22 August 2005 - 19:17
Waaaaay back in my First Aid training, I remember my instructors telling the class that when you arrive on the scene of an accident or an emergency, that your instincts and training take over and you start remembering things in a higher state of awareness. This is probably true…if you’re not asleep when you arrive at the scene…
The first thing I noticed was the spotlight pointing straight into the front windshield of the Peace Corps car that was taking me, a language facilitator, and four stagaires up to Tidjikja for their mid-training site visits. I had just had several long, busy days, and I fell asleep in the car as soon as the sun had set. So when we stopped abruptly a couple hours later, I was a bit disoriented, and the spotlight in my eyes didn’t help. All I could think of was how much I hate cops, and why do they have to be such jerks, shining this light in my eyes when I’m trying to sleep? And why is there a second, duller spotlight shining below the first one? And who are these people at my window jibber-jabbering? Is this a hallucination caused by my malaria meds?
A minute later, I was wide awake, kneeling on the side of the road, checking the vital signs of an old man with a gash in his forehead. He had been driving when he lost control of his car (probably swerving to avoid a herd of something), went off the road, and flipped it.
In First Aid, we were taught that the first steps when arriving on an accident scene are “Check, Call, Care.” I checked the scene – there’s a car standing on its side (hence my illusion of being spotlighted), smashed up pretty badly…not likely to be dangerous. Three people had been in the car – a man and a young boy were alright, but the old guy wasn’t in good shape. I checked the victim (side note: Reason #17 that I think boubous are retarded – they make medical examinations and care nearly impossible) – labored breathing, weak pulse, losing a lot of blood from a large gash in his right temporal lobe, definitely in shock, barely responsive.
Step 2: Call. Or not. There’s no cell phone reception outside of Tidjikja. And even though we’re told not to move a person who may have spinal injuries, we don’t have any other choice. The car we were in already had seven passengers (in eight seats). Fortunately, in Mauritania, you can magically fit as many people into a car as necessary, so we made space for three more guys, with the old man being laid across the middle seat, feet sticking out the open window.
Step 3: Care. We awkwardly picked the man up and moved him into the car, with me yelling in three languages to hold his head and neck still. In the car, I took the older passenger’s turban and put it over the old man’s head wound and instructed the other man to press on it. “No, that’s not good,” he replied. “Put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding,” I said. “Do it,” said the facilitator, from the front seat. Why don’t Mauritanians listen to me?
So off we went, racing towards Tidjikja. My suggestion that we take the unlit, winding, dilapidated, 2-lane, 40 kilometers of camel, goat, and donkey crossings that pass as our only road a little slower, and thus avoid creating nine accident victims instead of just one, went unheeded, and we arrived in Tidjikja in record time.
Back to Step 2…Everyone here makes fun of my gigantic cell phone (designed circa 1980), but I can’t afford a new one. I bought it because it had the strongest reception of any of the phones that were for sale in the market, and this night, it enabled us to call the hospital director 10 minutes before anyone else had coverage on their phones so that he could get doctors to the hospital to treat the victim immediately instead of having to drive around looking for them after we arrived in town. We got to the hospital, unloaded the victim, and walked to my house while the PC car took the other two people home and went to look for a place to wash the blood out of the seats.
Early the next morning, the old man was airlifted out of Tidjikja and flown to Nouakchott. As far as I know, he’s still alive.
I bet none of the other regions can top that site visit story…
