Visitors!

Lori and Major at her going away with staff

Dr. Kirsty Smith at work on the CD4 machine

Ryan at ART/EPI clinic

Bob working in the dusty chapel

Dr. Ryan and Dr. Greg

We have been very busy with visitors this past week. Bob is here helping to put roofs on our 2 new additions. He is finding out things never move fast in Africa, so he has been keeping busy painting our new flats while he waits for the timbers to arrive for the roof.
On Tuesday afternoon last week, Lori Batten joined us. She came to pack up her household here and get her dog, Maputi and return to the US. She was busy saying good-bye and packing and left this morning for Harare to get Maputi on the plane home today and then she leave tomorrow afternoon. . We had a breakfast in her honor on Friday at work so she could say her good byes. She is working in Seattle. We wish her well as she adjusts to life in the US. While she was here running around in shorts, Seattle had a snow storm with 12 inches in some areas! She is looking forward to a short term trip to Niger in June and helping with a church camp in CA in July.
On Wed. evening last week we welcomed Greg and Ryan, Family Practice residents from Ohio State. They are with us for about 3 ½ weeks. They are enjoying seeing many new diseases and seeing how we deal with limited resources to treat so many patients. On Saturday they helped Dr. Kellert in theater (OR).
Dr. Kellert has almost finished one month (she has to do 3 for her license) at Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital. She is not very busy there and only works until 1 each day. She has 2 days of theater (OR) if they have anesthesia people. She is enjoying living with a missionary family in Chinhoyi, Nick and Lindale Adams who are keeping her well fed and taken care of! She comes home on Friday afternoon here and stays until 5 a.m. Monday when she heads back. We put her to work on Saturday’s doing theater for us!
Saturday afternoon last week, our friend, Zebedee Togarepi from Chiredzi joined us. He is a minister and on our hospital board. We had a good visit with him over the weekend and he left this morning for home—a 12 hour drive.
We welcomed on Tuesday this week Dr. Kirsty Smith, a scientist, from the UK—Kirsty. Major was in Harare dropping Lori off and picking up Kirsty. He has been doing a lot of airport runs this month!
We received some good rain this past week—over 5 inches so we are happy and the fields look a bit better. Major and his family were busy weeding my field on Saturday.
Electricity was on and off this week, as usual but maybe a bit better than normal. Our visitors are getting into the predicting game of when it will come back. Little things amuse us here!
We head tomorrow to Chijawi—about an hour from here on a bad road—to revive a church. No one has been meeting there for about 15 years and a group has come to ask us to help get the church going again. We have agreed and tomorrow we are going with a lorry of people from our church here at Chidamoyo to encourage and revive the people in this area. We are excited about this.

Happy New Year 2012!

Mom and stolen baby after reunited!

