Week 2 back and very busy!

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Two weeks back and life continues to be busy.  Summer is here and we are struggling to “keep cool” in 105+ degree weather.  Some nights when we are eating dinner and it is dark it is still 93 degrees!  October is called suicide month here and we understand why!  It is hard to sleep and hard to work!
Rick and Sue have been busy unpacking the container.  We are very anxious to get to all the medical equipment.  I came home on Monday evening and found new furniture and a carpet that my forwarding agents had picked out for me to buy.  It is a beautiful and comfortable leather set and we are all are enjoying it!

We got our first rain of the season on Saturday the  13th of October.  It started to rain just as soon as we put the meat on the braii (BBQ) for dinner!  We kept cooking and enjoyed the cool drops.  By the time we got inside the hard rain hit and we ended up getting 11mls of rain in about 3 hours.  Of course one of the problems of the rainy season is that storms hit down power poles and by 9 p.m. we had no ZESA!  That night it stayed a bit cool because of the rain and so we could survive sleeping without a fan.  They finally got the problem fixed about 3 p.m. Sunday, but it continued to go on and off until 6 p.m. and then stayed on until Monday morning!

Rick and Major left last week on Wed to run errands in Harare as they were on their way to a National Men’s conference in Marandera (60 kms east of Harare), which started Thursday with dinner.  They enjoyed the conference and also the cool, as it is much cooler there than here!  Some of our men only brought sheets and found they really needed a blanket too!  They were cold!

Rick and Major returned to Harare on Sunday and on Monday afternoon picked up 2 visitors to come out here.  Jesse and Laura who work with PATH and Cascade were here to set up a machine that can make chlorine for disinfection using just table salt and water.  We had a smaller version which we were using to help us in saving costs for disinfecting instruments, toilets, floors and counters.  We are thankful for their help in this area.   They arrived but their luggage did not and so they finally got it in the evening and they all arrived here just before midnight!

We spent two days with them and they left on Wed (the 17th) to carry on to Malawi to bring another machine to a hospital there.  We hope it is cooler for them there!

Yesterday morning our electricity went off at 5:30 a.m. and has been off since (36 hours).  They said it was a fault and they were working on it!  We are critically low on diesel and so we have not turned on the generator much.  Last night we jumped in the pool before dinner and after Bible Study in order to cool off before bed without a fan all night!  This morning I jumped in the pool again to cool off before breakfast! 

Today was our busy day of CD4 counts, starting patients on ART and an eye team from Harare came to do cateracts.  We are all sweating and trying to keep going!

Last week on Thursday,  Sylvia and her husband Chuck arrived to spend some time with us here.  Friday I started her on a project with Sue of cleaning my office and sorting through meds I had there.  Then Monday they started on organizing all the used clothes in our containers.  It is quite a big job especially since the containers are like ovens!  I think we will all meet in the pool before dinner tonight.

We have been trying to keep up with the Play offs and hoping the Giants hang in there!  We would like to see a Detroit and SF World Series—we hope it will work out that way!
 New furniture and carpet
 Laura and Jesse from Cascade and PATH
 People for cateract surgery
Sue and Sylvia hard at work sorting clothing
 

 

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 30, 2012 at 3:34 AM

    I wonder how you afford all the medical equipment, it's so expensive. I've been trying to find a otoscope suppliers who offer an accessible price range but none so far.

    ReplyDelete

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