peace Corps arranged for an emergency paramedic jet to land in Conakry. It was rush hour by the time I had to get to the airport, and the medical officer was taking the Peace Corps vehicle back to the Conakry house to pick up my passport, etc. from the safe. Therefore they had to transport me in the hospital's ambulance to the airport, where I would meet back up with the Peace Corps. This ambulance was a glorified metal shell of a minivan, with a blaring siren on the top. An eight-month pregnant nurse sat up front and a thin male nurse was in the back with me. Technically he was in the back with me, but he spent most of the ride with as much of his upper body as he could fit shoved out of a small 1 ft x 1ft square hole (window?) in the side of the ambulance, waving to friends in the streets of downtown, suddenly a celebrity. As for me, I was sitting in one chair and had my leg propped up on a tv dinner table. Neither was bolted to the ground, and the tv table had wheels, so I would slide around the inside, trying to keep my leg as still as possible. Other than that, there was nothing else inside the ambulance. Seriously, nothing. I was extremely nauseous from the medications I was taking and asked for a plastic bag. The only thing they could rummage up to give me was a broken ice cube tray, which leaked puke all over me. Eventually we made it to the airport, the siren blaring in my brain long after they had turned it off.