Bob and Cheryl at church on Sunday

Fireworks NY Eve




NY Eve celebrations at the church



Driving home on NY Eve

Mereki Family, Gladys and her maid and Dr. Kellert

Major exploring ruins in the Highlands

Dr. Kellert at Nyangombe Falls

Happy New Year 2012. As we say here “Makorkoto Gore Itsva!”
We went to the Eastern Highlands and stayed in Juliasdale from December 28-31. We stayed in a wonderful Inn across the street from Gladys. Cheryl and I had a fireplace in our bedroom, but we seemed inept in getting it to burn very long! It was cool and raining and so green! A different world from Chidamoyo. We haven’t slept under blankets since September and there we slept under 2 blankets and it got down to low 60’s at night.
We got to see Gladys several times and she is doing well. Keeps very busy visiting the “old people” and making sure they are ok, taking their meds, have food, etc. She celebrates her 75th in September—so we will have to think of someplace special to go. She also celebrated 50 years in Zim in July 2011!
We spent time climbing mountains, seeing waterfalls and driving through the Honde Valley. We kept looking for some special sweet bananas but never found them, but peaches and plums and apples were in season and we ate a lot of those and came back with some.
We got back at 8 p.m. on Saturday (NY eve) night and after unpacking and eating—Cheryl and I went off to bed. Mereki’s went to the church for the all night meeting. We were in the midst of a 7 day straight no ZESA due to a fault, so we pulled up the portable generator for them to show 2 films. About 3 a.m. it started raining. At 5 a.m. we joined the all nighters for church (most had left and the ones left were sleeping!) and then came to my house for breakfast with Dr. Kellert and Major and Patience—the kids went home to crash!
It continued to rain most of the day, and Major left about 1 p.m. to go and get visitors from Singapore, Nikki and Justin Hess who have been here several times. They are Zimbabweans who are helping a lot with our school projects. They arrived in the midst of Sunday night church and after church we had a nice dinner with them and Major’s family and Dr. Kellert.
Monday, the 2nd was a holiday here but it started with word from Dr. Kajese that his father who has been very ill on dialysis for several months, died earlier that morning. We made arrangements for Major and Dr. Kabanzi to go to represent us at the funeral and for our truck to go and help transport people to the funeral at their rural home near Mutoko. So that meant all the schools we had planned for Nikki and Justin to do on Tuesday had to be done Monday—so Major took off with them for the day.
On Tuesday morning Dr. Kellert left to begin her Chinhoyi Hospital orientation for 3 months, Nikki and Justin went to Harare and Major and Dr. left for the funeral beyond Harare at 4 a.m. and our driver in another truck! That left me in charge of the hospital and it was a busy day since we had our out-patient clinic closed for the 3 days of holiday! I didn’t have time for tea or lunch and finally got home at 7 p.m.! Since there was no electricity, I ate and was in bed by 8 p.m. Of course, I left all the lights on in the house and surprise after 7 days off—ZESA came back at 11 p.m.! Had to go around and turn inside lights off and outside lights on! Wow—turned that fan on to sleep by, how great was that!
Wednesday was another busy day at work as I had to round on the in-patients and see the problem out-patients, read X-rays, lab work and do discharges besides starting new people on ART. Got home in time for our Bible Study at 7 p.m. Had the small generator on for it as we were on power cuts (7 days didn’t give us any credit for that) after most of the day with electricity. After Bible Study tried to read and the bugs kept dive bombing me—so gave up and went to bed and ZESA came back 10 p.m. Dr. Kabanzi got back about 8 p.m. with the driver from the funeral—Major stayed in town to get a visitor coming in Thursday night and do some running around.
Thursday started off with a team from Head Office, Ministry of health coming to do a survey on Maternal Child health. They were here until 2:30 p.m. and were following nurses, wanted statistics and a list of what we had or didn’t. My queue kept getting bigger as I tried to help them and get them out of here! I also was running to OPD to see doctor’s patients as he was in theater doing procedures and his line was getting longer and then it was Thursday which is CD4 day—so even more patients!
