Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

Visitors!

2012-01-28T06:07:00.000-08:00

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!

2012-01-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-12-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-12-10T02:31:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-20T03:57:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

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!

Dr. Kellert arrives--yeah!

2011-11-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kellert in office
New X-ray room next to theater (from OPD veranda)

New X-ray room

Building the new Nurses station and Trauma room

Trauma Room/ Nurses Station

Pediatric Extension

After 5 months of correspondence back and forth, and applications, sold house and moving, and waiting for a medical license in Zimbabwe —Dr. Cheryl Kellert and OB/GYN from the US arrived on Tuesday November 1st to become our 3rd doctor! Who would have thought! After so many years of no doctor, then 1 doctor, then 2 doctors and now a third—wow!

She arrived here on Tuesday evening and we had dinner for her with the other doctors and Major and Patience. Then she gladly went off to bed after 2 days of straight flying. She left Connecticut in a big snowstorm and arrived to 110 weather here—wow what a shock on the body—but she has done well and was up in the morning to start work!

We have been busy getting her house ready and an exam room ready. While we are building a new X-ray room we are now using the old X-ray room for her exam room and office. We are still using it for our X-ray room, until the new one is done in about 1-2 weeks, so they trade off back and forth!

She will have to go and work for 3 months in a government hospital to acclimatize her to the work here and we are trying to make arrangements that it will be in Chinhoyi which is close (3 hours) and she can come on weekends and also we can refer patients to her and we can call her for help. We will keep her here for a couple of weeks until it is sorted out where she will go.
On Friday we had a meeting of the 6 mission hospitals in our Province and we were the hosts. We had 17 people that came and 9 spent the night. They arrived for tea in the morning, we had our meeting and then they went to tour the hospital while I started dinner for 15 people. We had a braii—steak on the BBQ and Cheryl helped me to cook.

After dinner we had our Friday prayer time and then a movie for all. The next morning we had 15 people for French toast for breakfast! The people left about 8:00 a.m. and Cheryl and I and Dr. Kajese went to the hospital to make rounds and by 1 p.m. we were home for lunch and a nap!
This past week our X-ray person was at a workshop and his back-up replaced him. The back-up, a nurse aide, was on nights, so when the electricity came on at night he took the X-rays. One morning we found he had taken 5 X-rays of a guy who had no lung on his right side because of fluid. We asked why he took 5 films and he said he couldn’t see clear on the right side so he thought he had made a mistake so he kept taking X-rays thinking it would clear up on that side! We wish it were that easy-ha!

We are happy that our construction projects are progressing. The Pediatric extension is up to roof level and now they have started on the nurses /trauma room. The X-ray room is almost finished and the electrician has brought power to it!

We had our first big rain storm of the year this afternoon at noon. We had 2 inches of rain in about 1 hour and lots of noise from thunder and a lot of lightening, with a close hit in the yard of the hospital that made all of us jump! We are thankful for the start of our rainy season and pray this will be a good one with enough food for everyone this year. At least it cooled us down after a week of 118-119 degree weather every day--for the last 2 nights we pulled a blanket up during the night to sleep--it got down to high 70's at night instead of low 90's!

Our new cellphone service went off line on Wednesday and it has not been back since--so much for having phone service! So if you have been trying to call us, there has been no coverage.

A new doctor is joining us!

2011-10-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kellert on far right with Sylvia, Major and friend in Seattle in July

Well summer has finally come and with a vengeance. It has been not less than 118 for the past 4 days! Last night it was 92 when I went to bed at 10 p.m. and no electricity, so no fan until finally at 11:30 p.m. the electricity came on and was off by 5:15 a.m. We all feel very lethargic and can’t wait to jump in the pool after work. With no electricity during the day this week it makes it hard to work in our offices without air from a fan. I run and do as much paperwork outside my office on the veranda in between patients to get some air—even if it is hot—it feels cool! Somehow we have to figure out how to work outside, but most patients might object to be examined in the open!
We have some exciting news to share! I was contacted in June by Dr. Cheryl Kellert from Washington State. She is an OB/GYN that I worked with in 1989-1991 in Santa Rosa, CA. For years I have been trying to get an OB/GYN to come on a working vacation to teach our doctors how to do more surgery. She contacted me out of the blue and said she wanted to come to Chidamoyo and work fulltime with us. She was selling her practice, her home and belongings and wanted to come—sight unseen to work with us! We started to work on the paperwork needed to get her licensed. She met with Major and Lori when they were in the US in July. She sold her home in 12 days and by August quit her practice and travelled around getting ready to move here. She has spent the last 6 weeks in Connecticut with her mom and yesterday we received word her license to practice has been issued! She booked her ticket and will arrive this next Tuesday—November 1st! We have all felt from the beginning that God was working hard to put all the pieces into place for her to be here and now we are all so excited!
To now have 3 doctors and one an OB/GYN specialist is something we would have never imagined! We know that the hospital will benefit so much from her services and we all will be very busy. This will be an exciting time for our doctors who will have someone to mentor them and teach them a lot. Thank you to all who prayed with us. Keep praying us she packs up and travels here for her safety and travel mercies! Pray for her adjustment (especially to the heat) and her work with us.
We received word this week that Rotary International from Sebastopol, CA has again helped us so much. They have received a grant to buy a new truck for us to be used as an ambulance! They are also helping to provide new beds and furnishing for the new Pediatric ward. We are to roof level!
We are working on the new X-ray room and plan to turn the old one into Dr. Kellert’s office/exam room. God worked it all out for us to have an extra room just when we needed it! The new X-ray room is being wired and is almost done with the building—so they can start painting it next week and then we can contact the company to come and install the new X-ray machine and developer!

Another busy week!

2011-10-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Jacarandas in bloom in Harare!

Jeep Wrangler--Sahara

Handing over of the keys of the Jeep from the salesman Mr. Blantyre

Major starting the Jeep

Back of Jeep

Major and the New Jeep

This has been one of those weeks (I have been saying that a lot lately!) Our new doctor—Dr. Kabanzi has been all by himself as Dr. Kajese went off to pick up his new car from the Zambia/ Zimbabwe boarder over the weekend and planned to be back here by Monday. On Monday he received word that his father-in-law had a stroke and was in the hospital and so he and his wife left for Bulawayo to assess the situation. While they were taking care of the father-in-law in the hospital, his own father visiting his sister in Bulawayo got sick. He recently had one kidney removed in February and now was anemic with cardiac failure and his only kidney left seemed to be in renal failure. So the whole week they have been trying to get proper medical care for the fathers, which is always a challenge in Zimbabwe.
I got back on Friday night from my conference in Harare and got to work with the doctor for the first time on Saturday and by Sunday I had to ask him to put a urethral catheter in me as my constrictures were blocking off the way for me to urinate! Nice way to meet your colleague! I kept the Foley in for almost 2 days and then took it out—it usually does the trick. But this time I was in a lot of pain and no better, so Wednesday when we went to get the new Jeep we had ordered 2 months ago, I decided to see an urologist in Harare. So while Major went running around I went to the doctor who said lets do a dilatation under anesthesia in 3 hours. I said first I need to go and pick up a new car. So we ran to do that and then I drove to the hospital and checked in while Major ran other errands. By 3 p.m. I was in surgery and by 5:30 awake and ready to go home. He had picked up the kids from school for their exit weekend (mid term break Thursday-Tuesday) and they traveled home with us. He had to call one of our drivers who is on leave in Karoi to take a combi and meet us in Harare to drive my car home since I couldn’t drive after anesthesia.
This procedure I have had lots of time and with little pain but I started severe pain all the way home! Major wanted to take me back to the hospital and I kept saying no, we need to get home! I took about 2000mg of Ibuprofen on the way home and every 15 minutes had him stop to let me try and pee to try and relieve the pain but it didn’t. So much for my first ride in the new Jeep—couldn’t really enjoy it much when I was doubled over in pain, moaning in the back seat! We finally got home at 1:30 a.m. and I slept on and off all night, but couldn’t even think about getting up to go to work.
During that day we had a non-profit group show up to distribute food to some of our AIDS/TB patients—over 1000 people showed up hoping to get something, and one of our staff members wives took poison to commit suicide and they ended up intubating her and bagging her all night by hand until she recovered! A human respirator! And she made it! And our new doctor didn’t pack up his bags to leave yet! Does this sound like a good medical drama or what?
We got a Skype call through to the doctor who said I could put a catheter in again, and so Dr. Kabanzi put it one in again—2 times in one week! Gave me some oral morphine and I slept almost continually until 5 p.m. Major and 10 men left for the men’s conference in Bulawayo finally about 11:30 a.m. he kept hanging around to see if I needed to be rushed back to Harare. By 5 I got up to shower and sat up for the first time in a day and then visitors started arriving—because they know if I don’t go to work I am dying—so they wanted to check! Then they told me exciting news—our cell phone tower had been turned on that afternoon and we could make calls from anywhere on the mission! I picked up my phone and called Major right away who was still on his way to Bulawayo! I called to say “Major, this is sister, I am in heaven and it is a good place!” He didn’t think it was very funny, but was glad I was a bit better. Then he proceeded to tell me how wonderful it was to drive the Jeep and so comfortable and how many times he stepped on the brake thinking he had to clutch—it is an automatic! He just went on and on about the truck and how people stared at it everywhere because they had never seen one before! He told me had at least 50 calls from people that day telling him that we now had network coverage!! Of course where they were headed had no coverage so he can’t call all weekend!
Friday I got up to go to work and felt better. I went with my catheter in and my patients and staff just stared at me! I stayed until about noon and then came home and slept for 2 hours and then went back at 2 until 4 and then came home to sleep again! I was just so wiped out but the pain was so much better!
Friday night is Pizza night at Chidamoyo, so I invited the doctor and the 3 female medical students over for pizza. Then after prayers we turned on the generator to watch a movie with Monica, Mereki’s and the students and doctor—I went to bed and slept until 7 a.m. this morning.
I made the decision to take at the catheter because it was so irritating and now am doing much better. Major had gone into Bulawayo to get diesel for the car and so he called to say hi and make sure I was still living! He kept saying the Jeep was the big attraction and everyone wanted their picture taken with it! Then got up and was able to go to work until 11, finished up discharges and came home to sleep—now I am feeling better. No electricity since 6 a.m. this morning so wish it would come on for the fans to cool us off a bit!
A big Thank you to all “Friends of Chidamoyo” and “The Benefit of Hope” in Seattle in July that raised the money for the new Jeep! We are so happy to have it and it is a true blessing to us! Come and visit us so you can ride in it!
We were told to come on Tuesday next week to get a letter to tell us if Dr. Cheryl Kellert has been approved for her medical license here. We are praying for the best and hope she will be here soon to add to the excitement of our work here.
Major will take the kids back for school on Monday afternoon and stay to get the letter for Dr. Kellert. We are all praying for the best! Major is so happy to go to Harare with the new car—he doesn’t mind going 2-3 times a week! He finally is learning to drive an automatic! I asked him how fast it can go and he said “Unlimited! But I keep to the speed limit!” Yeah, right! Thank you, thank you to all our donors!
We do hope to have a non-exciting week next week—is it possible?
Phone numbers for you from US:
Kathy: 011263772416270
Major: 011263882348309
We will get a hospital number soon and let you know! We have noticed that the coverage comes and go depending on electricity or not--so don't give up if you are trying to get us. Email is the best way to contact us.

5-October-2011

2011-10-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Pediatric extension going up

Putting in the window frames

Attaching the extension

Remodeling for the new X-ray room

Unloading X-ray machine

X-ray machine and developer arriving

Walt Chamberlin and Major teaching at seminar

Church leaders and ministers at seminar

Working in theater with my new hat!

New scrub top and hat

Opening birthday gifts

We started a week ago Sunday with my 57th Birthday. I don’t mind saying how old I am because God has blessed me with the years to live and I have done and seen so much, I feel blessed! As one of my refrigerator magnet say “Lord I can’t die yet, I have so much to do and am so far behind, I have no time to die now!”
I had a great birthday—a quiet day of church services and after Sunday night church at the hospital I celebrated with dinner and a movie with Major, his wife Patience, Dr. Kajese and 2 visiting medical students we had visiting from Harare. They were here for 3 ½ weeks with us doing their 3rd year rural rotation. After the movie they sang Happy Birthday to me and I opened my gifts. Since I don’t eat cake I had a wonderful bowl of fresh strawberries and everyone else had strawberry shortcake! Thanks to everyone who sent BD wishes on FB, emails and cards! I received one special gift from Ma and Pa Minnis in CA which was a Happy Birthday Scrub Top and surgery hat to go with it. Our doctor said when I opened it “I hope that doesn’t mean we will have a C/Section tomorrow so you can wear your new hat this year!” I decided to wear the scrub top on Monday and continue my birthday another day!
Monday after devotions in the morning at the hospital the staff all sang Happy Birthday to me. Ben Pennington a friend from Masvingo arrived for lunch with Walt Chamberlin, a minister in Madras, Oregon. Walt came to present a 1 ½ day seminar for our ministers and church leaders, starting that evening in my outdoor dining room. We continued the Birthday celebration with wonderful Sugar Free Belgian chocolates that Ben brought me to celebrate!
When I got back to the hospital about 2:30 p.m. the doctor called me to see a patient. We both agreed she had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and needed surgery. We were jinxed by the new BD hat! I quickly helped him to see the rest of his queue of patients while the nurses got IV’s going and the patient ready for surgery. Her Hemoglobin was 3 gms (normal is 12 and above) and she was bleeding into her abdomen—so we were lucky to have 4 units of blood in the fridge that I had just brought from Harare the week before. I got the blood ready to pump in as soon as the Dr. opened her up and clamped off the ruptured tube.
Dr. Kajese was very nervous as he had never done this surgery by himself before, but I told him let’s go I will help you. Sure enough it turned out to be a difficult one with adhesions to the bowel. I kept her asleep and kept running to see what they were cutting and tying and voting “is that bowel—don’t cut there or that isn’t bowel—cut and tie!” It was a relief to all when we finished and we had pumped in 3 units of blood and saved one for the next day if she needed. We all held our breath as she recovered and when she said she was passing gas—we celebrated! Amazing little things that amuse us! She was discharged home well on the 5th day—PTL for his help!
The ministers’ conference and seminar went well. The food was well cooked for all and we had 30 leaders and ministers who attended. They finished on Tuesday evening and we showed a movie for them at the end. Walt and Ben left Wednesday morning for Harare and Walt returned to the US on Thursday after 8 weeks here doing this seminar all over the country.
Thursday was our usual busy CD4 count day. The medical students got lots of experience drawing blood during their 3 ½ weeks with us. We average 85-100 extra people who come for CD4 each Thursday. We are so thankful for this machine and we are able to start about 15-20 people on Thursday and Fridays who need to be started.
Thursday night we were happy to receive our new X-ray machine and developer that has been donated to us by a medical group in the US. It arrived on our lorry. We are now renovating our Rehab room as a new X-ray room and darkroom and hope to have the machines set up within 2 weeks.
Friday was also a busy day and I invited the doctor and med students and Mereki’s over for Pizza before our prayers and Friday night movie for the community—then I fell into bed exhausted.
The building of the Pediatric extension continues well and they put in window frames this week. They continue to work hard on the additions and they have been pulled off to get the X-ray room renovated this week.
The whole week was a bad week for ZESA (our electricity). Saturday it went off at 4 a.m. and we had none the whole day until 9:30 p.m. Sunday was better but by Monday it was on and off and then a fault developed and since Monday at 11:15 p.m. there is no electricity to present (Wed. afternoon). They “say” they are working on it!
This week I am in Harare to attend a seminary for 4 days on health care in the future in Zimbabwe. Most of it is very theoretical. Talking about paperless hospitals (when we have no electricity for up to 12 days at a time!) and spending millions for people to plan our hospitals—when they are already built and we are trying to keep them working! The reality of this work in Zimbabwe is applicable to the private sector only! Oh well I am in Harare enjoying electricity and phone services and I left Chidamoyo with no electricity due to a fault for the last 3 days!
We are excited that on Friday last week a new X-ray machine and developer arrived donated by a medical missions group in the US. We are renovating our Rehabilitation Room to be our new X-ray room and they started on Saturday knocking out windows and doors to make the dark room and room. As soon as the room is ready they will come and set up the machine! How exciting is that!
We also have received word that the new Jeep Wrangler we bought with proceeds from the Benefit of Hope in July, has arrived in Harare and they are doing the paper work to get it licensed and cleared for us—so we hope maybe this week or early next week! We are excited! God is good!

