Busy week at Chidamoyo

-

This week went very quickly.  On Tuesday the 19th I picked up a new visitor, Julie Gibson, from CA and Florida.  She has been accepted into Medical School in July and came her to get some hands on experience.   She has been busy and her first day here she learned to draw blood and watched some bones being set.

Thursday we went to Harare and got registered with our truck to be able to transport.  We bought a baler box and packs for tobacco to start transporting to Harare and Karoi soon.  We are excited that we will be having money to help the hospital, with the truck.

Friday we had 8 visitors who came for Harare to spend the day and night with us.  Dr. David Katzenstein, from Stanford University, lead the group and brought Lab and ITC people with him to talk about the start of our research project we will be doing together.  We will be doing Viral Loads by drawing blood and Dried Blood spots to look at adolescent/children from age 5-18 who are on ART (AIDS medication) and how well they are taking their medication and how well it is working with them.  This is a vulnerable population as many are orphans and get moved around from relative to relative and so they tend to miss medication.  Also adolescents tend to rebel by stopping their medication as a way to punish their family, so we want to see if there are ways to intervene if we need to.

We spent time discussing who is going to do what.  We hope also to benefit with students who will come and help us with the Lab and IT things.  We look forward to our interacting.

Major went off this morning to Zvipani (32 kms away) for a men's conference he is preaching at.  This is a mens meeting for all of our local churches.  It will be a great encouragement for the men in the church in our area.  We are thankful for that.

Julie


Baling Box


Our group that came for the Research project


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visitors from Australia, Happy 20th Carolyn, Unpacking container, lots waiting for delivery!

-
Image
We were so happy to visit with Dr. Batsi Chiuerki and wife Charity and their three children who were visiting from Perth, Australia on the 7th of July.  They moved to Australia 12 years ago after working with them as our doctor at Makonde Christian Hospital.  It was so good to see them and with their children grown up!  We had a wonderful visit with them in Harare for a few hours. Michael Major came home from University last week and he flew into Harare from South Africa.  We got to enjoy a lunch out and he drove me home from Harare last week.  My "driver "is back on his holiday so need to take advantage of it. On Saturday the 8th of July we celebrated Caorlyn Mereki's 20th biorthday with a taco dinner and cake.  We also celebrated Michael's 24th birthday from May since he ad been away at University and we didn't get to celebrate in person with him.  Everyone had a great time at the party! We spent time this past week unpacking the container we got recentl
Read more

What a week!

-
Image
We have two new visitors that arrived this week and started working with us. Liz graduated from high school in May and is starting college in Portland, OR in January. She is a missionary kid born in Zimbabwe—her name is also Tariro and she left when she was 3 years old for Cambodia and eventually Viet Nam and IN. Lauren is from my home church in Sebastopol and is taking a semester off from college in Chico, CA to help us out. It has been a busy week—I hope they don’t think it always like this—if it is I quit now! We had gone into Harare last Friday afternoon (27th August) after work (Dr. Zimudzi, Carolyn Mereki and I). We got there in time to meet up with Major, Lori and the 2 girls who had arrived Thursday afternoon. We enjoyed some peri-peri chicken and ice cream! Saturday morning we were all off for the wedding of one of our doctors, Vernon Murenje and his bride Christine. It was held in a beautiful location on the waterfront of a lake. The wedding was to start at 9 a.m. and in typi
Read more

Covid-19--The world has changed

-
Image
Throughout the world we are all facing big changes in our life.   Many are on self-quarantine; many are staying home because their state has been put on lock-down and all of us are trying to avoid getting this flu. It has hit Zimbabwe.   We have 5 confirmed cases—1 death and 1 doctor at Harare Hospital, in Zimbabwe.   They supposedly have only tested 150 people and as all of you are aware the results take 5+ days.  The tests are only available in Harare. We have few test kits in the country, no PPE and so nurses started a country wide strike today which means most hospitals are totally shut down.   Our local district hospital—which is our only other hospital in the district besides us—sent a message today to not send any patients as they were closed!   With no PPE you can’t blame people who make little money stopping work.   We hope it will cause some action from the government and not for them to continue to be quiet! We do have PPE here thanks to many donations from
Read more