About 11 a.m. one of the patients in my queue was sitting next to a woman who asked to hold her baby girl who was 6 weeks old and then sent the mom to get her some water. While the mom was gone she put the baby on her back and told the others on the bench that if the mom came back she had gone to get her Family Planning pills and she proceeded to leave. When the mom came back she went to find her and her baby and found no one! In a panic she went to the township and masasa and everywhere to look and only came back about 1 p.m. to report to us what happened. Immediately we went and got the police (you have to provide transport for police here—they have none) and called Major in Harare to tell him to contact Magunje and Karoi police to be on the lookout. We got the name of the lady who stole the baby as people knew her and also where her parents lived and where she lived in Magunje. Of course, there had been no ZESA all day and so no phone service, so had to contact major over Skype. We immediately started praying! By Friday the police and CIO from Magunje showed up to take statements and investigate, and ended by saying “please pray we get this baby back alive!” We had been praying for 24 hours!
The mom went to Magunje (about 70 kms from here towards Karoi) to investigate herself where this woman lived. No one was home when she arrived but by early Saturday morning she returned with the baby and the neighbor who was a soldier and had been notified to call the police if she arrived—called them and they came and arrested her and the real mom identified the baby. She had discarded the clothes the baby was in and had new clothes on the baby. This had been planned for sometime.
The mom came with the baby today to show us the baby and that it was well and fine. We all told her she must change the name to Nyasha (God has shown mercy) because God helped her to get her baby back safe and sound. She actually said the second name was Sibongile (which means thank you in Ndebele)! We all gave thanks! God is good!
So in the midst of this baby disappearing and the police coming and getting rid of the first people doing their survey—I started my patients and another group came from Karoi to get some information for a survey! I told them sorry I couldn’t handle it that day and I would send them the information they needed the next day by email if I had time! I finally got to go home at 7:30 p.m!
I started working on getting my Christmas decorations down that evening—still no electricity but I was determined to get them packed up before our visitor arrived the next day! I worked for 3 hours got it done and collapsed into bed!
Thursday night Major picked up Bob Coibion from Roseville, CA who came to help us put on the roof of our 2 new buildings. He has been here 6 times now and has put the roof on several of our additions—PTL for his safe arrival and willingness to give of his time away from his family. He is here until the end of March.
So by 2 p.m. Friday Major arrived with him and also Dr. Kellert from Chinhoyi to spend her weekend here!
Saturday Cheryl had patients to see that we saved for her and then she went home, I finished up discharges and went to give meds to our MDR-TB patient and on my way back the nurse came running out to tell me to come to theater for a prolapsed cord. Cheryl and Dr. Kabanzi were there and I ran in to give anesthesia. We got the babies (undiagnosed twins) out in record time, but they were very premie—one was stillbirth and one died a few hours later! Then we could go home and relax for the rest of the day.
Major took off this morning to Harare. Dropped Cheryl off in Chinhoyi to continue her time there and he brought his kids (Michael and Carolyn) back to start a new school year tomorrow. Carolyn is in Form 3 and Michael in Form 6 this year. Michael was especially happy because he passed the test to get a provisional driver’s license this last week and now he can drive as a learner with a licensed driver in the car! Major will be back tomorrow after a service for the Jeep—it has reached 10,000 kms already!
What a busy start to a New Year—where do we go from here-ha!