Busy, busy, busy

2011-09-10T10:38:00.001-07:00

Dr. Zimudzi and Mrs. Mereki with Dr. Kajese behind at going away lunch
Dr. Zimudzi and Mr. Mereki

Dr. Zimudzi, Mr. and Mrs. Mereki

Foundation for addition to Pediatric Unit

Morning devotions at outpatients

This has been a very busy past 2 weeks. I am sitting here in the dark writing this, as ZESA just went out! It was on from 10:30 p.m. last night (Friday) until 6 p.m. tonight so can’t complain too much.
Last week everything seemed to go wrong! Monday was in Harare on Monday to get car parts for 2 of our vehicles that were down. One of our doctors was on off days with one of our working cars and my vehicle was the only one working—so off he went to get parts in Harare. Left at 4 a.m. and back at 11 p.m. He got the parts and then we left at 4 a.m. again for Harare to interview a new doctor for Chidamoyo. I drove so Major could rest. We did the interview and hired a new doctor—Andrew Kabanje who will join us mid-Sept or so. Major then went off to sort out more things and buy for the hospital, so I got beds made up in the flat for a team of 9 people arriving 2 days later going to work at one of our orphanages in the southern part of the country.
Thursday Major left at 12:50 p.m. again running to Harare to make in time by 5 p.m. to buy a new pump for the borehole. We were down to no boreholes working—no water—so he ran off to get a new pump. He got back by 12 midnight. The next day they got the borehole up and running and water again—yeah!
Friday I left with Major and his family at 3 p.m. to Harare so that on Saturday we could proceed to a funeral of a dear friend and one of our elderly states man of our church, Kenneth Makusha, who had died that week. He was the principle of our Bible College for several years until he retired about 6 or 7 years ago. His funeral was in Masvingo so we went as far as Harare and spent the night in the flat and by 6 a.m. we were “on the road again” to drive the 3 hours south to Masvingo for the funeral. Major and I shared the driving as he was beat after 4 days in and out of Harare—not an easy trip! The funeral went well and the church was packed to overflowing with over 700 people there. After the burial I got to have lunch with friends Ben and Karen Pennington, missionaries in Masvingo, and their guest Walt Chamberlin visiting from Oregon. Then we headed for Harare—getting in about 8 p.m.
The next morning we took Michael (Major’s son) to the school bus as he was off on a week’s trip to Chimanimani with his geography class. Carolyn, his daughter we left to start school on Tuesday and then we headed home.
All trucks and boreholes are working and Major only went to Harare once this week! That is a good week. I keep him plied with a thermos of coffee to keep him going for those early/late trips to Harare!

The addition of the Pediatric unit is up to foundation unit as well as the Trauma/ nurses room. they should start on the walls this week. We have ordered 20 tons of cement!
Work was very busy this week and Thursday was CD4 count day which is always busy. We see over an extra 100 patients we draw blood from, run their blood and then start or adjust medicine based on their meds. I started 19 new people on ART and had 5 come back on Friday and 4 on Saturday to get everyone started! I usually am at the hospital by 6:30 a.m. on Thursday and don’t come home until 6:30 p.m. When I got home at 6:30 p.m. I had to make 5 cakes by the next day. No cake mixes here! Just as I started the electricity went off—typical! So used a gas stove with oven I have in my video room. I was so tired I got 4 done and did the 5th one and all the frosting (no such thing as frosting in a tin here) the next day. That is when you miss a store you can run to and buy dessert!
Friday we had a special lunch for all the staff as a farewell to one of our doctors, Irvin Zimudzi. He left today for a new job in Namibia. We had a big lunch with rice, cole slaw, chicken and beef and cake—the 5 cakes I made! It was a great party and finally at 4 p.m. went back to finish work which took until 6 p.m. Came home ready to go to bed—but Friday night we have prayer time at 7 p.m. Decided to cancel the movie we usually have afterwards and go to bed by 9 p.m. and slept until 7 a.m.!! that felt good.
Today work was busy and had to help in theater to give anesthesia for a myositic abcess (muscle abscess) which we needed to open and drained—got 4 liters of pus out of it! She should feel better! The hospital she went to in town said she had a painful leg and did nothing about it!
Finally got home about 2 p.m. and ate lunch and took another hour nap! Wow, that felt good! Summer is here and enjoying a fan when the electricity is on. Got up to 117 today, but down to 72 as I am writing this at 7 p.m. Took off my second blanket off my bed today—so summer is officially here!
I am hoping for a slower week next week but already we have a meeting in Harare on Friday morning—so up to leave by 4 a.m. and back late—of those 1 day trips are killers for me! With only one doctor here now until the other one joins us it will be busy and I will need to help him see out-patients to get through in time as well as my patients, so I don’t think it will slow down much—we can only hope

Summer is on the way!

2011-08-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

Major and Michael staking out the house

Measuring the house

Major and his cousin Reggie marking the outdoor dining room

World Vision and team from Bristol,UK
with our 2 doctors

Last week started with visits from church members from Bristol, England who came out with a World Vision team to see some of the projects they have supported in our district. They worshipped with us at church on Sunday and then I cooked lunch for 20 people. World Visions helps us with drugs and equipment for the hospital and so we have been happy to be working with them. We enjoyed having them out for a few hours of fellowship and meeting new friends.

Wednesday I spent in Harare for a patient conference that concerns an MDR-TB patient that we have in our treatment here at Chidamoyo. MDR which stands for Multi Drug Resistant is a growing problem in Zimbabwe. There are 25 known patients in Zimbabwe. This is a difficult disease to treat and needs special medicine provided only through Harare. We have to go daily to give an injection and pills for the patient to swallow, 6 days a week for the next 2 years. The patient has to wear a mask at all time when interacting with people and we have to wear a mask when we go there to protect ourselves from this disease which is difficult to treat and deadly. Please pray for the healing of this patient. We go monthly to see a team of specialists doctors in Harare with the patient.

Yesterday, Saturday, I went with Major and family and Dr. Kajese and his wife to Major’s farm and home in Batanai (25 kms from here). We marked and pounded stakes into the ground to build my rural house in his village. I will have a 2 bedroom house with a patio in the middle all under one grass roof—that is oblong. Separately there will be an outdoor dining room/kitchen/lounge. It is built with walls about 3 feet high and then opens around with a grass roof. It will be started this next weekend. This will be my weekend and days off retreat. No running water or electricity—just living out in the bush in a community. This will also be a place to take my visitors to enjoy some bush living. Will keep you updated as we build.

Summer is coming back. Yesterday we had mid-90’s weather and it was 72 when I went to bed at 10 p.m. Seems that winter has come and it is going now. I enjoy the warm weather so I am happy to have summer back again!

Adventures of the week

2011-08-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Crocs they shot in the river that attacked our man we worked on

Kariba sunset

Michael and Carolyn Mereki

Major and family on safari in Kariba

Mereki family and Kathy at Kariba

Our Peanut Butter thieve!

3 lions looking at us!

This week we had a 4 day weekend with Monday and Tuesday being Heroes Day and Defense Forces Day. I went with major and his wife Patience and their 2 kids, Michael 18 and Carolyn 14 to a safari camp on an island on Lake Kariba in Mutasadona National Park. We left at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning and after getting a bit lost we made it there in about 8 hours.
It was dirt road and some 4-wheel drive parts to it. When we got lost (we drove by the turnoff) we actually drove through a river bed and Patience yelled “lion!” and there was a big female standing up on a ridge near us. We looked around and saw a male and one more female. We continued on and came back the same way when we decided we had missed our turn and saw 3 female lions lying on a sand bar in the river. Definitely a good reason to get lost!
We finally arrived and even though they told us we could drive all the way—it was still an island and we couldn’t get across to it—so they came to get us in a boat to go to Rhino Safari Camp.
Shortly after we arrived we went upstairs into an open area to get a drink and an elephant came walking out of the bush and right up to the open area. Pretty soon we noticed he was going through our luggage! We had brought some peanut butter for them and the elephant was trying to get it. When the guides shouted at him he dropped one bottle he had managed to get out of a paper bag. The guides thought it was medicine we brought because we put our peanut butter in our big plastic medicine bottles—so they were laughing when we told them it was peanut butter and boy had the elephant smelled that! We got some very up close pictures of elephant from the start!
We had a wonderful 3 nights and saw everything from lots of elephants (even babies) to kudu, impala, and crocodiles, lots of different birds, waterbuck, bushbuck, and buffalo. We went game viewing on Land Rovers and in boats. Major even had a chance to go out on a boat and fish one morning—he only caught one small fish but some of the others managed to catch some bream which we enjoyed as our appetizer that night.
We returned home on Tuesday afternoon and managed to get home in 6 hours without getting lost. It was a wonderful time and well worth the bad ride. Come and visit us so we can take you there!
When we got back and started work yesterday (Wed) we had to make up for the 4 days that we were gone. We had lots of patients and then I got called to do anesthesia for a patient who arrived with a big chunk out of his arm from a crocodile bite! The croc had bit him below the elbow and pulled him under and sat on him to drown him. He kicked with his leg as hard as he could into the stomach of the croc and it dropped him and swam away. His elbow was dislocated as well as fingers a bit mangled—but he will live and should be able to use that arm. He will be here for many weeks healing! He is a neighbor to Major at Batanai. He was fishing in the river with a net and dragging his hand in the water with his net. They said the croc was 12+ feet long!
Thursday was CD4 count day and we drew 87 people and started 14 and 8 others of those today on HIV meds. We always have a busy Thursday!
Friday Major left for Harare at 4 a.m. to do some errands. He didn’t get far before a flat tire. Then he only made it past Chinhoyi and blew the head gasket. Dr. Zimudzi also went to Chinhoyi and on to Harare and so he came back and helped out. They started driving slowly home filling it will water every 10 kms. Finally reached Karoi at 3 a.m. and Dr. Z came home and Major travelled on and when Dr. Z got home at 5 a.m. he sent another truck and people to tow Major home. They finally got home at 10 a.m.! What an Adventure! Sounds like it is time to sell the Land Rover!!
We have completely most of the foundation of our new additions—Pediatric ward extension and Trauma/ Stabilization room. We are excited to keep seeing it go up! We just heard this week that Bob the builder from CA will be here in early January to put the roofs on. He is looking for volunteers to help him if anyone is interested and come anytime from early Jan to end of March for any amount of time. Please contact us if you are interested. We can teach anyone to be a builder if you are interested in helping on this project.
The council sent out a hunter today to try and kill the crocs attacking the man whose arm was bit. They killed 2 very large crocs and came to show us this afternoon. They said there are plenty more left in the river.

Another container arrives!

2011-07-23T08:36:00.001-07:00

Unpacking boxes

All the boxes we need to go through!

Thank You Medical Teams International and all our donors!

Rehab Tech with some of his new equipment

The container was full!

The container arrives

God is so good! This week a 40 foot container from Medical Teams International arrived at our door step! This container was packed with medical equipment and supplies that will be so beneficially for our hospital. Many of you donated money to cover the cost of $23,000 to buy the goods and ship them here. It was sent at the end of April and arrived here on the 19th of July! There is over $500,000 worth of goods in the container!
We quickly had to unload the container as it had to go back with the truck that brought it. It took 2 hours and 10 people helping but we moved all the boxes into the chapel (where the peanuts had just vacated!) and all the boxes are now stacked up and ready to go through.
As some things were unloaded we immediately sent them to the departments. Our Rehabilitation Technician was so happy to see 2 wheelchairs and crutches and some traction equipment. We received an electric cauterizer machine for theater and skin staplers!! We have been missing the staplers for our C/Section patients as without them we have to sew the incision closed which takes an extra 10-15 minutes of anesthesia time! There is surgery instruments and just so much more! It will take me a bit of time to go through it but we are thankful it is here! In my spare time between seeing patients I will go box by box to unload and send to the departments that will use the things. Our doctors were so excited and even our visiting dentist was here when they were unloading and was so shocked that people would donate and send such wonderful things to people here in Zimbabwe that they don’t even know. This was really a witness to him!
I just finished this week going through the last barrel in the last container we received last month—so now am ready to start on this one! We are so thankful for the things we have received. We have also been able to share with other mission hospitals in our province when we have extra things. On Friday this next week, we are going to that meeting and I have several boxes to bring and share. Your help is spread throughout Zimbabwe!
Thank you for all the help you have been to our hospital, our patients and the poor of Zimbabwe! We couldn’t be here without you!

2011-07-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

Major leaving with family members
Elephant going through trash cans where we were

Ben cooking our steaks while hippo rests on our lawn!

