uninformed choices made easy

Today I sat on a bench outside the hospital and spaced out for forty-five minutes, which is another way of saying: Today, I supervised a group of nursing students while they educated a group of patients on the perils of malaria in the local dialect, which is another way of saying: Today, for all I know, my nursing students facilitated a heated discussion on the latest Manchester United game while I, with my toddler-like language skills, daydreamed about Peanut Buster Parfaits. Or is it Parsfait? Damn the French and their confusing pluralization rules.

After the Man-U debate, I gathered my students for a debriefing. In nursing school I hated debriefing but now that I’m the teacher, I get to ask those types of annoying teacher questions which have many possible answers but only one acceptable answer, i.e. the answer that I want to hear. And so I asked my little Man-U fans, “Why do we, as nurses, health educate?”

Fan #1: “Because it’s part of our job!”
Me: “No. Well…yes it is, but no.”

Fan #2: “Because we have the information and they don’t!”
Me: Ah. “Good point, but…no.”

Fan #3: “Because…it’s part of our job?”
Me: “Really? No, no….the correct answer, the only possible answer that could possibly be accepted by anyone important, meaning me, and I’m the teacher, is: To empower our patients. I would have also accepted: To empower the patient; English has some confusing pluralization rules.”

Why do we, as nurses, health educate? Why, to empower our patients of course! Empower them to what? To take control of their health! And how do we go about health educating our patients? By giving them just one small piece of the story, a small sample of confusing and sometimes controversial information related to one extremely specific health topic and then sending them out into the world, freshly Empowered, to Empower those around them!

Was it just me or did you also go out and eat an entire garlic lover’s pizza the very second CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta mentioned garlic was good for your health? I’ve binged on red wine for the age-defying flavanoids, drank my pre-Peace Corps weight in Starbucks Gingerbread lattes to reap the memory-boosting benefits of ginger and eaten entire family-sized boxes of low-fat Wheat Thins in one sitting with the assumption that multiple servings of a low-fat food can’t possibly equal a high-fat food. Plus the tiny green man on the label assured me they were one of many Smart Choices Made Easy. Tiny green men don’t lie. They just don’t.

I once heard that a handful of peanuts effectively suppresses appetite when eaten twenty minutes before a meal and the first thing I thought was, Hmmm…they didn’t specify the peanuts should fit into my tiny hand, per se. And that’s how I came to discover an entire jar of peanuts eaten twenty minutes before a meal will indeed effectively suppress appetite. Empowerment feels a lot like a stomachache.

never shop stupid

I sometimes crave corn. Corn chowder, candy corn; any corn manifestation would probably do but in my wildest daydreams the corn is slightly sweet, warmed but not roasted and safely tucked inside a Chipotle burrito alongside hormone-ranked steak slices, chemically-ripened tomatoes and cage-free lettuce.

Now in America people will tell you never to grocery shop while hungry, that it’s just too risky, the argument being you’ll inevitably return home with sixty dollars worth of delightful impulse buys ranging from an economy pack of trans-fat-free* gum to peapples, the charming pear-apple hybrid which takes geneticists away from the less important task of curing cancer and which, let’s face it, makes indecisiveness a lot more fun. The irony, of course, is that hunger often does correlate with running out of food, and once you’ve run out of food you’re essentially forced to: grocery shop. Back home I’d mainly avoid the whole ‘no grocery shopping while hungry’ rule by journeying to my local Taco Bell drive-thru several times a day hungry, which, as far as I know and according to the stand-up folks from the Food and Drug Administration, is completely risk-free. Besides, of course, the inherent danger of those annoying yellow concrete posts which majestically line drive-thru lanes like modern-day maple trees and like to take advantage of my hungry, hypoglycemia-induced shaky state by scraping the paint off my car as I ricochet toward the drive-thru window.

If it’s risky to grocery shop in America hungry, it’s flat out stupid to shop hungry in a country where impulse buys might include a severed cow head and hoof pieces from an unidentified species. I make an effort to boil up an extra banana to eat on market days but the extra 18 calories are often expended come market time, usually around the same time I open my front door and am pummeled by one of my energetic neighbors, who range in age from four to forty. On one of the rare occasions I did make it to my local market with a full stomach, I noticed a beautiful woman selling corn. When I saw the woman my corn craving began almost immediately, so much so that I actually stopped to wonder whether I hadn’t been craving corn all along. A more likely scenario is that like most Americans, I’m perfectly susceptible to the marketing powers of pretty people. Back home I’d sometimes see a Coke ad with a beautiful woman and think, what a coincidence beautiful woman, I totally wanted to go spend $1.25 on a can of Coke! Thanks a bunch for reminding me- this when I very well know Taco Bell serves Pepsi products exclusively.

I approached the woman where she sat, my stomach now inexplicably growling, and she looked up vacantly in my direction. I stared back in an equally vacant way until I realized she was waiting for me to tell her to do her job. In Uganda the consumer usually has to initiate the sale, which is difficult to get used to. It’s not uncommon that your waiter will approach you, pad and pen in hand, and simply stare until you ask him if you can order; I imagine if I were in the market for a car I’d probably be forced, after a long and awkward silence, to ask the dealer, “So…what would it take to get me into this car today?” I finally mumbled something to the woman along the lines of “You, to buy corn I want,” in Rufumbira and she gave me a look as if to say, “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place? Also, I speak perfect English, and am highly insulted by your dismal Rufumbira baby-talk.” Yes, it was quite a loaded look. I ended up buying a kilo of corn, which seemed as good a unit to me as any- particularly since, brainwashed by the metric system, I still have no real concept of what a kilogram is and therefore get excited, then a bit alarmed, then excited again every time I hear my weight in kilograms.

By the time I left the market I’d purchased what I thought to be a kilo of corn and a bushel of spinach; by the time I arrived home I realized I’d actually purchased a kilo of dried maize chicken feed and a sickly looking cabbage plant, roots intact and ready to be planted in the garden I don’t possess. No matter, I thought to myself, as I plucked the bitter leaves off the cabbage plant, placing them into my salad bowl. No big deal, I thought to myself, as I attempted to soften the chicken feed in boiling water until it became fit for human consumption. But after discovering boiled chicken feed does not equal human food, no matter how much care and attention goes into the boiling process, I threw the whole mess out and boiled up three bananas, all the while dreaming of majestic yellow concrete posts and a land where shopping hungry ends in a very different kind of stomachache.