Christmas 2011

Cheryl, Mrs. and Dr.Kajese at Christmas brunch

Christmas Brunch

Christmas Brunch

Tea and Bread after church

Mrs. and Mr. Mereki and Carolyn and Michael

Church at the Hospital on Christmas morning

Michael holding a gift for the family

Michael opening a gift

Cheryl getting her gift bag from Major

Staff and their gift bags

Major as Father Christmas

Staff at the hospital party on 23rd

Caroling on the lorry

What a wonderful Christmas we had and I hope each of you did too. This has been a busy week leading up to Christmas. We had movies on Tuesday and Friday nights for 2 weeks leading up to Christmas. The community comes and joins us. We were happy to be rained out one night but postponed the movie until the next night. We were happy to have needed rain.
This past Wednesday night we went caroling in our lorry (big truck) and at each place we stopped added more people to the truck. We ended up with about 40 people squeezed in! We gave out sweets to all the people we sang for. Thursday was a holiday here and the doctors were gone for a wedding, so I did rounds and discharges and then with Cheryl, and the Mereki kids we put together the gift bags for our staff to be given out the next day. That day was hot so jumped in the pool when I got home before making 6 cakes for the party! We were so happy to have electricity all day except an hour during dinner time.
Friday we worked until 1 p.m. and we were running here and there to get everyone’s work done by 1 p.m. so we could start our staff Christmas lunch. We finally got started close to 2 p.m. Michael Mereki played DJ for us and we were happy to have electricity from about 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. when usually on Friday’s we don’t have electricity. We served a wonderful lunch of chicken. beef, rice, Cole slaw and gravy. It was so good. For dessert we had chocolate cake and ice cream—some people had never eaten ice cream before so it was a real treat. We played games, danced, sang and ended with giving a gift bag to each of our 96 staff members of rice, sugar, flour, oil, Mazoe (drink), soap, socks and a scarf! We had bags sent from the US and they were beautiful bags for each which they all enjoyed. We had close to 80 staff there for the party which was great considering many were on leave or days off. We were happy that we had some tent awnings which came in the recent container to put up in our dining area to give us some shade. It was a toasty 108 that day!
We finally finished about 4:30 p.m. and then had a few patients to see and I helped Major pay our construction crew and finally got home at 7:15 p.m. in time for prayers and movie. Went to bed about 11 p.m. exhausted!
Up early to get started on Christmas Eve baking and then to the hospital for work. Got home by 12:30 p.m. and continued with baking. I made cookies, doughnuts, pumpkin and banana breads and Cheryl made an apple pie for our Christmas Eve present opening. We also made coffee, tea and hot chocolate.
The electricity was on from Friday night until about 2:20 p.m. on Sat and then tried to come back for a few minutes about 3 p.m. and died. We knew there was a fault and thought that is it—no electricity for Christmas! I sent them a text message to tell them of the fault and at 7 p.m. when we went to the hospital to start our Christmas Eve candlelight service just as we lit the candles, ZESA came on! Wow! We actually had to go around and turn off lights to have our candlelight service!
After the service, the Mereki family and Dr. Kajese joined Cheryl and I for snacks and opening gifts. We all got wonderful gifts and enjoyed our time together. Major drank 2 large cups of coffee and we kept waking him up as he was so tired! No one left until about 10:30 p.m. When again we fell into bed exhausted!
I was up by 5 a.m. on Christmas morning to start cooking again! We do a lot of eating here! We decided we would have a brunch after church—so I started cooking so it would be ready and we would just have to heat it up when we got home. We were happy to have received 6 mls of rain during the night which cooled us down and it stayed pretty overcast for the day with some more sprinkles here and there. The high for Christmas day was 95 and low 78! Don’t you wish you were here?
We went to church at 8 a.m. and we had a good crowd. We held it at the hospital so the patients could join us. Over 200 people came and then we served bread and jam and margarine and tea to all who came. They ate until they were so full! This was a great Christmas for them.
At 11 a.m. Dr. and Mrs. Kajese, Major and family and Major’s cousin and son joined Cheryl and me for a brunch. We had quiche, ham, sausage, French toast, banana and pumpkin bread, doughnuts and hash browns. We ate outside in my dining room and had tea, coffee and juice. Everyone ate until they were so full—we had a hard time moving! We ate and visited for 3 hours and then Major and family left for their farm at Batanai while the rest of us went to take a long nap.
We ended the day with showing the Jesus film in Shona at the hospital with a good crowd that came out for that. The 26th is a holiday here so we plan to sleep in and go to work at 9 a.m. and only work a half a day and then get ready to go away on Tuesday for a short holiday to the Eastern Highlands to visit with our friend Gladys.
We hope you and your families had a Blessed Day praising our God for the gift of his son.

Container arrives!

African flying termite


The invasion begins--they love light!

Christmas is up at home!

Dr. Kajese and Dr. Kellert holding up ovarian tumor removed!

Starting the surgery for the ovarian cyst!