We found a croc resting in the sun on the shoreline

Hippo walking

Hippo Island off the shore of our house

Ben and Karen Pennington in front of Kariba Dam

Major left on the 2nd of July to fly to the US for 3 ½ weeks and he is on the run. Lori left on the 9th of July for a 6 months furlough and we are on the run without both of them. Maybe the run will make me lose more weight-ha!

We were happy to hear that Jimmy and Bre’s wedding went well that he officiated at on July 10th and that Major is busy speaking to groups and organizations.

We were so shocked to learn that as our alumni reunion braii was starting on Friday night (the 15th) at Cedar Ridge church in Renton, WA they received the sad news that the minister of that church, Darrell Duff died suddenly on the operating table during a minor knee surgery. What a shock it was to all the people there and the party had to end very suddenly. We were so thankful for the church in hosting this event and are so sorrowful at their lost. Please pray for Linda, the widow, and for the church during this difficult time. Darrell was an active part of supporting our ministry at Chidamoyo and had been here once and was planning his second trip with more church members in 2012. This is Lori’s home church—so we are thankful she was home to be there. Please pray for her.

This past week I was happy to have friends from Masvingo (9 hours SE of me) visiting with me. Ben and Karen Pennington from IN who came to Zimbabwe in 1976 and we met then and have been friends since. We constantly use their house and hospitality when we bring visitors to see the Zimbabwe Ruins and to and from our road trips to South Africa. We try and meet in Harare every 3 or so months to have dinner and fellowship. I was happy to have them for 2 days at Chidamoyo and put them to work preparing pills for our next ART outreach clinic. Then on Wednesday morning we left for Kariba and had 4 nights at a wonderful house right on the lake. A friend who works in Harare has a company owned house that we have rented before and after our 4 days here we would love to make this an annual retreat!

Our first afternoon there we had a big hippo lying in the sun on our back lawn. The next we had 10 hippo basking in the sun on an island right off our back yard for the whole day. We just pulled our chairs down near the water and read in the sun—enjoying the view. One walked right near me to go up to our lawn and spend the day napping there!

The first night after we finished cooking on the braii (BBQ) we had an elephant in front of us chewing on a tree and another one that came around the side of the house. I ran up to the second story and the elephant’s eye was level with my balcony and I could have reached out and touched him! That was one big elephant! I was yelling down to Ben to watch out as he was cleaning the grill about 10 feet away and unaware, but he doesn’t hear well so I yelled to his wife who finally warned him! That gave us some excitement to talk about that night.

We were thankful for our relaxing time away. Also it was not as cold in Kariba—only 2 layers of clothing—verses 3-4+ at Chidamoyo and more in Masvingo this time of the year. We are thankful for the warmer weather we got to enjoy and it will give us encouragement to get through the 6 more weeks of winter ahead!

Ben and Karen left Monday morning for Masvingo and I hope to be at their house next month when we have our annual church conference near them.

We have been happy to hear news and talk to people on Skype and see pictures on U-tube of our "Benefit of Hope" that was hosted by Friends of Chidamoyo in Seattle on Saturday the 16th. They have raised over $55,000 so far and more is coming in! Thank you Cheri and Larry Gail and all that helped. This will be such a blessing and a big help to our work here!

This week has been very busy at work. One doctor was gone until Tuesday night and the other left Wednesday night for his days off until Monday. Thursday we had 81 people for CD4 day and managed to start 28 people on ART on Thursday and Friday!

This evening I ended the week with a woman who ended up in my office by accident. She was very sick and was being sent home—so I sat down and took her history. She lives in Harare and she just delivered a baby 2 weeks ago. She has been sick since she was 6 months pregnant with a cough and fever and was found to be HIV positive. She had X-rays and sputum’s done in Harare, which they said were fine but continued to get worse. She heard about Chidamoyo from other people in Harare and so she had her sister bring her here for help. She had been told to sell whatever she had and get to Chidamoyo where they can help you! I took her X-ray which showed a very bad TB and I am sure she will be sputum positive. We admitted here, put her on the right ART medication and pray she got here in time to live. Amazing that people have to go from an urban central hospital for the whole country to a rural hospital like us to get proper care. We pray God has lead her here in time to get better and live!

Major leaves the US on Wednesday and back here on Thursday afternoon! We pray for travel mercies—especially that 15 hour flight from NYC to Joburg! Am I excited or what?

The peanuts are going!

2011-06-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

Second truck taking peanuts and we can see the floor!

Hauling peanuts away in first truck

The peanuts are being loaded from the chapel

It is so cold the dog is in blankets--43!!

After a long struggle we finally got a buyer for the peanuts which were unshelled and bagged. they came 2 weeks ago and bagged them up and weighed them--it took almost 2 weeks to bag them all. We had 38 tons! Can you believe it? This is all peanuts that have been bartered for our medical service. this is last years peanuts and more are coming everyday of the new stock.

One big lorry showed up Monday and another on Tuesday and started to haul them away! They only took maybe a third in the first load--so we may see the chapel floor again soon. Also they have agreed to keep buying all we have! This is truly an answer to prayer!

Winter continues and this week it got down to 43! That is way too cold for us!! We heard reports of gardens wilting from the cold, the Sanyati river having some ice on top and birds dying from the cold in areas! We had 4 layers on and kept adding. I think it makes it feel even colder here because during the day it gets to 80's and then as soon as the sun sets the temperature drops quickly with the coldest time just before sunrise! My dining room is a screened in veranda so this week I have been eating at my desk in the bedroom for breakfast!

The container has arrived!

2011-06-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

Major is happy to get a new chain saw!
Starting to unload the container

Pulling the container off the truck!

Unloading the container from the lorry

The container arrives

Winter is here!

Winter is here and Friday we woke up to 50 degrees! That is freezing for us here! I had to get all my winter gear out to walk to work to work.

Major had been in Harare since Wed to get our container cleared and it arrived on Friday morning. We were so happy to receive this container from Sebastopol Christian church and from people all over the US who have collected medical equipment and different things for us. We have started to unpack it and have already found needed gauze we were almost out of! Thank you to all who have helped!

We will keep working on unpacking in our spare time this week. There are much needed medical supplies for the hospital and we are so thankful for this help.

Major leaves for US on July 2nd and then Lori leaves on the 8th—so lots to do before they leave. We hope that some of you will be joining us for the BBQ and the Benefit for Hope. Please contact us if you can join us for more info.

Ambuya Day!

2011-06-13T00:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Grandmothers

Waiting for Food

Receiving food

Major with his 106 year old Grandmother

The Grandmothers and their shirts

Mr. Togarepi preaching

The grandmothers at church

Happy with their T-shirts

We had such a wonderful day yesterday when we had “Ambuya Day” at church. For some time we have wanted to thank all of the Grandmothers who are working so hard to be the primary caregivers of many grandchildren. So we set aside this special day to invite as many grandmothers to honor them with a special church service.
We started with tea and bread at 9 a.m. and then had a wonderful service. Our band was there and the old ladies really got into dancing. Even the ones with their walking sticks were dancing around. Mr. Zebedee Togarepi our friend and minister from Chiredzi came to preach the message that was specifically to thank the Grandmothers for their hard work. The theme of the message was that they need God even more than the children who have died and left them with grandchildren to take care of. It was such a touching message.
After the service we were able to give each grandmother a T-shirt that said “Thank God for Grandma’s” with a map of Zimbabwe. They were all so happy. Then we had a special lunch with sadza, goat, and intestines, veges and chicken. They ate until they were so full and like all grandmothers everywhere they tucked leftovers into their plates and bowls to take home for dinner! The grandmothers continued to jump for joy and it was just such a wonderful day!

Over 150 grandmothers attended and with the regular church people the church was packed. Some people came by scotch cart because they couldn't walk far. It was really a special day for these Grandmothers and something they will talk about for years to come!

We especially thank Gary and Patty LeDonne and others from Sebastopol Christian Church for providing the T-shirts and postage to send them and sponsoring this wonderful day! This speacial Sunday we hope will attract more people to the church on a regular basis. We see our T-shirts everywhere right now.

Happy Graduation Major

2011-06-12T20:36:00.001-07:00

Major and wife Patience
Lori abd Kathy with the graduate

Major giving his speech

The graduates

Major holding his Cokes and Snickjer bars!

Major receiving his diploma

The graduate

We had a wonderful weekend this week. Major and Patience and Lori and I went in to Harare leaving here at 4 a.m. Friday in order to see Major graduate. We spent the day running around getting supplies for the hospital and then Friday night they had a special banquet for the 28 graduates. Eight receiving their 3 year fulltime degree and 20 upgrading like Major. Major had upgraded his Bible college degress from a certificate to a Diploma in Religious Studies.

We went to the graduation on Saturday afternoon and Major was the speaker for his class. Here you run up and yell and dance when the graduate you support is called. You shower them with gifts--so we ran up with coke bottle and Snicker bars--what else for Major?

We finally got home at 11:30 p.m. exhausted!

Happy Birthday Michael!

2011-05-29T00:51:00.001-07:00

Michael with his pizza!

Surprising Michael at school with his dad!

Yesterday(Saturday) we had a wonderful day. It started at 4 a.m. when I got up to speak to my family on Skype. It was Friday evening their time and it was family game night at my nephew’s so got to speak to several at once and saw them too! By 5:30 a.m. Major and I were on our way to Harare to surprise his son Michael on his 18th birthday. On the way to Harare we stopped at Magunje and hour from here where we were having an area woman’s church meeting. Patience, Major’s wife was there and it was also her birthday—so we stopped by to surprise her with cake at 6:30 in the morning! It was so encouraging to see over 300 women who had come for the meeting and they all came out to greet us!
We arrived in Harare about 10:30 a.m. and Michael is in boarding school and so we stopped to ask them if we could take him out for the day. We had told him in advance one of the doctors from Harare was stopping by with something so he should be ready! He saw us walk by his tea room and came running! We brought our Chidamoyo birthday hat—a tradition that everyone has to wear all day on their birthday and the birthday sunglasses!
We had to sign him out with the boarding master and when he noticed Michael in his birthday hat he asked if it was his birthday and he said yes and it was 18th. Then I said “that is why we have come to get him so that we can take him out to get drunk!” He looked like he believed me and started saying that usually on visiting day parents come to the school and they rarely let students out! We assured him it was a joke but I think he wasn’t too convinced, but he finally agreed. So we kidnapped him. He had to stay in his uniform all day because when they are at school it can not be taken off—even on weekends!
We then went by to get his sister Carolyn and cousin sisters Nancy and Christine. We spent the morning shopping at the flea market. We gave him some money to buy what he wanted for his present. Since we made him wear his hat all day many people came up to say Happy Birthday and shake his hand. He felt like he was quite a celebrity.
Then we went to a nice restaurant in Borrowdale where he ate a whole pizza by himself, had a milkshake, coke and we put candles on a bowl of ice cream and the waiters sang him Happy Birthday. We opened presents and he got what he wanted by was so shocked—a pair of Converse High –top tennis shoes! He put them on right at the table and wore him with his uniform the rest of the day until he had to go back to school!
We did some grocery shopping and he got to pick out some snacks for him to take home and we got him back at 5:33 p.m. on our way home. The boarding master reminded us we were 33 minutes late! I felt like I was in boarding!
Major and I drove home and stopped at Magunje to leave his wife a chicken and chips dinner with a rose and then got home about 10 p.m. When I arrived the 2 doctors and our Lab Tech were in my house watching the final European Cup game (soccer) because there was no electricity yet and so they used my generator! I had told them before I left they could do this as this game was so exciting for them. They were sure ZESA would be on for the game! Ha! The electricity came on 15 minutes later so we could switch over to it. Dr. Zimudzi was so happy that Barcelona won! Finally by 11 I was able to drop into bed and sleep undisturbed until 7 a.m. These one day trips to Harare are killers and the older I get the more it takes out of me!
Tonight we will have a proper birthday dinner for Patience as the women get home this morning from their meeting. The roast beef is in oven and the cupcakes are made. I have had to switch the beef 2 times as there was electricity when I started then it went out so switched it to my gas oven and then after an hour the electricity came back on so back to the electric oven! Always a challenge here!
Winter is here and it was 61 when I got up this morning. It gets up to 70’s and 80’s during the day and warm but as soon as the sun goes down, brrr… last week we had temps into mid-50’s in early morning! Bright sunny and crisp days—winter in Africa!

Happy Birthday Major! Happy End of the World!

2011-05-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

Happy 47- Major!

This has been a busy week with both doctors gone from last weekend until Friday morning. Trying to do their job and mine and Major’s all week was a bit overwhelming and thank goodness the week is over.
Major has been in Chinhoyi for 2 weeks attending a course. He got to come home last weekend and then headed back 4 a.m. on Monday morning. His birthday was Friday so I sent money to the Administrator at Makonde Christian Hospital, Tauzen Kandungure, who is also in he course, for him to arrange a cake and drinks for tea on Friday. I also sent a gift for the lodge where he was staying to give it to him at breakfast on Friday.
People in Zimbabwe love a party and so when Tauzen talked to someone else in the class they decided to have a big surprise party for Major. One of the other Administrators stood up on Monday and said her birthday was on Friday and she wanted to have a party and invite everyone. They set up committees for food, entertainment and decorations and asked people to contribute and even Major gave money for this lady’s party—not knowing it was all for him!
The teachers of the course decided that they would give them all Thursday afternoon for the party and so while Major went off for lunch the rest decorated and when he walked in after lunch he was shocked to find the party was all for him! He said he almost had a heart attack he was so surprised! They spent the whole afternoon eating and partying—he was so happy! He was the most popular guy in class since they got out of a whole afternoon of class because of him!
Friday morning when he went to breakfast the woman who owns the lodge he stayed in had everyone sing happy birthday and he shared pumpkin bread I sent and opened his gift—and then they prayed for him!
When he got home Friday night I had a fried chicken dinner ready for him, his wife, Lori and the 2 doctors. He had another party to celebrate! He kept saying this was his best birthday ever. He was so surprised by all!
During the whole dinner last night we sarcastically called it a celebration of our last day on earth! Since May 21st is to be the last day here on earth according to the newest end of time group. Yes we even heard about here and someone paid to put up a billboard about it in Harare! We sat around and talked about all the things we shouldn’t do—like the C/S we did that afternoon—why did we waste our time? I gave Major a card and promised him $500 tomorrow (the day the earth ends)-ha! Won’t have to pay him that, right? I told people don’t even help clear the table—why should I do housework in the last 24 hours on earth? Should we make rounds in the morning or just sleep in? Why should I start anyone on ART this morning at work when we are all going to die? Aren’t we happy we really don’t know the end of the world date or we would stop living our lies wouldn’t we.
It is Saturday night and no big earthquake to end the world yet and ZESA went off as usual before dinner time. Why don’t they just keep it on since the world is ending soon and we won’t have to pay the creditors we have to buy the electricity from. Oh well life goes on—tomorrow we will celebrate the day after the earth was suppose to end party and I guess I have to go do my housework!

