Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

Many people ask if the things we send are worth the money it takes to get them here in a container.   Let me tell you something that happened this morning to illustrate.   An old grandmother of 80+ years was beaten up with a brick from her psychotic daughter at 0400 this morning.   They found her about 6 a.m. when her other daughter went to see her.   She was slumped over in a pile of blood.   They luckily had a vehicle and put in the back of an open pickup truck and brought her here to the hospital (2 hours away). When she arrived she was gasping for air.   She had lacerations in two places on her skull—she had 2 depressed skull fractures we could feel.   She was bleeding from her mouth where her front teeth had been, and her nose was bleeding as well as bleeding blood from the inside of her right ear.   Her eyes were both swollen shut and bruised and her cheek was swollen and bruised. We had to put an IV line in her neck, take a blood...

This week has been very busy with patients and working on or research project.   We have hired two new people to work with us in the office to help with our weekly and monthly reports and to do data management for or ART patients. Mrs. Marceline Moyo is Dr. Calvin Moyo’s wife and mother of almost 2-year-old Matipa. She is helping in our Data management.   She is developing a new data base for our patients and putting lots of info in the computer, so we can follow our patients better. Mrs. Ntombizodwa Mudzingwa is Dr. Garikayi Mudzingwa wife and mother of 14 month old, Abigail.   She is helping to do our weekly and monthly statistical reports that need to be done.   As more and more reports have been required it was impossible for me to continue to do them and my other work.   Both ladies will be a big help to our program and take some of my work away that has been piling up.   We are thankful for our mission hospital organization ZACH and ...

This weekend winter really hit and believe it or not it gets very cold in Africa! On Monday Major and his wife Patience and his daughter Carolyn and I headed for Harare about 11:45 p.m.  We were supposed to leave at 11 a.m. but with a hospital to run it is hard to get away! I had a doctor's appointment with my urologist, Mr. Chiura, at 4 p.m. and we managed to get there by 3:45 p.m. and then wait!  He decided that due to my worsening hydronephrosis he wanted to try a procedure in surgery to put stents in my ureters to help with the constrictures I have due to radiation 28 years ago.  He had booked me for surgery first thing Wednesday morning. Monday night we got together with Dr. Kajese and his family.  They had a new baby girl, Zoey, born in March that we hadn't seen and Lexi, daughter number 1 had grown so much.  She is almost 3 and quite a handful of excitement!  After dinner Dr. Kajese and I went to the car and he started an IV cannula on me so ...

Monday our lorry from the hospital went in to pick up a container from Sebastopol, CA that arrived.   This is the first time that we have been able to transport our own container.   Tapson, the driver said it was very heavy—but they made it up Zvimaiwei Hill with no problem and arrived Monday night.   We got it unloaded on Wednesday off the lorry and opened it Friday to start the unloading progress.   We put lots of boxes in the hallway outside my office to start unpacking as I have time between patients. This week we kept busy with some guests from ZACH—our church hospital organization that works with CDC-PEPFAR program to sponsor or HIV/AIDS work.   They were with us from Tuesday night through Friday morning visiting 2 other clinics in the area they sponsor and us. I cooked dinner for the 3 guests for the 3 nights they were with us. They brought us a nice tented room that we can use when going out on our ART outreach clinics.   We learned to pu...

It has been a busy 2 weeks.   We said goodbye to people and said hello to new people and then met up with old friends to see new places.   What fun is that! On the 22 nd of May we had a going away party for Dr. Isala and his wife Loraine.   He had been with us for 4 years as our doctor and Loraine had been here for almost eight years as a nurse.   They met and married here in 2015.   They left as of May 31 st to work at a private clinic in Bindura—80 kms North of Harare.   We had a wonderful lunch with all the staff and gave them a rural life painting to remember us by in their new home. At the going away party we also said goodbye to Dr. Ben Watterly who had been with us for 3 weeks from the UK and Courtney Walker, RN who had been with us for 2 weeks from CA.   We had a great time with them and wish them well.   Ben was going on for a month to New Zealand to visit his brother and Courtney was going on to do another medical mission trip i...