Week 3 - No longer the kid i used to be...

First week of Placement

I must admit that this has been one of the heaviest week's of my entire life. I finally started my internship at the Police Hospital in Osu! Luckily for me, traveling to placement isn't as bad in comparison to some of the others; roughly about one hours travel from Legon where i reside. The first two days would be my orientation and introduction to the various wards of the hospital. Both days began relatively smoothly moving from the childrens ward to the maternity ward and so on. But something towards the end of orientation would happened which would change my life forever.
As the second day of our orientation was coming to a close, we still had one ward left on the agenda.... the mortuary ward! As we walked in, I began to feel nervous for I had no idea what to expect. We entered a dark room where there were three autopsy tables, and you could just imagine some of the horrible things that people have witnessed in this room! As we continued walking down to the office, we were introduced to the Mortuary Director Akosumbo Okai who welcomed us. He discussed with us some of the issues that the Hospital was facing as well as some specifics concerning his ward. Of all the issues he laid out on the table, one thing which stuck with me was the way he described the unsanitary treatment of the bodies due to the wards' lack of funds; being a publicly funded hospital. Morticians are forced to spray RAID (as in the stuff which kills insects) and bleach on the dead bodies because the proper medical chemicals needed are virtually unaffordable.
As we were leaving, Susan our supervisor took us into another room which was more peculiar than the last. As the door opened the first thing that caught my attention were three naked corpse lying on their backs with scars indicating where the morticians' dissections had been made. Just as I thought the worst was over, the mortician opened a white door to the left; and what i saw in that room I feel no human being could ever prepare themselves for! It was a dark fridge which stood 15 meters by 14 meters filled with metal bunk beds covered by wooden planks. There must have been over 300 bodies stacked up one on top of another in no particular organized order. The congestion of the room was absolutely horrifying. The chilled smell of the rotting corpses hit me so hard that I almost puked right then and there! A smell that to this day has hauntingly not left me. And speaking of haunting, one image which reoccurs in my mind constantly sending me to an unsettling state of shock is the image of two dead girls thrown on top of a man whose stomach was in a disturbing state which I will not describe.
My initial thought during the time was as that white door opened, any ties I may have had to my childhood or youth were long gone. I knew that that single moment oddly and sadly enough was my transition to my adulthood. I've seen a lot in my short life of 22 years but never have I ever seen anything like that, and never have I ever felt the feelings that I felt during those moments. But although I can finally say that I have seen what death can look like, and as dark as it may be, I can confidently and optimistically say that the light of life will always shine much brighter! Look at me being all philosophical...