Nhasi China!

2011-05-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

Nhasi China (chee-na) means today is Thursday! That is a day that has become a day to dread around the hospital because it is 12 hours of non-stop work! No time for tea or lunch—just work flat out!
We have made every Thursday CD4 count day. Now that we have a CD4 machine and Thursdays we usually have electricity (this week we had turn on he generator), we draw blood from HIV positive patients to see who needs to start ART medication and to monitor those on ART meds to make sure they are improving. The CD4 count shows how well their immune system is working. If the number is below 350 they need to start on ART.
This past Thursday we drew 87 people! There were 2 people writing the forms and filling out the test tubes while I drew all the blood from babies up to 80 year olds! Then we start getting the results back in about 2 hours and out of those 87 we needed to start 38 patients! So immediately I started prioritizing who we could start that day (those that live far away) and who could be rescheduled over the next few days! Of course everyone wants to be started immediately!
We worked straight through until 7 p.m. when it was too dark for me to see to write their cards anymore (we had no electricity all week and still going!) and then sent them away until Friday. I went home and ate and went to bed at 8 p.m. I was so tired!
We continued yesterday and saw more people to start—it is always a groan when you have a man and his 3 wives who all need to be started at the same time! Yesterday we had ART clinic at Deve (about an hour away) so my helper in the office had to go to that while I ran between starting new people and filling meds for our patients already on TB and/or ART meds! It was another non-stop, no tea, no lunch day! I pushed about 3 more patients to start until this morning! Whew!
Lori was gone for a workshop all week and is coming home today so next week might be better—we can only hope!
We are so happy to have the machine and be able to start more people and save lives! It will just take us awhile to catch up since we haven’t been able to do this before and just started people on their clinical appearance. That meant we were treating only the very sick and so many of those died because they started medication so late. Now we can start people when they need it—even if they look well on the outside they may be very sick inside!
We also have a small CD4 machine that has battery backup that was provided for maternity patients. So all positive maternity patients can be seen and tested the same day and started on ART to help prevent their baby from being infected with AIDS. We can draw any day for those patients. We are so thankful to the Kaplan foundation for providing this machine!
Some good news to share is that we are definitely decreasing in the number of new patients with HIV infection. We are running about 18% of our general population are infected and 7% of our maternity population. So new cases are definitely slowing down! We feel the more people we can get on medication the more people will be saved from getting AIDS as the disease is not transmitted as easily from someone on medication. There are many people who have the disease already that need to be on treatment so we will be busy for awhile catching up on all those (over 2 million in Zimbabwe) who need to be on medication! God is good and we can’t complain about work when we are saving so many lives! Pray for our strength to continue on!

Winter seems to officially started! We had 2 nights this week where it got into the 50's, brrr...The extra blanket and comforter have been added to my bed and as soon as the sun goes down it is cold. We acually had sweatshirts and blankets wrapped around us for the movie last night!

Happy May Day 2011!

2011-05-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

Major and Carolyn and Michael
The kids and I at Victoria Falls

Major and kids at The Kingdom--Vic Falls

Mereki family having our picnic at Maopos

Michael at Rhodes Grave-Maopos

Bushman paintings in Caves-Matopos

Emma Takaedza's wedding

Youth getting leaving for youth conference--3 a.m.!

Our youth left on the Thursday before Easter for their annual youth conference. This year it was at our mission station Dewure (about 8 hours from here). We sent 30 youth in our lorry (big truck) for the 4 day meeting. They had a wonderful time and came in 3rd in the singing competition.
Major and family and I took off last Saturday for a wedding of one of our nurses in Bulawayo (9 hours SE of here). We attended the wedding on Sunday and then went for 4 nights to a National Park called Matopos about 50 kms away. We spent days exploring caves where there are bushman paintings from the San people who lived here over 500 years ago. We wanted to show Major’s kids some of their history that they only read about and now they have seen in person.
We walked a lot and really enjoyed our time together. We were joined by friend, Zebedee Togarepi for 2 days. He works and lives in Chiredzi. We spent a lot of time talking and laughing!
After our 4 days at Matopos we travelled on for 2 nights in Victoria Falls while Major’s wife, Patience, went to Gweru for our church annual woman’s conference. We had a great time in Bulawayo but some rain fell that proved our rainy season is not over yet. Our lorry took 21 women from Chidamoyo for the conference and they had a wonderful time.
We did a sunset cruise and ate at the Boma in Victoria Falls. We had a bushbuck and baboons visiting our cabin!
We drove home from Vic Falls in one day on Saturday—getting home at 1 a.m. We stopped by to pick up Patience and got to see a lot of friends from all over the country that had come to the Woman’s conference.
When we arrived home—no electricity! We had a fault due to the storm that hit here and no electricity since early Sat. morning. They have “promised” to “maybe” come to fix it tomorrow. We thought the rainy season and our faults were over—but not yet!
Today was a holiday here—Workers Day—so only had to work half a day at the hospital. Tomorrow should be a busy day after our Out-patient department has been closed for 3 days!
We got some great news this week that a mission organization in the US is buying us a new X-ray machine and processor! Wow—what an answer to prayers!

Happy Independence Day #31!

2011-04-20T02:20:00.000-07:00

Maize harvest from my field

Working on flats

Some of participants in our workshop in front of Inyangombe Falls

Gladys in her fur hat to keep warm!

Loading Peanuts--still a mound of peanuts in background!

Happy Independence Day Zimbabwe!

This week started with Independence Day on Monday (April 18)—Number 31 for Zimbabwe. Even though it was a holiday we were still at work at the hospital. I made rounds, saw problems and some outpatient emergencies, did the discharges and then got to go home. So I was home by 2 p.m. No electricity from 8 a.m. for the whole day until 8:30 p.m. so not much we could do—but take it easy!
Major and I spent last week at a conference for mission hospitals on building up our infrastructure. We were 1 of 10 hospitals chosen to participate. It was held at a casino hotel in Juliasdale. We had to keep pulling the nuns away from the slot machines! The hotel is only 6 kms from my friend Gladys’s house and at dinner we were given money so we bought groceries and had dinner with her each night! We enjoyed sitting by her big stone fireplace each night and eating dinner. She is very active and busy and doing well for her 74 years!
Juliasdale is in the eastern part of Zimbabwe and up in the mountains (about 9000 ft and higher) so we were very cold the whole 5 days! We woke up to weather in high 40’s and never got above 60’s even in the sun all day! This is getting us ready for winter here soon! We returned home Friday night—after a 9 hour drive from there to here!
We think we have a buyer for the peanuts (yippee!!!). We finally found a source who wants our peanuts unshelled and the team is busy putting them all in bags! They are on their second week and still stacking the bags. You can tell from the pictures how much we have!! We are beginning to see the floor of our chapel again. We are all holding our breath and praying the deal doesn’t fall through! More and more peanuts come each day to pay for hospital bills.
My acre of maize was harvested by the youth group on Monday and it is now on the floor of our library drying until they can start taking it off the cob. We have already started buying maize for use at the hospital this year—so my grainery in my yard is filling it!
We are working on finishing up the flats and the plumbers have been busy fitting toilets, showers, sinks, etc. The men are busy plastering the rooms. How nice it will be to have 4 flats ready soon.
My wish to all of you is to have a wonderful Easter holiday—it is a 4 day holiday here from Friday-Monday as holidays—so we hope to get a break from work. We have an Easter meeting for 4 churches here starting Friday night through Sunday morning! Our other churches are also meeting together for 3 day meetings—so we have to try and visit all. Should be a lot of fun with singing, dancing, preaching, lessons and no one sleeping (except me—I will sleep!)! Celebrate—He is Risen!

Happy April

2011-04-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Cellphone tower Pulling out trees to start the Pediatric ward extension--old ward on left

Inside flat

The new 4 roomed flat unit with roof on

Mbangani family with Kathy

Students studying on desks for the first time in 9 years! Unloading the desks

The lorry was full

We were excited this past week to be able to go to Harare and get 40 pupil desks and 2 teachers desks and deliver to Mukowe school. This school has been supported by ZRDSP a UK based group that helps to develop rural schools.

Mukowe is 2 hours from here on a very rough road with many streams to cross! This program built a 2 classroom block and provided exercise books, pens, chalk and now benches. We bought the benches in September last year but had no way to get them out here, But now our lorry is working and we were able to go and pick them up ourselves! These kids have been sitting on the ground for the 9 years the school has been operating! They were so excited to finally have desks! The teachers were also excited and even more so when they found out we are starting to build 4 new teacher houses for them. The supplies have been bought and will be delivered shortly. Major is in Harare this week buying textbooks for the classes. Up until now they have had 1 book for the teacher only in each class! Thank you to ZRDSP!

We are in the building mood at Chidamoyo and we have been busy finishing off a 4 room flat building across the street from the hospital. This is to provide us more housing for our nurses and 2 rooms to be furnished for medical students from the local university who come 2 times a year to learn. They would also be available for government officials who always "drop in" and need a place to stay. They finished the roof this week and plumbers are here putting in the water pipes and they are starting to plaster the insides.

We have also started clearing trees for the Pediatric extension and trauma/duty room. We are buying cement and supplies and will start when flats are done. It is always exciting to see building going on.

One other exciting piece of news is that a cellphone tower has been started and is almost done on the hill behind our hospital. They say within 1 month it may be working! that means we will have a phone! It seems impossible after so many years of no phone. Now we are already fighting with patients who play music from their phones and turn them on and off when we don't even have coverage--can you imagine when there is service--no cellphone allowed-ha!

This past Thursday night we got a surprise visit from Eva Mbangani and her kids and brother-in-law Desmond. Dr. Mbangani was our doctor from 2002-2005 and now lives in Katherine, Australia in the NW Territory. His wife and kids had to fly home unexpectedly for her brothers sudden funeral. While in the country they came to move furniture and things they had stored her for the past 6 years! They spent the night, got loaded up and left the next morning. It was a short trip but we were happy to see them.

We thought our rains ended when we went almost 8 days with no rain but a big storm hit last night and tonight. Lots of thunder and lightening and last night almost 2 inches of rain in 3 hours! It was a downpour. It is starting to get cooler during the early morning--got down to 66 last week and i had to wear a jacket for a couple of hours until I warmed up! Winter is on the way, brrr...

Both doctors are gone for 3 days this week so I am in charge and on call, so that will keep me busy! Malaria season is upon us and we have a shortage of medicine and so we really have to make sure people have it instead of just treating in case. Makes life a bit difficult. Thanks always for your thoughts and prayers.

One of my patients brought me

2011-03-22T01:44:00.000-07:00

Hey look what one of my patients brought me. She brought me an Obama bag since she knew he was the President of the U.S. She saw these bags for sale in Harare and thought of me and bought it for me. It has pictures on all sides and bottom has a flag of US. when I offered to buy it from her she said "no, you are keeping me alive on ART and I appreciate that!"

Please come and celebrate!

2011-03-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

A special weekend event for all you alumni of Chidamoyo and supporters--please mark your calendar and join us!

Benefit of Hope

Project is to Raise money for a new ambulance for the hospital

For Chidamoyo Christian Hospital
Please come and celebrate with us on
July 16th 6- 9 p.m.
Bitter Lake Community Center
Seattle, Washington
Special events:
Sadza—all you can eat and Mexican (kapenta and Mopani worms too!)
Face painting
Silent auction (Zimbabwe things)
Marimba band
Dancing—Zimbabwe style
Special guest star: Major Mereki
RSVP:friendsofchidamoyo@gmail.com

Special Braii (BBQ)
For Chidamoyo Alumni
Friday night July 15th—Cedar Ridge Christian Church, (suburb of Seattle)
5:30 p.m. onwards
Free
A time of get together, eating, sharing stories and fellowship.
Please RSVP: friendsofchidamoyo@gmail.com

This is a pre dinner for our Benefit of Hope on Saturday. If you need help with hotel bookings please indicate.

One of those days!

2011-03-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

We started yesterday (Sunday) with both of our doctors gone and so I started the day by making rounds and making sure all the in-patients were settled. While I was making rounds Major came and said the Chinese company putting in the cell tower behind our hospital (yes we might have a phone in 1 month!!) had extra cement they wanted to sell us from their other site at Makande about 2-3 hours drive from here. So we decided to send our lorry (yes it is up and working-finally!) for it. Of our driver and helper went.

By 7 p.m. Sunday evening I had a prior C/Section in labor and not having strong contractions to progress well and the lorry was not back! So we called our back up driver and another helper and sent them with the LandRover off to find our lorry. We had expected one of the doctors back by combi or bus but none had come by then and we kept hoping he might make it back in order to do a C/S here.

By midnight by lady was still not progressing and no doctor we thought. I had sent the guard to knock on the doctor's door and he came back and said no answer. This morning when the doctor showed up for work he said he actually came at 11 p.m. so we think the guard knocked at the wrong doctors house! So I had to send our lady in labor off to Chinhoyi for a C/Section (Karoi doesn't do C/S)--3 hours away! Woke up Major to say all the drivers are gone what do I do? He came prepared to go and then we decided it was better to send our other driver who was on leave with the patient if he would go. So Major went to his house to see and drove back with him. We got the patient off about 1 a.m. and back to sleep waiting for other trucks to come.

By 5:15 a.m. when I got up, still no lorry or LR so woke Major up and he took another person with our last vehicle here to find the other 2 . After they left I remembered we were starting a new ART clinic about 45 minutes away from here today and now i had no car and no guarantee when one would be back-yikes!

When I got to the hospital about 7 a.m. all 3 trucks were now back. Major had met them about 5 miles from the mission! The lorry had loaded the cement at Makande about noon and drove only about 45 minutes when it got stuck in mud. It waited the whole day trying to dig itself out and when the LR arrived they proceeded to unload all 70 bags of cement and pull the lorry out of the mud and then reload (in the dark!). They got through that mud hole and proceeded to get stuck 2 more times! Each time they unloaded the truck of all 70 bags of cement and pulled the lorry out and then reload each time. We saved $2 a bag by picking up ourselves--after that we felt like paying the $2! When they got here I said ok--unload again! They said NO WAY! Then they reported the company has more cement for us if we wanted it and Major and I yelled--NO!

