Rindi Gets Mugged

I wish I could say that the title of this is a joke, but unfortunately it is not. Friday night I came back to my compound between 7 and 7:30 PM with my telephone in my hand.  I had been using the flashlight option to watch where I was walking.  A young man I did not recognize was inside the compound, standing close to the front.  When  he saw me, he asked if he could use my phone to call his sister. Since he was a stranger I told him no and continued walking toward my house.  Unfortunately he followed along, so I stopped and told him I didn't want him to come with me.  At that point he got a weird smile on his face and then lunged and grabbed the strap of my purse.  I use a messenger bag and always wear it across my body, so it did not come off when he grabbed.  I grabbed my strap and started screaming my landlord's name. At that point I am fuzzy on details.  I ended up on the ground and felt him grab my phone and then saw him running away.  About that time my neighbors and landlord came running up and found me on the ground.  By the time I told them what had happened, he was gone.

The good news is that I still have my purse which had  my computer and iPhone inside and my landlord found my Gambian phone inside the compound the next day .  The bad news is that I was hurt.  When they came running up, I was already starting into shock.  They kept trying to help me stand up and walk back to my house,  I would take a step sit down on the ground and go to a happy place only to rudely come back to reality. It was like I was in a white cloud that would get an expanding hole and I would realize where I was -- on the ground, in the dark surrounded by people  Kinda weird.  They finally brought out a chair so I managed to stay with it for awhile.  My landlord called the Peace Corps and they came and picked me up and took me to the med unit.  Bonus was that our regular doc was out and they had a cute American doc from Malawi -- too young but fun to look.  My left wrist hurt like crazy and several ribs were very painful.  It took awhile to get the shock under control.  At one point I was under two blankets and a heated towel and still shivering but my blood pressure recovered before he had to do an iv.  I spent the night in the med unit, mostly wide awake keeping my wrist on ice.

The next day we set off for AfriMed, the only place open on Saturdays that takes x-rays.  The PC doc was a little horrified.  The x-ray room was totally unshielded and people were waiting directly outside the room.  When I went into the room, neither I nor the tech were shielded.  My arm had been wrapped with an ace bandage and a splint and the tech told me to take it off so I took everything off.  Then he told me he meant only the ace bandage clips, and proceeded to wrap the arm back up with the splint.  Then I had to squat down and lay my arm on a little wooden bench for the x-ray. When the films were developed we had a lovely picture of the splint in the background of my arm.  However, the films were clear enough to show that I had cracked a couple of metacarpals and the bottom of my radius.  I think my ribs are just bruised because they do not hurt as much as the time I fractured 2. They do not x-ray ribs because they do nothing to treat them, unless they are so broken they are out of position

I had to wait until Monday to get my cast.   They still put on the plaster casts here and the PC doc had never done a plaster cast, so the weekend was spent putting cold gel packs on my wrist -- when the electricity stayed on long enough to keep them cold. So Monday I went to still  another clinic and a Gambian named Dr. Jones put the cast on.  He said it needed about 4 weeks to heal, which after one day with this thing cannot go quickly enough. This sucker is heavy -- I can see why they use fiberglass or splinting in the US.  It is lined with cotton batting so I know it will be very ripe by the time it comes off.

So that is the end of the mugging story.  The good news is that the Peace Corps talked my landlord into hiring a night watchman so I will be a little more comfortable about coming home after dark.

Thanksgiving is coming up in a couple of days.  Peace  Corps is having a potluck with turkeys provided so I will not be sitting there alone thinking poor me.  I hope that anyone reading this before has or had a wonderful time with their family.  After all of my experiences here I am richly aware of my blessings and the importance of family.