Clean Up and Wipe Out: 10-6

Babandogo cleanup day! We joined our guys again to clean the trash out of the ditches. It was a fun experience again. This time, there was a cluster of kids following us around. We eventually found an open area in between some buildings. We began to play Simon Says with them. Eventually these games evolved into giving piggyback rides. I was running around the open area with a kid on my back when I tripped over a rock. Don’t worry the kid was totally fine. (He thought it was part of the ride and proceeded to follow me around wanting to go again for the rest of the day.) I, however, was not totally fine. I scraped up my left hand and bruised my right shin. I took the whole fall one handed because I used my right arm to hold the kid on my back so he didn’t get hurt. It was pretty awesome.

Since we were in the middle of the village, there wasn’t anything I could safely use to clean out the dirty wounds. Furthermore, I had been handling tools all morning – tools that had been in sewage. Given the predicament, I wiped the blood off my hand with the inside of my shirt, and continued on my merry way. As it turned out, I had to wait about 1 and a half hours before I could at least rinse the dirt off my hand. At this point, the dirt was pretty well engrained. I dumped tons of hydrogen peroxide on the wound at Babandogo. When we got back to Pangani, I slathered my hand with triple antibiotic ointment and put some Band-Aids on it. When I got home, I scrubbed the wounds with a towel to try to get the skin opened up. I was mostly successful. Everything looks good except for one scrape. I am praying that it doesn’t get infected, but I think it will heal rather nicely. (And hopefully leave me with a sweet scar.)