They all went off to eat and to sleep! I am sure they dreamed of loading and unloading cement in their dreams!

New Doctor Arrives

2011-03-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

Dr. and Mrs. Kajese

Last week on Tuesday Major and Tapson Jr. left with 2 trucks at 3 a.m. to travel to Bulawayo (9 hours away) to move our new doctor to his new home with us. His name is Dr. Shield Kajese (ka jessie) and he has just finished his housemanship. They packed him up and got him moved here safely arriving at 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, very exhausted.

The next morning when I was in the maternity ward talking to Dr. Zimudzi he showed up. I had only met him once during his interview and I didn't expect him up to the hospital so early and so when he walked in I thought he was our local policeman that we had sent for. When he followed us to the office I wondered what was going on and thought this policeman was a bit pushy to just follow us around and then finally figured out it was Dr. Kajese when Dr. Z said he was surprised to see him up so early--oh he is the new doctor!

Then we sent him on a tour of the hospital with Main Munemo (mother) and everyone thought it was her son until she introduced him! the best thing is that he couldn't find his brush when he woke up and so he went to Lori's house to "borrow" a brush so he could come to the hospital and her maid gave him the dog brush! When he thanked Lori for using the bursh, she thought "I don't have a brush" and then figured out what brush he was given! What a welcome we gave him!

His wife is a nurse and doing a theater nurse course in Harare until December, but we were able to bring her out Sat for a short visit so she could see what he got her into!

We are happy to have Dr. Kajese and we are thankful for his work. He is getting oriented and it is very busy this week, so he is being thrown into the fire! Welcome to Chidamoyo!

Judy Pickett, RIP

2011-03-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

We were sorry to hear this past week of the death of our fellow missionary who lived in Chinhoyi (3 hours towards Harare from here). Judy would have been 75 years old in April. She has been sick for a long time with Arthritis, Diabetes and Hypertension and heart problems. She started feeling ill on Friday and her foster daughter, Kina, came out from Harare and was there with her. By Sunday night she was unable to walk or talk and Monday they moved her to Harare where she died about a day later.

Judy worked with women's groups in the area around Chinhoyi, teaching many to read the Bible, sew and cook. She worked at Chidamoyo for 9 years as secretary at the hospital. She moved to Chinhoyi when the mission was evacuated in1978 due to the increased civil war.

I replaced Judy for her first furlough in 1978 when I had just turned 18 years old. It was through this experience that I made the decision to become a nurse and return to help at Chidamoyo. She had a big influence on my life.

Her Homecoming service was on Friday at Hillside Chapel in Chinhoyi. Many people came together to bid her farewell. She was buried with her foster daughter Ireen who proceeded her in death in 1999.

We are rejoicing with her that she is now out of pain and sickness. A memorial for her is being set up which will be a scholarship fund to sponsor students through Zimbabwe Christian College where her foster daughter Kina and her husband Edmore work. I will pass on more details when we get them.

Life at Chidamoyo

2011-03-08T10:46:00.001-08:00

Back of Gadhafi T-shirt

Obama and Gadhafi together sitting on the bench

This week I decided to write about some of the funny things my patients tell me. I know as health professionals we have to maintain dignity no matter what our patients say—but sometimes you just have to be on the floor doubled up with laughter!
• One patient I saw this week, as I was reading their X-ray and seeing esophageal cancer I asked him if he smoked. He said No. Then I said are you sure you have never smoked before? He said well I don’t really smoke because I roll my own tobacco in newspaper and then smoke! When I said that is smoking—he said, well I didn’t really thinking that was smoking since I didn’t buy the cigarettes!

• I asked a patient if they had ever been treated for TB before and they said no, but VD yes!

• When we start patients on ART we have to ask people their birth date—always a challenge here. Most people have no idea when they were born, but they always try to guess. Recently I have a very old man who said he was born in 1998. When I said no way, he said ok, how about 2003?

• One of our visitors recently asked me if we had any lepers around. I thought they had said “leopards.” So I replied—no we used to have a lot of them around here but they shot them out in the 60’s and 70’s when the first missionaries came. When they said really? I said yes—we used to put meat out at night and when they came out to get it—we would shot them! Then I went on to say some of the missionaries even skinned them and had the skins hung on their walls. The visitor looked like they were about ready to fall over and by their reaction I knew something was up and I said leopard’s right? And they said no “people with leprosy.” Oh I said, we didn’t shoot them out! She looked greatly relieved!

• One of my patients I recently gave him 3 sputum cups and told him to come back in the morning with 3 different samples taken at least 2 hours apart. The next morning he brings me a cup with sputum and another with urine and one with stool. When I asked him why he didn’t bring 3 sputum samples for us he said “I think you should look at all things—not just whatever comes out of my mouth!”

• I recently delivered a patient who was a breech presentation. We kept telling her in Shona to push and push. We got the buttocks out and always the head was a bit of a struggle. We pulled and kept yelling at her to push—pulling her legs further and further apart, and with me sweating and pulling hard. Finally after what seemed like hours but was only a couple of minutes we got the baby out and it cried the mom said very clearly in English “shit that was hard!” I said Amen to that!

• An old man recently came to my office and kept saying in Shona “sister I am so sick.” I asked him to be a bit more specific but he just kept saying over and over “sister I am sick!” So then I started going through each system and asking if this was the problem. He just kept saying “I am so sick.” After about 10 minutes I was very confused as to how I was going to help this patient when he couldn’t tell me what exactly was wrong. When I finally said to him in Shona I really want to help you but you have to tell me what exactly is wrong. He said “what kind of nurse are you that you can’t figure out what is wrong—I told you I am very sick!” (Major was sitting in his office overhearing all of this and laughing—big help he was!)

• I had a patient once who I asked to say “e.e.e.e.e.” while I listened to their lungs. I did this to several patients in the ward and one started saying “e.f.g.h.i.” when I asked why he didn’t say “e.e.e.e.e.” like the other patients he said “I thought they didn’t know the alphabet!”

Today as I was walking by the queue for the Lab I was Obama sitting next to Gadafi! yes right here at our little rural hospital. Thought you would enjoy this picture--ant notice the back of Gadhafi's shirt. Maybe he is planning to hide out here?

Let it rain and rain and rain

2011-02-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

This is one our youth leaders who serves Communion every week in this shirt!

Sadza after church at Mukowe--we saw the chicken before he saw the pot!

BIG THANK YOU TO ZRSDP FOR THE SUPPLIES!

The Headmaster receiving supplies from Major

Simra, Lindsay and Shavonne on the scotch cart!

Major check out how deep that river is! You can see part of the bridge is gone! We made it!

We have had rain and rain all night long and into the afternoon today! That may not seem like alot to you--but usually we have 1-2 hours a day--so for us to get so much rain at once is very unusual. We got 105 mls so far (4 inches). We really needed it because it hadn't rain much in February. In fact we had only had 58.5 mls up until yesterday for the whole month. Crops are looking good and this big rains has really helped us to keeps those crops going.

We were able to travel to one of our far away churches 2 weeks ago in an area called Mukowe. We took our 3 visitors Simra, Lindsay and Shavonne and took off on a 2 1/2 hour very bad road. At one part Major Mereki had to get out and roll up his suitpants to test how deep the water was in one river! Always an adventure when we go out.

We stopped a scotch cart (ox cart) on the way so that our visitors could have their "African bush picture." When we arrived we were greeted with singing and dancing. After church we were able to present the headmaster and school committee with exercise books, pens, and chalk for the students and teachers that had been provided by ZRSDP a group from the UK who are improving rural schools in Zimbabwe. We met for church in the classroom block they had just recently completed. We were also excited to tell them of further help to provide teachers with housing. Thank you to this great group that is helping us to improve schools in our area.

We are excited to report that so many of you, our wonderful supporters and friends went above and beyond to provide us a 40 foot container of medical supplies through MTI. Larry Gail (friendsofchidamoyo@gmail.com) headed this fundraiser and we are happy to report we have reached our goal and are in the process of co-ordinating our priorities for the medical supplies to be sent. Thank you, thank you! We will keep you informed on it's progress towards getting to us! You are the best!!!

The new generator has arrived!

2011-02-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

The new generator being unloaded
Major is so happy!

Due to the generosity of many people especially, from Rotary Club of Sebastopol, Steve and Rosanne Prandini and friends, Larry Gail and Friends of Chidamoyo, a wonderful man in Ringwood, NJ and IDES we were able to purchase a new generator for the hospital. The last generator was brought 21 years ago and it was used then. For the past 2 years it has not been working well, eating up batteries (so we always had to have a car here to start it), not putting out more than 170 volts when we needed 220 and not allowing us to use it for X-rays, grinding mill and the air conditioner in theater. Through the generosity of so many donors we were able to purchase a new one and they delivered and set it up 6 days later! The generator arrived on Tuesday this week. It weighed about 3 tons and so they brought a lift on the truck to remove it with. Then we had 8 men to help roll it on poles and turn it to put it up on the stand that holds it! It took about 2 hours from start to finish moving it bit by bit. The company engineer hooked it up to our system and when we went to test it we actually had to turn ZESA off! We rarely have it and then when we try the generator it is there! We could take an X-ray and run the air conditioner and grinding mill at the same time—wow!
As soon as we finished testing it and turned back to ZESA, then ZESA went out 15 minutes later. I convinced Major we need to “make sure” the new generator continued to work and so we turned it back on for the 2 ½ hours that ZESA was out! I got to cook and eat with lights on—wow! Even my microwave work with it--yeah!
Thank you to so many people who helped us in so many ways. We know this will be a big help to us for years to come! This week so far ZESA has been better than most—go figure!
Thank you, thank you, thank you one and all!

Off to South Africa

2011-02-09T07:23:00.001-08:00

Kathy and her residents team and Buddy
Dr. Murenje and wife

Staff lunch to say goodbye to Dr. Murenje

Michael at Monte Casino in Joburg

Michael and Major in Joberg

Dinner with Zebedee Togarepi, Michael and Major in Polokwane

On January 23rd Major and his 17 year old son Michael and I went to Polokwane, South Africa (15 hour drive from here) to have our Land Rover worked on. The turbo had broken in it and the car smoked all the way down. We met up with Zebedee Togarepi , a minister friend who went with us in his car. I rode with him and we followed the “smoking gun.” We spent the week with the car in the shop and enjoyed running around and being in a “developed country” with a KFC on every corner and 2 McDonalds. What more can you ask for?
We enjoyed walking in a mall, window shopping, going to a movie and grocery shopping where they have everything and 10 brands of each. We spent a day driving to Johannesburg (2 hours from where we stayed) to show Michael a 10 lane highway and traffic jams! After 6 nights we drove home, crossed the boarder in an hour (that is a record almost) we arrived in Harare at 1 a.m. and left by 7 a.m. the next morning to get home.
We got home for the going away party for Dr. Murenje on January 31st—his last day with us. He has been with us for 2 years and has moved to Harare to take a job there. We had a great lunch and presented him with some nice clothes to wear to his new job—can’t wear his scrubs anymore!
This past week we were joined by 3 visitors, Family Practice residents from Ohio State. They are here with us for 3 weeks. They have had some good experiences so far from delivering babies, to do spinal taps to see patients in the wards and outpatients. They are Lindsey Konor, Shivonne Suttles and Simarpreet Vidwan. Dr. Zimudzi has been away for 4 days due to a death in his family and so they have been fun to have following me and doing a lot of my work for me!

Life in Zimbabwe

2011-01-15T05:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to Harare to conduct an interview for a doctor position at our hospital. We had asked other hospital board members to come and when we greeted each other I quickly discovered we suddenly had new greetings in Zimbabwe. This wasn’t Shona, Ndebele or English this was Zimbabwean! The new greetings go like this…”so we haven’t had ZESA for 10 days now, how about you?” “Yes, we didn’t have much except midnight until 5 a.m. all last week.” “We haven’t had water for 3 days, how about you?” “We have water but it smells like poop, how about you?” “We have water but without ZESA we can’t pump as much from our boreholes and the water table is down so it is not very clear.” “I’ve tried to call you and couldn’t get through.” “Oh our landline hasn’t worked in 2 months because of a storm, try our cell.” “Every time I try to use my cell phone it says network busy, why does everyone overuse the lines!” "How's your road?" Oh it is bad, so much rain and big holes, looks like a river bed all the way to Chidamoyo now!" "Yes, we got stuck at a river going home the other day for 4 hours!" We spend the first 5-10 minutes of greetings comparing ZESA , water, roads and telephone horror stories and then we can settle down to work!
Then we had to buy suture and so talked to the guys (middlemen) on the phone and they said they would meet me and bring some for me to see and buy. We met at an ice cream place in Avondale shopping center and used their table. The guys pulled the suture out of their unmarked backpack and I examined each one, negotiated the price and gave them the money. Our deal was done and we each went on our way. It quickly occurred to me this was like making a drug deal in public. Who really buys suture this way? Only in Zimbabwe!
The next stop was to go to the flea market to return some DVDs that I had bought earlier that didn’t work well. I went to my supplier and told him they didn’t play well and told him” if I couldn’t trust pirates who could you trust in this world?” He quickly apologized and gave me new ones that he “promised” were good. He also personally recommended some new ones for me. A personal NetFlick consultant—what more can you ask for in Zimbabwe?

Happy New Year

2011-01-12T04:13:00.000-08:00

We have been in the New Year for almost 2 weeks and life continues on. We are having good rains and the crops are growing well. We are so thankful for all the wonderful people who gae gifts to the hospital in December. We went from being in the red to ending the year in the black--wow--how did that happen! People were so generous to us.

Because of the rains we have had a few easier days at the hospital. You will notice us working on a jigsaw puzzle I got for Christmas! No one could resist walking by and adding a piece. I put it outside my office on the veranda. Today the 2 doctors, Lori and I finished it!

We are so blessed to get a new small CD4 machine that can do a CD4 in 20 minutes, so we have been busy testing people and starting so many more people on drugs. We are thankful for the organization that provided it. Also we have a group that is sponsoring renovations to our AIDS/counselling center. We are so thankful for these international donors that have chosen us to help!

We are in another ZESA blackout--literally! Going on 6 days and no electricity. The good rainy season is knocking out our power constantly and results in many days "waiting" for ZESA to find the problem and then fix it. Since December 1st we haven't had 7 days with electricity sometime during the day! We are happy the crops look good. Unfortunately the rain has brought a lot of lightening and we have had 2 people who arrived dead due to lightening strikes and several who have been burnt. One who died was a mom holding her 6 week old baby who survived without a touch of lightening while her mom was struck dead.