Starting to remove the container off the lorry

The Lorry arrives with the container

The container from Sebastopol Christian Church arrived on Saturday last week (10th of December). It was quite an experience to get it here; in fact it could be a movie script!
One of doctors left on Saturday at 6:30 a.m. to go to Chinhoyi with the driver and they only got about 5 miles away from the hospital when they found the truck bringing the container had broken down on our big hill (Dzimaiwei Hill—which means “Oh my goodness” hill) since the night before. The driver came back to tell us and quickly Major took off with the Land Rover and tractor to pull it up the hill. They got there by 7:30 a.m. and went to work. The doctor and driver went on to Chinhoyi (3 hours away) while Major went to work trying to get the truck with the container up the hill. Shortly after they went to work—another truck showed up (large lorry) which had come to pick up peanuts from the hospital. The driver decided that he could get by on the right of the truck and then promptly got his wheels stuck off the road so now there were 2 trucks stuck at a V shape angle! The whole hill was now totally blocked.
The combi’s which transport patients back and forth to the hospital couldn’t get by the trucks. So the one’s bringing patients from the hospital pulled up to the truck and let their passengers walk around trucks and get to another combi who was bringing patients to the hospital. Those people got out and walked to the combi stuck on the other side. So they traded passengers and kept going back and forth like that while the trucks were stuck!
Soon it was learned that the truck carrying the container had a starter problem—so they went to work on that. Our mechanic was the driver who had gone to Chinhoyi with the doctor—so they called and told him to hurry back.
While they were waiting for the mechanic to get back a pickup truck driven by a local headmaster came up the hill before seeing the trucks. Major’s son Michael tried to wave them down to warn them of the obstacle ahead and they assumed he wanted a ride, so didn’t slow down and went over the hill to see 2 big trucks stuck, blocking the way. The driver panicked and had no brakes—so he decided to drive into the hill to stop and in front of all the people flipped his car over and ended up upside down! The people said it was like watching slow motion crash! They waited to go to the car thinking they might have died but soon a hand was reaching out the window and so they ran to drag them out of the cab of the truck. They helped to turn the truck over and the roof was dented in and windscreen shattered, but they got them going away and they turned around and left with the truck with no brakes!
Shortly after 1 p.m. the driver arrived back from Chinhoyi fixed the truck with the container and they used the local road crew caterpillar to pull out the 2 stuck trucks—one at a time and they finally arrived at 4 p.m. with the container and to pick up the peanuts! Major and group arrived hungry, dusty and tired, but quickly went to work to pull the container off the truck. It took awhile but finally it was off! By 5:45 p.m. the peanuts were loaded on their way and the truck with the container offloaded was on their way too! What a day!
We are so thankful for the container and so far in a week haven’t had a chance to unload it because Major was in Harare 3 days this week. We hope to get it open on Monday.
We are happy to report we have had over 100mls of rain this week. People are happy and busy in their fields! Keep praying for rain it is working. We have had enough rain to bring out the flying termites tonight and they are coming in the house as I write! Luckily it only lasts for 2-3 nights a year, so the invasion has begun. This is a favorite snack for the local people so they are so happy!
On Thursday Dr. Cheryl Kellert took out a 9 pound ovarian cyst/fibroid. She had to work hard to dissect it. This lady looked like she was 20 months pregnant when she came in and had been living with all the extra fluid and mass for 3 years. We drained 15.5 litres of fluid out of the mass before the operation! We had referred her to Chinhoyi Hospital last year and they did an ultrasound and said they saw no mass! How thankful we are here to have Dr. Kellert her who made such a difference in this woman’s life! I am sure word will spread fast and many more women will come for help.
Yesterday (Friday) Major, Cheryl and I went off to Harare for the day to do some Christmas shopping and some errands for the hospital. We left by 5 a.m. and spent the day on the run! We left Harare at 6 p.m. with the car full and got home at 11 p.m. We were all exhausted! Couldn’t wait to fall into bed. Those one day trips to Harare are killer days! We did enjoy lunch at the Belgian Chocolate Shop!
This afternoon was spent wrapping presents and putting them under the tree. This will be a busy week with Tuesday movie, Wednesday caroling, Friday staff lunch—need to bake 5 cakes, Friday night movie, Saturday night candlelight Christmas Eve service, after that opening presents and snacks at my house with Major’s family, doctors and wife and Cheryl and I. Sunday morning, church at the hospital, 9 a.m. with tea after for all who come and then brunch at noon here for Major and family, one doctor and wife and Cheryl and I. Monday is a holiday here—so we have some time to recover from the busy week!
Then Tuesday night (27th) Major and family and Cheryl and I head to Harare to spend the night and then leave early the next morning for Nyanga to see Gladys and do some exploring in the Eastern Highlands, an area full of fir trees, lakes with trout and waterfalls! We come back on the 31st to have NY Eve with the community which goes all night and have church at 5 a.m. on the 1st after the all night church meeting. Then we collapse!

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas is up!

Hysterectomy at Chidamoyo with Dr. Kabanzi and Dr. Kellert and myself doing anesthesia

Thanksgiving dinner at Chidamoyo

Students enjoying all that food!

Major is getting ready to eat!

