It all started at dinner two nights ago. We were eating a delicious baked spaghetti with extra ground beef. So good. Then crunch. Not an unusual thing, there's often a little sand or stones or bone or something hard in the food here. I started fishing out little pieces of bone with my tongue. Satisfied that there was nothing hard left in my food I swallowed it. That's when I realized that something was wrong. Where once I had an intact wisdom tooth, I now had a sharp cavity on the one corner.
I got quite a sinking feeling. I don't think that I would feel quite that bad if were we in America, But here, in rural Africa, I was sort of panicking inside.
Tab had a look at it. She didn't think it looked so bad, but who knows. It looked like some pink was showing? It didn't hurt, but that didn't mean that it wouldn't start. Based on a quick internet search, I should see a dentist right away. We went to the neighbor's house to see what they thought. Those doctors concluded I should see a dentist. But where? There is no dentist here. Well, it turns out that there is a dentist in a town about a three hour drive from here. And, there just happened to be someone going to there in the morning so we arranged for me to ride with them. We left at six a.m. well before the sun was up. The road was rough but I slept no problem.
We arrived in the big city about 9. First stop was the dentist. The dentist office was in the middle of the city. The driver stopped and told me the dentist was down an alley and around a corner. I exited the vehicle and off they went to run their errands, they would pick me up when I was done.
Walking past open sewer and trash heaps in a dark and muddy alley way made me nervous. But there it was, I entered the gate and walked past a guard half asleep until he saw me. I asked him "where is the dentist?" he pointed up to the second floor.
It was a decent looking place, with a sleeping receptionist/assistant inside. I woke her up, she was surprised to see a white man, I am sure. I filled out the card and paid the consult fee and then she called the dentist to let him know that he had a patient waiting. In america, dentists are always busy, but here they seem to be quite free and see patients and do the work all on the same day.
I sat in the waiting room with no electricity and read a book I brought. 45 minutes later, the dentist arrived. He came in and started preparing things. One of the first things he did was yell for the guard down by the entrance to turn the generator on. After a few minutes the assistant/receptionist invited me into the procedure room. I told him I broke a tooth. he looked in my mouth and told me I broke the cusp off my tooth and he could fix it with a filling. He could do it immediately and it cost 7000 ~30 dollars. I agreed and he went and got the supplies, he also had the guard turn on an air compressor. Most dentist chairs are run on compressed air.
The room was okay, clean by west African standards. the dental chair and equipment seemed to be from the eighties. The dental tools were kinda stained but they came out of a sterilizer box. I could plainly see the sterilizer out on the balcony. I just hope it worked and they followed proper sterile techniques and this wasn't just for show.
Before you know it he had the drill in my face ready to go. He said he had to prepare the area and that "this will be sensitive." From the moment I realized my tooth was broken I suspected I would have a guy drilling and scraping in my mouth
without pain killers. It wasn't too bad. A few minutes later he was done. We talked for a bit about where I was from, and what I was doing in Africa. I asked him about his practice and where he learned dentistry.
This is the shelves of supplies that the dentists "sells" you to use during your procedure. It includes things like gloves and masks and composite filling etc. Anyways, the assistant was nice enough to pick out all the things that I would need.
I paid and waited for my ride to come back and pick me up. They came by and picked me up about 11. Enough time for my Ibuprofen to kick in. We ran errands that day all over town and finally got home about 6 p.m.
On our way home the driver kept stopping to buy things on the side of the road. Bread, water, and then this!
The driver was very excited to have the opportunity to buy this guy for a mere 300~ a dollar and a half. I have posted about these before. In hausa they are called gufiya. One night two years ago a friend and I caught two of these things. I guess they are a prized meal here too. hh