Hope you guys are keeping warm--have been hearing of bad storms throughout the US from floods to blizzards--makes me happy to be in summer here!

Happy New Year 2011

2010-12-31T22:47:00.000-08:00

We had a good week before the end of the year although the hospital was busy after Monday was a holiday here. We did get electricity for less than 24 hours from Christmas Eve night at 8 p.m. until Christmas Day at 6:15 p.m. (only 1 hour off in the morning) and then a big storm hit and we were off again! the whole week we struggled with no electricity for X-rays and computer work, etc.

NY Eve we broke off work at 2 p.m. and got a few hours to relax (take down Christmas decorations) at home before the start of our NY Eve celebrations at 7:30 p.m. We had a packed church with some of our local churches coming and the community. We sang, dance, had a video, prayed the NY in and then at midnight went outside the church for fireworks. We bought some Chinese ones at the flea market in Harare and we were unsure what they would do but they were fun--one rocket went into the sky and then head back into the crowd! They scattered and asked for more!

After the fireworks we went back into the church and had some question and answers for prizes and gave out new T-shirts to the winners. Then the youth group band turned all their amplifiers on and went to town with more music, singing and dancing! I gave up and went home at 1:30 a.m. when the broke for tea and bread. They continued until 6 a.m.!

ZESA finally came on this morning about 7:45 for 10 minutes and off and then 8:15 for 45 minutes and off so there is hope we might get more? I am sure we are on load shedding after 14 days on none except for Christmas!

My field is growing well and the maize is about 2 feet high and very green! the youth group went to do the weeding on Thursday. For those of you who only come to Chidamoyo in our winter (June-Sept) when things are very brown and dry I am showing you a picture from my gate of how green it is this time of the year and how tall the grass is! You can't believe it I am sure.

Just to rub it in a bit, yesterday low was 68F and high of 86F. what a way to welcome in 2011! Hope you kept warm!

We pray that 2011 will be a year of peace and calm in Zimbabwe. continue to pray for the country and people of Zimbabwe! All the best to all of you for a great 2011!

Happy Boxing Day

2010-12-26T07:23:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas dinner theme was Hawaiian Retro Christmas--so we had dress 1950's Hawaii. Michael, Major's son decided to add some tummy to his costume to look like his Dad! Enjoy these pictures!

We had a great Christmas!

2010-12-25T10:43:00.000-08:00

We had a great Christmas and hope you did too. I am sharing some of the highlights through pictures I am posting.

We started the week by finding out that we made the NY times front page on Sunday the 19th of December. Wow--this was a surprise to be on the front page. Then we were reprinted in other newspapers and on the front page of my hometown newspaper on Monday the 20th. So if you haven't read it or seen the video (you must be in cave) here are the websites:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F12%2F19%2Fworld%2Fafrica%2Fzimbabwe.html&h=ofb0b

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/2001220/news/12201041

Thank you for all the kind words and some donations that have rolled in. We are in desperate need for a new generator and we think we might have the money soon! This week we spent 6 days without electricity as we had big storms last weekend which burnt up a power pole. ZESA had no pole to replace it with and so it took several days to find one. What a nice surprise to have it come back at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve night--just as we finished our candlelight service! It was on until 6 p.m. and now am in the dark writing this before heading off to bed! And it continued through today (the 26th). Another fault? How many days this time?

We had caroling on Wed night and Friday we had our staff party where we killed a pig and 20 chickens to feed our staff. Over 70 people came and we had fun playing a game, eating and handing out a goodie bag of rice, sugar, flour, oil and soap and Mazoe (drink) to each of our staff members. they really look forward to this each year! We played a game where we asked questions and then they were given a gift. Some of the highlights of the game were "Who was Jesus' father?" answer was "Mary!" Then "how many wisemen were there? Answer: 12!" We laughed a lot!

We had Christmas present opening with Mereki family and Dr. Zimudzi, Lori and Chris and I on Christmas eve after the candlelight service. Chrstmas morning we had church and then at 3 p.m. we had dinner for 10 of us--ham and all the trimmings. We enjoying swimming before and after dinner as it was in high 90's today. Christmas night we are enjoying a big thunder and lightening storm with some rain--enjoyable to see in the dark!

today (26th) we had church at 7 a.m. since today is a holiday. the highlight of church was my visitor Chris being baptized in my pool at the end! Then Lori, Chris and the Mereki family joined me for a brunch and games and then a big storm hit with lightening near by! We got 2 inches in about 30 minutes! the wind knocked alot of branches down in my yard.

Will share some pictures of our events and hope all of you have a great Christmas too. Thanks to all of you for helping and supporting our work here.

Happy Christmas from Zimbabwe

2010-12-18T04:09:00.000-08:00

Well it is December and even though there is no snow on the ground—there are crops growing in the field, rain falling and days up to 90 degrees—sounds like Christmas for me!
Major is back but he has spent the last 2 weeks in school in Harare to upgrade his ministry degree. So even though he is in the country, we still communicate by email and look anxiously to his return this weekend. Of course during the past 2 weeks the peanut butter machine needs new blades, the boreholes have broken 3 times and need new belts, rubbers and a pump, and the grinding mill needs a new circuit breaker, the chickens have some kind of skin disease and we need to pick a pig to kill for Christmas. Wow I can’t wait for Major to get back and take over those issues! Somehow I missed those classes in Nursing school on how to handle these hospital crisis issues! Now it must be my turn for holiday!
Stacy, our visitor from TN left for Harare yesterday to spend a few days before she heads for Joburg on Monday and on to US on Wed. She had been with us since October and was a big help, so we are missing her already. We are wishing her well in her applications for medical school this next year.
Since Major is gone, his wife went away for a workshop this week and so their two kids, Michael (17) and Carolyn (13) have been staying with me. It is always fun to have teenagers at the table. When you ask if they want dessert, the answer is “bring it on!” Major also got a box of chocolate bars he sent from the US when he was there that arrived this week and Chris and I have been trying to convince them to bring the box over here so we can just “look” at it—but they don’t trust us and they said “mom has counted how many there are and that we better not eat any!” We immediately told them that did not include us—only them!
We have started the Christmas activities of Chidamoyo. Instead of crowded malls and shopping and no parking places and packed freeways—we have movie night, carol singing, candlelight service and a Christmas party for our staff! We did get the 12 foot tree up and decorated—in the dark with flashlights—as no ZESA! The presents are wrapped and today is cookie making day—Carolyn and Chris (my other visitor) have that job. Almost as easy as buying them at the store!
We showed a movie on Wed and last night (Fri) and there is one more scheduled for Tues night. Our staff party is a luncheon on Friday (24th) and we have a pig and goat to kill—along with rice, Cole slaw and cake! Last year people ate until they got sick they ate so much! We have a gift bag of soap, oil, flour, rice, sugar, toothbrush and paste and drink mix for each employee. They always look forward to this each year.
Christmas Eve we have a candlelight service of Scripture reading and Christmas carols (all in Shona) at the hospital courtyard. We usually don’t have to worry about turning off the lights as there is usually no ZESA in the evenings. After that Dr. Zimudzi, Mereki family and Lori will join Chris and I in cookies, tea and coffee and opening our gifts.
Christmas morning is breakfast with Mereki family (French toast) and then church at 9 a.m. and then after that rounds on the patients and home to a ham dinner with all the trimmings. Our theme this year is “Retro Hawaiian Christmas.” That means dress in 50’s Hawaiian outfits. Should be interesting—stay tuned for pictures!
This past week at the hospital it has been busy and on Wednesday we had to do an emergency operation for a ruptured uterus during labor. ZESA was on when we started and went off about an hour into the surgery, all vehicles were gone and so we couldn’t find a battery to get the generator started—so worked for 30 minutes with 2 torches (flashlights) being held by the Nurse Aide and then ZESA came back! Wow that was exciting! Patient did well and survived. We used a lot of lap sponges since we had no suction for the part with no ZESA! God was good and at least it was during the day when there was some outside light! Trying to hang and push in units of blood in the dark is interesting!
Just in case we didn’t have enough work they also threw in a week of Immunization clinics last week, so Lori and her crew were out until late each evening trying to vaccinate children and give Vitamin A. So much for work slowly down during the holidays!
Both of the doctors here have offered their resignation (one will leave end of Jan and one end of Feb) and so please join us in prayer as we look for 2 new doctors. We need the right ones to help the hospital continue to give the good service we are known for and proud of.
Three weeks ago I had a reporter from NY Times and a photographer here following me around for a couple of days. The story should be coming out shortly and I will let you know when we know when it is published.
Merry Christmas to all of you and slow down and enjoy the Reason for the Season—Christ our Savior is born and live on even today! Share this light in all that you do!

Happy thanksgiving to you!

2010-11-16T06:52:00.000-08:00

This week has been a busy week. We have already received 150 mls+ of rain in November, so people are busy in their fields plowing and planting. Mondays all day and Thursday mornings are days people can not work in their fields in our area in order to honor their ancestors—so that is when the patients flock to the hospital. Many wait until they are very ill because the family member who may need to bring them doesn’t want to miss days in the field. So we get some breaks in between when people are busy plowing and planting. The rivers aren’t full yet, but soon the rivers will prevent many people being able to get the hospital until the river goes down a day or so after the rain.
This week we said goodbye to Liz Able who has been with us since August. She flew on to spend Christmas with her family in Shanghai, China and then will be enrolling in college in January in Portland, OR. We wish her well and thank her for her help!
This past Saturday (Nov 13th) we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving and cook up a feast. We couldn’t find another Sat between now and December when all of us would be here, so we had it early. We don’t get Thanksgiving Day off here, so we need a Saturday when we have time to cook and prepare. So we started on Friday when Chris killed the turkey (one of our bartered ones at the hospital) and Saturday we spent all day cooking. We each choose a part to help with and 3 of us were busy cooking and went to the hospital to work in the morning too! We also decided to add to the entertainment by dressing up—3 of us were pilgrims and 3 were Indians—we had to use what we had here and it was a challenge, but we managed—look at those pictures! The best part was having Chris put on white panty hose for his outfit—we all had to help him, with him complaining the whole time! We told him he now had a big appreciation for what girls go through to impress men!
We had turkey, chicken, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry salad, broccoli with cranberry salad, carrot soufflé, green beans, cranberry sauce, biscuits, gravy and pecan and butternut squash pie for dessert. We invited some of our neighbors to share with us and 9 of us ate this huge feast on Saturday night! Of course we have been without electricity since Wed. night due to power poles fallen down in a storm, so we met the challenge to get everything cooked in a gas stove and kept warm! What fun we had and all fell into bed exhausted and stuffed like the turkey!
Today 3 of our visitors took off for a visit for Victoria Falls before 2 of them—Kial and Lauren leave us for the states (and another Thanksgiving)! Soon the Christmas decorations come out and the Christmas dishes—yeah!
Now we have been 6 days without electricity and counting. We had to postpone a scheduled C/Section and another surgery in hopes it might come back anytime! They can’t seem to find the fault so our guys are out and walking the lines looking for fallen poles today. We have one of their ZESA employees in our hospital bed, and he has been waiting for an X-ray for 5 days. We are threatening to hold him hostage until it is fixed! With the electricity off for 6 nights now we tend to go bed earlier and get up with the sun!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you as you celebrate on the 25th!

More pictures

2010-11-06T05:08:00.000-07:00

Thought I would add some more pictures for all of you. Stacy is a visitor from TN and she is applying for Med School in the Fall 2011 so she is learning by assisting in surgery and sewing up lacerations.
Some more pictures of our visitors and our animals we saw on safari in Kariba. Notice how close the elephants were to our room!
Liz and Lauren sitting next to me on the boat over to the safari camp!
The group with Dr. Zimudzi.

Finally an update!

2010-11-06T02:50:00.000-07:00

In mid-October the visitors (Chris, Amber, Lauren, Liz, Stacy and Kial) and I were able to spend 3 nights and 3 days at a wonderful safari camp called Rhino Camp. We actually got to see Rhino—there are only 14 in the whole National Park—so it was special! We had many elephants around our cabins and looked out on Kariba Lake which made us feel we were on a tropical island with African elephants! We also say lions with cubs and lots of other animals and enjoyed walking, riding and boating to see the many different animals. Amber's birthday was the day we arrived so made her wear the famous birthday hat (the picture with her and Kial on boat to elephant point). We had a special dinner with chocolate cake--too windy for candles! It was a relaxing and fun time by all.
Amber left us on October 28th and returned to Lincoln, Nebraska. Her welcome home party turned into her engagement party when her boyfriend popped the questions—Makorokoto (Congrats) Amber!
Our rains have started and people are busy plowing and planting. There is always excitement in the air when people get back into their fields after several months waiting for the rains! Already the dusty brown all around is starting to green up.
Talked with Major by Skype this week and he certainly must be enjoying America as he has put on a lot of weight! The Pillsbury Boy of Zimbabwe has been created! Thank you to all who are keeping him so well fed and drunk (with Root Beer)! He will be back to the reality of sadza and veges soon enough! He is complaining about the cold and it was down to low 30’s at night in Kansas when I talked to him. He will be home in 4 weeks and we will be so happy to see him here!
The hospital has decreased a bit with people busy in their fields. Only the very sick come and Monday and Thursday are days people cannot plow in our area in honor of their ancestors and so those days are very busy. Since a week ago we have already received 100 mls of rains—so we are happy! It has cooled us down too. Our visitors now know why October is called suicide month—it was a hot one! They were sleeping out on the platform every night in my yard—now they have to guess if it will rain during the night or make a run for it from the platform when it starts to rain.
Dr. Zimudzi went on leave this past week for 6 weeks and Dr. Murenje and I are trying to hold down the fort while he is away. So far so good!
One more visitor leaves this week—Liz flies on to be with her mother and siblings in Shanghai this Friday. She has been here since then end of August and has been a good gopher (go for this, go for that) for me—so we will miss her and wish her well in college in Portland, OR in January. Lauren and Kial leave on 21st so everyone is getting excited about home. In fact, In and Out Burger has been the topic of many of the conversations lately!
The house is decorated for Thanksgiving and we are trying to figure out when we will have this big day. We don’t get the holiday off here so we can celebrate whenever we want! Lori, Chris, Stacy and I will be here and we will invite some local friends too. It may be chicken with all the trimmings. The turkeys are pretty old and tough around here.
Thanks for all of you who pray for us and financially support us so much! You are the ones who make this work possible!