Thanksgiving was celebrated here on Sunday November 27th. Thanksgiving Day is not a holiday here and so it is always a busy day and no time to cook the feast—so we usually have it on Saturday, but Major and family wanted to go home to plant that weekend so we had it Sunday night after church. We had Major and wife Patience, Dr. Kabanzi, Dr. Kellert and 3 medical students from University of Zimbabwe who are here for 4 weeks with us. We started by explaining what Thanksgiving was and they really got into the eating part!
We had planned on having chicken because turkey is hard to come by and very expensive here, but the driver didn’t get to the butchery in time to pick up the chickens I ordered and paid for, so we had one small chicken and roast pork with all the trimmings! We had a table full of food and those young men could eat. Cheryl (Dr. Kellert) made 2 pumpkin pies and an apple pie! So we really enjoyed and left some leftovers for some days.
We have been busy at the hospital and Dr. Kajese has been gone for a month as his father was critically ill, but now doing better and then he had a 2 week workshop that lasts until today and then he is coming home. He is most anxious to get back to the bush.
We stayed closed to home to cover for him and went 2 days to Harare to do some pre-Christmas shopping, visit the doctor, and pick up Major’s kids who finished school on the 30th of November. This is the end of the school year and the new school year starts on January . They were so excited to be out of school!
Saturday the 3rd was spent in decorating for Christmas—it took all day, but I got it done! I have 30 boxes of decorations so it takes time! Our electricity had been off all day from 12:30 a.m. due to a fault but it came back at 5:30 p.m. and we got to see the lights light up!
Last week we had a young 18 year old walk in having delivered a premie at home—still attached to the placenta. Dr. Cheryl Kellert went to take care of it and then she was in my office saying it is twins, and then 10 minutes later she was saying it is triplets and then within another few minutes—it is quads! Four babies and no IVF! First pregnancy. It was only about a 24 week gestational pregnancy so none lived beyond a few minutes after delivery. This was definitely a first for all of us!
Yesterday we had another first in the 31 years I have been at Chidamoyo. We did our first hysterectomy with Cheryl teaching as she worked with what instruments we have and did well. We also had a C/Section to start off the day. It was hot in the theater and the small air conditioner was struggling so she came out soaked with sweat! It was a great morning!
We also received word yesterday that she will be stationed in Chinhoyi to do her 3 months acclimatization to get her medical license here. She goes on Monday morning to arrange this. We are glad she will be close (3 hours) where we can refer patients and also she can come home on weekends. She will learn what can and can’t be done in the Province and meet with people we work with. Part of the time she will be living with Nick and Lindale Marshall Adams, missionaries in Chinhoyi. We are hoping this will be a great time for her and also it will go fast so we have her back here again soon.

5 Days without ZESA!

Mr. Mereki 20 years and Mrs. Mereki 10 years getting their certificate from Dr. Kabanzi

Presenting certificates

Long Service Award Dinner

Dinner for Long Service Awards

Dr. Kellert sewing up a leg

TOP TEN THINGS YOU LEARN WHEN YOU HAVE NO ZESA* FOR 5 DAYS IN A ROW
(ZESA is the name of our electric supply company in Zimbabwe and stands for “Zimbabwe electricity Seldom Available!)
10. It is your fault that ZESA went out because you bought extra meat, had 2 pigs slaughtered, filled the freezers full for a staff party on Saturday this week.
9. Everyday you struggle to call the ZESA fault line on Skype( because there is no cell phone coverage when there is no electricity) with your battery back up with a small amount of time before it will die, to report that you still have no electricity. The answer you get everyday is “has this been reported?”
8. You learn quickly not to wear that headlight flash light that is so great because it leaves your hands free to do things. As the only light in the room it attracts all the bugs to bombard you in your face!
7. When you have Sunday night church you can dose off discreetly and no one notices (unless you snore) because only the person preaching has a light and the audience is in the dark.
6. When Major came from Harare on Wednesday night and he stopped at the ZESA office in Karoi to see if they had worked on our fault, he was meet by a ZESA employee holding a candle, because their electricity was out, and asking “did you report the fault?” (Yes you have noticed that is the “only” question they can ask)
5. You have a constant battle at night whether you should put your mosquito net down and then sleep with no air all night because the air doesn’t seem to get through those small holes in the net very well, or keep the net up and let the bugs dive bomb you all night and hope a mosquito doesn’t bite you and give you malaria, but at least you felt some breeze during the night!
4. You try and stay up past 7 p.m. with a few solar lights which immediately attract every bug within a 25 mile radius and so you constantly are picking bugs off your body, under your clothes, and hair, until you finally give up and turn off all the lights and go to bed early!
3. You look forward to that cold shower in the morning (no lights, not hot water) when you get up because you have been sweating all night!
2. You invite lots of people over for lunch and dinner because you want to use up all your meat that is melting in your freezer. Meat every meal—wow am I happy or what?
1. The whole audience breaks into a cheer when last night during the community movie (run by generator) when ZESA came on! Even those who don’t have electricity in their homes are cheering because they know the hospital needs electricity for X-rays and Lab tests! And you go to bed with the fan blowing on your face and all seems right with the world!

