I think every African mother have one habit of keeping some form of medications in their house in case of necessity. It may be just paracetamol but I don’t think there is a way you’d search an African home and not find any of such. It’s part of us and I already took this habit from my parents. It’s a very good habit but may be bad sometimes because a lot of people may decide go ignore going to the hospital since they believe they have some forms of medications in the house and this may be a very bad one at times.
I’ve had several instances while I was young and I must have played very rough to the point of getting injured. I know if my mum gets back from the shop, I’d be spanked for getting myself injured so I always take care of myself with the medications we have at home and also fully pretending that nothing is wrong with me so that I won’t get spanked.
Have I ever been in the situation of administering first aid?
I’ve been in this situation so many times and this mostly happened when I was young. Honestly, I never liked playing rough but there are just times when you may be quite unfortunate to get injured even thoigh you’re the most careful person on earth.
One day, my mum left the shop to attend to the visitors we have at home. It was in the evening and she expected us to start packing the goods outside so we could get home on time. I’ve always been the lazy person between me and my sister. She’s so hardworking so that night, she has been the one doing almost everything while I was just flexing and eating my mum’s biscuit. Suddenly, she came to me and hit my head on the door and it began to bleed. The bloodshed was so much that a the people passing by came and suggested we go to the hospital to stitch it.
Also, my sis knows she was going to get the beating of her life if my mum gets to hear about it or see me bleeding. My mum is used to having her First Aid Basket because she never used a box. She has it at home and in the shop too so my sis checked it and saw the GV, cotton wool, spirit and some pills for pain relief. That was how she unleashed the doctor in her. She cleaned the wound and put Chloramphenicol on it to dry up the blood and it’s going to suck it too.
She did all of that and she plastered it.
Image taken with my phone camera
Did you see how this injury got cleaned up even though it took weeks before it got healed and the hurse continued the healing process from where my sister stopped and I also took some injections.
My mum was shocked when we got home. The next day, we went to the nurse and she was amazed by what my sis had done because she mentioned that they must have stitched it in the hospital but my sister did a good job oh my forehead.
What did I learn from this experience?
I learned that it’s good to have some medications at home. It may be in the midnight. If we didn’t have those those things, I mighy have lost so much blood by the time I get to the hospital the next day and I may nit even survive so having a first aid box in the home is good and important.
