Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

Wow, one travel over our road from Karoi and you will see why we are dreaming of a helicopter.  This is the worse it has been in 34 years I have been here.  No one has worked on it for 4 years and now with an abundance of rain this year, it is a mess.  It used to take us 1 hr and 15 minutes to Karoi our nearest town.  Now it is 2- 2 1/2 hours!  We have 2 ways to go and we can’t decide if one is better than the other.  We always say it is shorter to the tar one way so at least the agony of the first isn’t so long, so we usually choose that way! With the rain there have been big gullies and hole that have washed away in the road--it is always a challenge.  Most of us refuse to go to town unless absolutely necessary.  It is so painful!  Major goes 2 times a week sometime!  Glad he is younger and can drink a lot of coffee/coke to keep going! We were happy to welcome our UK Trust board members, Gillian and Mike Withers from Crowthorne, ...

Those of you who know us at Chidamoyo or have been here to visit with us know how “cool” we are are, but this week we got even “cooler!”  We had a new air conditioning unit put into our labortory to keep the machines cool and running.  Without the air conditioning they were shutting down because they were overheating.  So with the new air conditioner we can keep going even in our hot season. We also put an additional air condition in our operating room and it is very cool now for our doctors operating.  This week I got to enjoy it on Friday when I had several cases to do.  I think we will be fighting to work in theater and the Lab in October during our hot days! We are thankful for our supporters who helped us make a big change  in both departments that will help our patient care be better.  Thank you! Our only doctor left last Saturday to attend a family wedding in South Africa, so it has been me trying to run everything and do my job an...

New and exciting developments are happening at the hospital.  This past week we finally got installed our Full Blood Count machine and Electrolyte machine that was donated by the Rotary Club of Sebastopol, CA.  We hope to arrange the official turnover ceremony with the Harare Rotary club this week. Let me tell you some exciting things that happened with these machines.  We ordered and paid for the machines in early September.  They promised to delivery them in 1 month.  We waited 1 month and called, yes they are coming.  Then we kept calling every week and we would get some excuse and a promise they were on the way. In December when we got worried they were taking us and our $25,000 for a ride we called and said they better be delivered in 2 weeks or we wanted all our money back with interest! Within a week our machines were delivered. Then we had to call them several times about coming to set up the machines for us and teach our Lab guy how to d...