We kept Dr. Kellert this week. I made it sew up a lacerated leg this week. i told her you are a surgeon you can sew a leg closed--it had been a few years since she had to do that!

Saturday I cooked dinner for 30 people as we had our Long Service Award dinner. We celebrated 13 people who have worked 5, 10 and 20 years at the hospital. I cooked 4 pork roasts, 22 pounds of beef, coleslaw, 22 pounds of mashed potatoes, 10 butternut squash and 2 cakes.

ZESA came back on Friday about 9:30 p.m. and stayed on until 7 a.m. Saturday--just in time for me to have the pork roasts cooking and the cakes in the oven. Quickly switched to the gas oven and hoped the cakes wouldn't fall in!

The electricity stayed off the whole day so we turned on the generator for the party. ZESA finally came back at 11:30 p.m.! This morning it was still on so I quickly went to work getting a load of wash out. Soon my back veranda was flooding. Called Major and we quickly found that a rat had eaten through a plastic hose in the washer. We temporarily fixed it with duct tape and now on load 3 of washing and have one more to go!

Only a few drops of rain this week! We are very dry and need rain so badly! Keep praying for rain!

Pray for rain--it is dry!

Price giving with Headmaster at Zvarai

Major and Cheryl eating after the prize giving

Cheryl and I at Prize giving

Prize giving with students and teaching

Students performing for parents and us

Nurses station and Trauma room going up

Pediatric extension and Nurse station and Trauma room under construction

Major, myself, Dr. Kajese, Dr. Kellert and Dr. Kabanze

The 3 Doctor K's

Well it has been another busy week in Club Chid. The three Doctor K’s are all working hard and Dr. Kellert got to do her first C/Section with Dr. Kajese on Wednesday evening. It went well and she is now used to our instruments, sutures and non-disposable everything—don’t throw those gloves away—we reuse them!! The C/Section was done on Lori’s maid who had come the day before to clean Dr. Kellert’s house—that put her into labor. I told her she should have tried that on her patients in the US “clean my house and you will go into labor!”
The building continues on the Peds extension and also the Nurses Station/Trauma room and updating the new X-ray room. Major is keeping busy supervising it all.
We have been having severe water problems for sometime and we finally broke down and paid a company from Harare to come out and help us. We also got new pumps and pipes and it seems to be working much better now. This is always a time of water shortage because we haven’t had rain for 6 months and it is hot so people use more water. I was jumping in my swimming pool to keep cool and smell better for a few days!
It is still hot but our very hot weather seems to have broken. We are now running in low 100’s everyday and the past 2 days we have had some wind which helps to keep us a bit cooler. It is wonderful to come home from work and jump in the pool and swim some laps! It is a nice 88 degrees at 8 a.m. this beautiful Saturday morning as I write this. Just talked to my family in California and it was 32 degrees and raining as I talked to them on Skype! I am glad I am here.
We had a big storm last Saturday with lots of lightening and thunder for a couple of hours. It burnt out our modem for the internet and part of our satellite dish for the internet so we had to have the technician out this week to put us back on line at the hospital. Since then it has been dry—no rain! People are anxious to start plowing and planting.
On Friday I was invited to be the “Guest of Honor” at the end of year Prize Giving for Zvarai Primary school about an hour away. Major, Dr. Kellert and I went for a big program with a band, dancing, speeches and then helping to give out the prized for best students in each class. The program was about 4 hours long and then they gave us a feast of rice, sadza, chicken, liver, intestines, and beef. We had a wonderful time and came home exhausted and ready for bed!