More visitors

2010-09-18T05:38:00.000-07:00

We were happy to have Kial from San Francisco and Amber from Lincoln, Nebraska arrive on Friday the 10th of September to join our other two young women here, Liz and Lauren. We put them to work right away. Kial is working on putting all our financial records on computers and Amber, who is a Nurse Aide is busy helping at outreach clinics and around the hospital.

On Saturday night we had a C/Section for our after dinner experience. Only Liz wanted to observe the others bowed out! We got home for dessert at 10 p.m.!

Major left for the US on Tuesday and he has arrived safely and is busy enjoying food as he tells me and Root Beer! He was met at the airport with 8 litres of Root Beer and he really believe that he was in the land of wonderful! he is busy going out for dinner and catching up with people. He had 100+ voice messages on his cellphone he is using in the US when he arrived--so be patient he will get back to you!

The doctors were both gone for meetings from Thursday afternoon until Saturday afternoon so we kept the hospital running and kept busy doing everyone's job!

Summer is definitely here and it is 111 outside as i write this. Most nights it is getting down into mid-70's--so winter clothes have been put away until next year.

We are planning to get in the pool and cool off this weekend so hope you have a cool weekend too!

What a week!

2010-09-05T02:41:00.000-07:00

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 typical “Zimbabwean tradition” we arrived at 10:45 a.m. and we were early! It started at 11:30 a.m.! We enjoyed food and dancing and present giving and the girls were a big hit with strangers coming up to have their picture taken with them using their cell phones. They were using the backdrop of a boat and when I finally saw the name of the boat it was “White Mischief!” It is this the prediction for these 2 girls and their time here?
Sunday morning we were up early and did grocery shopping, and then packed what we could in my car and left with our friends from the UK out for a short visit following behind in their own truck. Nikki, Justin and Tom are involved in Zimbabwe Rural School s Development Program, a UK non-profit. They have helped us in building on to schools in our area and helping with desks and furniture for school as well as helping build our new school at Mukowe.
About 50 kms out of Harare we began to see some wild fires burning the bush close to the road. These are very common this time of the year when we haven’t had rain for 5 months. We were just telling the girls “you know in the States they would have the National Guard out to fight this, here we just let it burn, no big deal!” Famous last words…soon we were completely surrounded by fire on both sides of the road with flames leaping into the road and throwing flames across the road. A van traveling the opposite way was suddenly coming towards us in the smoke and we couldn’t get over because of flames, but he saw us and moved at the last moment. The car in front of me stops! It’s a petrol car and the fire is surrounding it! I am yelling and telling them to keep going so it doesn’t explode right in front of us and finally they do and we were all able to drive out. When we got to where we could pull off we waited for the other car and went on. Soon their open truck which had bags and mattresses in the back started smoldering and open flames started! They quickly came out with their drinking water and put the flames out! 1 mattress burnt up! One suitcase a bit melted on one side but no major damage. Boy we gave those visitors a show to remember on the way home! Remember we said no big deal!
We came home from Harare on Sunday and I had 1 hour to cook dinner for 9 people—oh and by the way no electricity when we arrived-ha! I had Carolyn Mereki with me so she quickly made the cake (I have been teaching her to bake and she thinks it is fun!). I put the pot of rice and mince on to brown. Lori cut up peaches and pineapple and Carolyn cut up onions and tomatoes. In 1 hour—walla—we had curry and rice for 9 people and cake for desert!
We went off for church at the hospital at 5 p.m. and came home by 6:15 p.m. to heat up dinner and it was on the table by 7:30 p.m. and guess what? The lights come on for us to eat—go figure! We finally all went to bed about 9:30 p.m. exhausted after quite a start to Liz and Lauren’s African Adventure.
Monday the girls went off with Lori to do 2 well baby clinics. Nikki and Justin and Tom went with Major to see Mukowe school which was now completed. Nikki and Justin were with us in February 2009 and helped to feed many people who were literally starving from lack of food at the time. I went to the hospital and had a long day there. We all got home and had a nice dinner about 7:45 p.m.
Tues the UK guests left us and the girls and I started in on month end reports. About half way through the morning I left them as fevers hit from a bad UTI. I woke up to hear them at lunch with a new visitor who just popped in—Zebedee Togarepi. Zebedee is a good friend who is a minister down in Chiredzi, runs a children’s home and is working with all our Christian schools in Zimbabwe. He had come by to visit our schools. So we quickly made up my guest rondoval for him and went back to work. The same day we received word that the Deputy Minister of Health would be arriving on Thursday to present us with a Lab machine and could we have lunch for 100 dignitaries ready! Major was in Harare and I Skyped him to say help! He bought 25 chickens and hurried home!
Wed major got home at 2 a.m. and we got busy in the morning scrubbing wards, getting menu’s planned and everyone working hard for the next day. Again I had to go home from work for a few hours to rest, leaving the visitors taking blood pressures and weights on 200+ pregnant women who came for their Antenatal Care. By evening I was feeling better and led Bible Study and by Thursday morning my fevers were gone and I was much better.
Thursday we worked hard to rush through all the patients. The minister was to arrive by 12 but luckily he was 2 hours late as we did our theater cases, started new people on ART, saw new out-patients, never stopping for tea or lunch until he arrived at 2 p.m. We (Dr. Zimudzi, Major and I) as the Administration met with the Minister to say thanks for what he did for us and also to throw in a few needs we had. He politely answered how he could possibly help and then we went to meet the public which was about a group of 400+ people that had gathered for the occasion. Finally about 4 p.m. we went to eat a wonderful lunch that our staff had prepared—chicken, beef, veges, sadza and rice! We were starving and tired and ate it with gusto!
By 6 I was home and had a few minutes to get ready for our Area church conference which started with dinner at 5 p.m. and services. Once a year in September we meet from Thurs night until Sunday morning. We have 42 churches in our area that we are responsible for and we have this conference each year to teach and enjoy fellowship with one another. This year we helped 40 people from our further churches in the Tonga areas to come and be with us. They live 5 hours by car one way from here and by bus over 15 hours. They walked together to one spot over 40 kms some of them to be picked up by our cars. They speak Tonga which is a totally different language than Shona and so it is exciting for the people here to learn new songs in a new language and meet fellow Christians who are so different but still worship the same God!
Each day we filled the church with more sitting on the porch outside, so we had over 600 people attend. We killed 1 cow, 2 pigs, 10 goats and 15 chickens to cook with veges and sadza! We enjoyed the singing, dancing and preaching.
For the next 3 days we went between work and church. We went to bed hearing singing from the church late into the night, there is no more beautiful sound then that.
This morning, Sunday, we started with coffee and muffins with the girls and the Mereki family before we headed for church at 7:30 a.m. to end the conference. Many had left walking at sunrise, but still there were over 400 left. This afternoon we are relaxing! What a week for the girls! We hope it calms down more this week—but don’t count on it.

A priest dedication

2010-08-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

I was asked to come yesterday for a priest dedication at Chitiki, about a 30 minute drive from us. A young man that grew up in that area was dedicated and took his vows and this was the celebration at his mom's house. We got there at 10 a.m. and we were the special guests. We had tea with the new priest and 3 others who had come to celebrate. Then there was a 4 hour church service. Lots of singing, dancing and talking! Then we had to eat before we could rush off. We ate sadza with a rubber chicken! I took Major's 13 y/o daughter Carolyn who started laughing when she tried to eat the chicken and she couldn't tear a piece off with her mouth because it was so tough. It all sent us into giggles which we had to hide! Finally we left at 4:30 p.m. and back to Chidamoyo in time for night church.

I was kept awake on and off all night with a lady not progressing well in labor and finally at 7 a.m. we did a C/Section, not an easy start to a Monday morning! lori is off to Harare to see off Liz and pick up the newest guests arriving on Thursday, Lauren from CA and Liz from IN

Pictures

2010-08-18T23:21:00.000-07:00

Life in the bush

2010-08-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

Well this has been one of those weeks. Nothing went as planned but we survived. Since we have a visitor here we can blame them for everything—so Liz it is your fault!
We started the week with 2 holidays—Hero’s Day on Monday and Tuesday. This is to remember the people who fought in the war for Independence and died. We keep our out-patient department closed during the holiday and so only have to make rounds on in-patients, but there are always people who show up because they don’t know it is a holiday! The doctors were gone for 6 days and so I was the one holding down the fort.
The in-patient rounds were made, 2 ladies who had high blood pressure and were pregnant were started on induction, several discharges were made and we actually were home before 1 p.m. each day and not called back to work. We had time to work on projects at home and relax. Then Wednesday came and the doctor did not make it back because of car troubles—so I had to do in-patient rounds, do some procedures in theater and cover out-patients and still had some ART (HIV treatment) patients to see. Since the holiday made our out-patient department closed for 4 days (Sat-Tue) we made up for lost time with lots of patients. We worked flat out from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. not going for tea or lunch and finally finished all with several to come back the next day for the doctor to see. We all went home ready to eat and go to bed.
The doctor and the driver got home at 1:30 a.m.on Thursday morning and the driver woke me to give me my grocery order—which had nothing cold that could have all waited until morning to put away but he wanted me to make sure I knew they were home! Then the lights went off at 3:30 a.m. instead of the usual 5 or 6 a.m. and by 5 a.m. I was awaken by the hospital.
A pregnant woman with high blood pressure had a seizure—so immediately I said get the generator on and prepare for a C/Section. I sent the guard to get Lori and Liz for the C/S and thought I would let the doctor sleep in a bit more until we were ready to cut since he only got in at 1:30 a.m. and of course the lady had another seizure while getting her ready for the C/Section.
We got the lady in theater, I put the spinal in and got her blood pressure down and then sent for the doctor. The guard went and knocked and no one answered and so the guard decided he wasn’t home because he had been gone for the past 6 days. So we waited and waited in theater and after 30 minutes I called the guards and ask where doctor was and they reply he is not home! By this time my blood pressure is raising and I said he is home, go knock louder and tell him to come now for a C/Section. So they did and immediately he woke up and came. Still being half asleep he thought I said the patient has 2 caesers not 2 seizures and so when he went to cut he said “ where is the scar?” Since I was half asleep also I said “what scar?” and he said “how did they do the 2 caesers?” Then I realized he was half asleep when I told him seizures and so I finally got through to him she was eclamptic having seizures! This was now a comedy of errors but we got through the operation and mom and baby did well! Our nursing student thought it was great fun and the rest of us were tired and trying to stay awake. We finished in time to go to work and started on patients and worked again flat out until 6 p.m. when we proceeded to go home and eat and to bed by 8 p.m.! We were so exhausted all we wanted to do was collapse in bed! Exciting night life here-ha!
The next day (Friday) was also busy and we ended the day with another C/Section! We usually have 2 C/Sections a month but whenever we get students here it seems like they wish for more and they get their wish! This one went well and we got home in time to eat pizza (our Friday night usual) with the lights of the generator until it went off after cleaning up after the C/Section. Major arrived home with our newest visitor at 10 p.m. and served dinner to them.
This weekend we have a guest from Harare, Sylvia Welsford, a friend of mine who was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She has fun stories of growing up here in the 50’s and 60’s. She is here until Tuesday with us.
This weekend is a bad ZESA weekend. Where we usually count on electricity all day on Saturday and Sunday, it had gone off at 6 a.m. each day and yesterday it came back on from 1-3 p.m. and then came back at 10 p.m. until 6 .am. this morning and none so far this Sunday morning since then. Oh well, we have the read and relax more, no time to do work on the computer and email! As I write a praying mantas has joined me on my dining room chair next to me. I’ll share him via picture with you!
The other exciting news is that the WHO declared the H1N1 flu epidemic officially over and this week they brought vaccine to our hospital to start vaccinating against the H1N1. I wonder if the western countries are now dumping their vaccines? They said there have been 200+ confirmed cases in our province, but nothing much seen here—usually flue for this time of the year. We are always a bit late in Zimbabwe!

More pictures from Bulawayo

2010-07-31T07:45:00.000-07:00

One funny thing happened when we were at Matopos. They told us that there were no lions in the park. Major commented "you never know for sure!" Of course i said "Major, they should know!" Yep--on the last day we were there we were stopped on the road by ladies cutting grass who asked us what kind of footprints those were and yes there were fresh new lion prints! A big mom and 2 cubs! So much for no lions!

Major is coming to US!

2010-07-31T07:31:00.001-07:00

Major was issued his US visa at the embassy in Harare this week and so he will be on his way to the US on September 14th. I am not sure what I can do without him here, but we will try and hang in there. Here is his schedule and we encourage any of you that are nearby to any of his speaking dates to go and see him. He is excited to meet up with all of our visitors and supporters.
15 Sept arrives in SF and goes to Sebastopol to stay
19 Sept be at Adventure Christian Church in Rocklin
26 Sept speak at Sebastopol Christian Church
3 Oct speak at Natomas church in Sacramento
4 Oct-11 Oct be in Los Alamitos, CA
10 Oct speak at Lemon Grove, CA
15-17 Oct men’s retreat in Occidental, CA
21-25 Oct Seattle
27 Oct fly to Indianapolis and stay with Altman family in Ft. Wayne
31 Oct speak at Monroe Christian Church in Monroe, MI
3 Nov-8 Nov be in Wichita, KS with Phil Smith family
7 Nov speak at Countryside Christian church in Wichita, KS
8 Nov-12 Nov be with Barringer family in Carl Junction, MO
14 Nov speak at Sterling Christian church Veedersburg, IN
17 Nov-20 Nov National Missionary Convention in Lexington, KY—we will have a booth under Chidamoyo Christian Hospital, come and visit
20-Nov fly to Ringwood, NJ
21 Nov Speak at Ringwood Community Presbyterian church
21-26 Nov Ringwood, NJ with Don McCarty family
26 Nov Fly to London
27 Nov-2 Dec be in London with Chidamoyo UK Trust
2 Dec leave for Harare from London
3 December arrive in Harare 13:55 p.m. (Time for me to go on vacation!)
His phone number while he is in US 707 484-9868

Happy end of July!

2010-07-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed a few days away with our visitors: Pam and Jack and Hannah and Brandon. We went to Matopos National Park SW of Bulawayo and spent 4 nights there. A beautiful setting with lots of balancing rocks. We enjoyed climbing up mountains to see caves with bush painting in them from thousands of years ago. We enjoyed a chance encounter with a native rock cutter who made rocks to use on our feet to smooth them. We called that getting out feet stoned!

We had a game park close by and saw rhinos everywhere we turned as well as impala and warthogs and plenty of monkeys and baboons. We had monkeys that surrounded our cabins everyday and tried to sneak in if the door was left open! One got in and got into a big bag of biscuits (cookies) and so we called them monkey biscuits and had to throw the whole bag out!

We took a day trip to Victoria Falls (6 hours each way!) and on the way home Pam yelled "elephant" and so Jack and I quickly braced our heads behind the seats, thinking he was in the road and we were going to run into him. He was right by the side of the road--so we were able to see him well as our heartbeats returned to normal!

On our way home to Harare we stopped off to see the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo. This is a wonderful museum with lots of rich history. We got to the museum and they said it was closed because of no ZESA (electricity!)! So I asked them if we could still see it if we provided our own torches (flashlights) and they said yes but you still have to pay! So we enjoyed our own speacial tour of the museum in the dark with torches. We called it "Night at the Museum--Part 3!" It would make a good movie, don't you think?

We had to say goodbye to Pam and Jack who returned to Seattle and Hannah and Brandon who returned to Ringwood, NJ on Wed. this week. On Friday we welcomed our new visitor Liz Willis, a final semester nursing student from Sonoma State University near my home area in CA! It is always fun having visitors and we are thankful for the help! Month end reports are due soon!

More pictures!

2010-07-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

Winter is here..brrr...

2010-07-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Winter is here!

2010-07-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

Life continues on in Zimbabwe and it seems like it goes by so fast. We have been very busy at the hospital. It is winter and we see a lot of pneumonia, flu, and burns. Children stay near the fire in cookhouses to keep warm and frequently someone trips or a pan falls over with hot water or hot porridge and they get burnt.
The children seem to do well and the mother’s do the daily scrubbing of the burns and the kids are kept busy coloring and playing games with my visitors.
We had a new group of visitors that joined us on July 1, Pam and Jack Johnson from Bainbridge Island near Seattle and Hannah McCarty, my niece and friend Brandon from Ringwood, NJ.
Pam is an OB nurse and keeps busy with the medical things. Jack is building shelves, doing computer projects and keeping us organized and Brandon and Hannah have been helping in getting our ART meds ready, helping in our vaccination clinics and playing with kids in Pediatrics.
It is always fun to have visitors and see their enthusiasm for the work. It is always a big help in keeping us going!
It seems like the new visitors, Hannah and Brandon, have brought us good ZESA luck. We had electricity continuous from Friday night until Monday morning and then everyday since during the day some hours and the night some hours. I think we can’t let them go or the ZESA curse will return!
We have been able to purchase a lorry for the hospital (a 3.5 ton Mazda truck) which Major picked it up on Thursday and got back at 4 a.m. due to several flat tires! This will definitely help us in our building projects, transporting staff and supplies during our weekly grocery run and for church and youth work. Maybe our little trucks will not wear out so fast! The hospital was able to purchase this with funds from selling our crops that we got from bartering for our services last year! Now the only problem is when we say go get “Lori” for a C/Section they will go and get the truck!
Winter is here and we have had weather down to 52 (10 C) this week, brrr! It may not sound cold to you but our houses are built for heat and so my dining room which is a screened in room can be very cool eating breakfast and seeing your breath in the air! It takes until about 10 a.m. to warm up (I can go from 4 layers to 2) and then by 6 p.m. when the sun goes down it is cold again! We look forward to August when it warms up again.
This last week we attended a funeral for our fellow missionary, Ivan Martin, who died after a 2 year struggle with cancer. The service was in Bulawayo (11 hours from here) and it was really a great service celebrating his wonderful life. All of us can only hope that such nice things can be said about us and the influence of our work here when we die. His body will be flown to the US at the end of the month for a service there and burial in the family cemetery in rural Colorado. JoAnn, his wife of 53 years will return to keep the work going on with the churches in Bulawayo. Pray for this upcoming travel and for JoAnn and the family.
We had a party on Friday night to celebrate our long service awards for people who have worked 5-10-15-20 and 25 years for the hospital. We had 35 for dinner and served 1 pig, 25 pounds of rice, 10 pounds of potatoes, 4 heads of cabbage made into cole slaw, gravy and 3 cakes! Everyone enjoyed and we appreciate all of our workers.
We continue to see more Obama clothing line—this week it was belt buckle worn by our Rehab Tech. I guess he needs to supplement his income somehow and Zimbabwe seems to be the place!

Visitors and Container arrives!

2010-06-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Life has been so busy at Chidamoyo. On May 26th we had 5 visitors from my home church in CA arrive to help us for 5 weeks. Steve and Roseanne Prandini, Nellie Whitlock and Bob and Rose Coibion (now transplanted to Roseville, CA). There has been an outbreak of measles and we have seen 15 cases—mostly unvaccinated adults and there have been 300 deaths in the country due to measles. So the team arrived right in the midst of NIDS—National Immunization Days for measles. This one started on May 24 and ran through June 2. We were sent to immunize every child under 15 with measles and catch up defaulter under 5 years of age in all their immunizations.
Lori and her team covered 26 schools and immunized 18,200 children over those 10 days. Nellie, a San Francisco State nursing student and Roseanne joined to help. They must have felt like we were punishing them. They were gone by 7:30 a.m. each day and rarely got back until 8 p.m. or later! Bob and Steve even went for a couple of days to do crowd control and help weigh kids. Most of the places had 2000 or more kids! It was quite an introduction to the work of Chidamoyo!
One of the major projects they came to do was unpack a container sent from the US on February 22. It arrived on June 1st! They got busy opening and unpacking on June 2nd and have been busy unpacking ever since. They also built cupboards in a new pantry I built, built cupboards for our office, repaired my platform, and repaired my closet shelves. They have been busy and I have been busy thinking of things they have to do before they can go home-ha!
Winter is here and most mornings it is down to low 60’s. This might not seem too cold for you but my dining room is a screened in veranda so we have some chilly mealtimes! It does warm up to 80’s during the day but as soon as the sun goes down it is cold! We are also heading towards our shortage day of the year—so it is not light until about 6:30 a.m. and dark by 6 p.m .
Electricity continues to be a challenge. Seems like we never have it for dinner and very little during the day—mostly after 10 or 11 p.m. and off by 5 a.m. A challenge to cook and keep things warm! Life is never boring here.
The container has been so exciting to unpack—so much needed things. Wow—people in my home church gave me lots of food—you better some and visit because I have pasta for years. Rose is busy making spaghetti sauce for me to put in the freezer!
We expect more visitors from now until the end of the year, so life will continue to be busy. The hospital is busy and last week we had 5 C/Sections in a row—1 each day! When they called me for the 6th one—I said no way I am tired (they are always after a long day at work. So I went and was able to vacuum the baby out and save us, but the next day I couldn’t get it out by vacuum and so back we went for another one! During one the electricity went off and it took 20 minutes to get the generator started so we were doing it by torch light! Quite exciting. I wonder if that is JACHO approved?

Kariba

2010-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Lori, Major and I were happy to get away to Kariba this week for 4 days. Kariba is located NW of here about 3 hours and we rented a house right on the Lake. We enjoyed seeing the Lake so full that 3 of the gate on the dam wall are opened and have been opened for the last 2 months. We had hippos on our lawn during the day and night—brings a new meaning to “lawn mower!”
We also enjoyed driving around and having elephants come out to see us in the road! Major was trying on Zambia’s for Lori who was looking to buy! We had a great time and really relaxed and got away from the work—what fun!

Obama

2010-05-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

Hey Obama may not be very popular in the US—but he is still very popular in Africa. One of my young patients recently had his shirt on and when I asked to take his picture he said “bama!”

ZESA

2010-05-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

ZESA is the name of our electricity company—we say that it stands for “Zimbabwe Electricity Seldom Available” and it has proved true for the last 2 weeks. It was only coming on at anywhere from 8:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. and then off by 5 or 6 a.m. for the past 2 weeks. Even on Saturday and Sundays when we tend to have electricity for the whole day—it was off all day. Finally today it has been on since 10 p.m. last night and it just went off as I wrote this sentence (6 p.m.). I have 14 people coming for dinner so had to run outside turn on my propane tank and move all the dishes to the gas stove. Just got back and then as soon as I got everything changed to the gas stove in the back room, the guard came and said the doctor needs the generator for a vacuum extraction he is doing! So should I switch everything back when the generator comes on?
We now have a new registered psychiatric condition here called “ZESA anxiety.” When the electricity comes on you never know for how long or when it will go off. All you can count on is that it will be on during the middle of the night when no one needs it. You can usually count on it to go off when you have a cake half way baked and it sinks before you run to get it in the gas oven which needs to heat up! You can usually count on it being out dinner time when you need to cook and serve food! It does make you more organized when there is electricity and you get a lot more done because you never know when it will go off.
Trying to take X-rays and do some surgeries have been a challenge for the past 2 weeks. Our X-ray guy has been getting up at 10 or 11 p.m. at night to get some X-rays done so we can read them the next day. This means patients are camping out on the Out=patient veranda in order to know when ZESA comes on and when the X-ray guy comes up. If you sleep in front of the door he has to come through—you might get your X-ray done—especially if you have been waiting for several days! It is a game we learn to play!
You get the washing machine all ready, turn on the fan by your bed so when the lights come on you can jump up and start the washing machine! Sometimes I even cook the coffee for breakfast the night before and keep it in the thermos to keep it hot for morning! We learn all the tricks of the trade!
Of course during all of this as I am writing the generator wouldn’t start because the battery was flat and the only car we had here also had a flat battery (one car was with Major in Harare on his way back and one vehicle was in Karoi picking up Lori from a workshop) but God provided—as we have Bible College students visiting for the weekend and they had brought their college van—so quickly we got it to the generator and got it going to get the baby out! Mom and baby doing fine!
As soon as we got the generator going within 10 minutes ZESA was back! Oh the joys of living in Zimbabwe!
We have a team of 9 from our Bible College in Harare who arrived Friday night and stay until Monday mid-morning. We had 8 last week end from the college too. For the past 15+ years we have been having the seniors come out just before they graduate and after they have taken a counseling course, to put into practice what they have learned in theory. We also teach them how to minister to HIV/AIDS patients since they will have many in their congregation who will be infected. We talk about the disease, they sit in on counseling sessions when we test people and tell them they are or are not infected and sit in on a session of starting people on drugs to treat HIV/AIDS. They then visit the patients on the wards and learn how to do a hospital visit as a minister. On Sunday we use them in our local churches to preach and on Sunday night at the hospital service. All of the students have said how much this has helped them and prepared them in their ministry. So we are happy to participate in this program. Over the years we have trained ministers from South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, and Sudan and from all over Zimbabwe.
The past month we have had several visitors with us which is always fun. We had Mike and Gilly Withers from our UK Trust. We quickly put them to work—Mike fixing up the guest house and Gilly teaching staff from our hospital to prepare them for their English exams. They brought their niece, Jeanine who helped with some of our paperwork and pill cutting for our HIV drugs.
Then Rachel Sullivan a final year medical student from Ohio State University joined us for a month. She is starting her residency in general surgery in July at Ohio State. Then during that time Dr. Robert chin joined us from Stanford University in CA, who is a 3rd year resident in Radiation Therapy. It is always great to have visitors and they brought needed supplies with them in their suitcase that is always exciting!
On Tuesday Major, Lori and I have a 3 night/4 day getaway to Kariba planned! Yeah! We can’t wait to get away and be by the Lake and relax, read, nap and do nothing! I am sure Major is planning to fish (but I am not counting on that for dinner!) and we will see lots of animals around the place where we are staying. Stay tuned for more Adventures in the Bush!

Easter Weekend 2010

2010-04-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

APRIL 1st

Well April 1st is like a national holiday in Zimbabwe and especially at Chidamoyo, people can’t seem to wait to start “fooling” each other! Of course I enjoy getting into the mood of the day and first thing in the morning I had my guards going to Major’s house saying they were needed there. When the guards went one said “I am not sure if sister said I should see you or she needed to see you” so Major decided since he didn’t need him I must need him and went off to get dressed. Then his wife reminded him it was April 1st!
Then I sent one of my visitors to Major’s house who by this time had over 10 people sent to his house and they figured out he had been fooled!
On my way to the hospital I stopped next store and got Lori out of bed saying “C/Section—get dressed I am waiting.” She got in the car and a drove her about 10 feet and asked her what day it was and she said April 1st and I said “you are a fool!” She was not happy I woke her up for that!!
Then I got to the hospital and people were sending people to me left and right telling them sister needed them! I send word to the doctor that our diabetic patient had a blood sugar of >65 mmol (normal is 6) and what should I do—he came to see patient!
When I told Major that our PMD (provincial medical director) was coming today he started getting ready for them and kept saying “why are they coming the day before the 4 day holiday starts? Then I told him “April 1st!”
I told him to go tell his son he had to go back to school on Monday as I got an email from his school, Major again fell for it and said “why did he come home if he has to go back Sunday!” I said tell him, not that it is real! Oh—April 1st!
This continues all day! Then when we usually have electricity all day Thursday—surprise—ZESA went out at 6 p.m.! Surprise it was back on at 7 p.m. and for rest of night until 7:30 a.m.! I guess that was our April Fools from ZESA!
My visitors this week, Mike and Gilly Withers from UK and their niece Jeannine from Cape Town arrived on Tuesday night. Mike is fixing up our guesthouse and getting it in order. Gilly is teaching some English classes for our staff. Jeannine is helping us at the hospital.
Easter weekend is always a 4 day holiday here and the youth left on Thursday to attend a National Youth conference in Mutare until Monday. We helped to pay their bus fare. We had several church meetings going on here from Friday through Sunday church, so I went out with Major to Mudzimu church and he went out Saturday night to Bashungwe church. We show the Jesus film in Shona and stay for the message and some singing. The skies are so clear and it is so wonderful to sit out under the stars and see the film!
Today it was 84 and Gilly was in the pool. Winter is coming on fast and it is getting down to low 70’s at night—I sleep under the blanket! Mike and Jeannine went to visit Gladys for the weekend up on the eastern part of the country.
Since we have a four day holiday I only have to work until I am finished—so Friday I was up at the hospital from 8:30 until about 1:30 p.m. Our patients don’t realize we close outpatients on holidays so they still manage to come! I stayed to do the discharges and started 2 new people on ART, so it was a good day. Lori went Friday afternoon to Harare to pick up our new visitor, Rachael Sullivan from Ohio who arrived on Saturday afternoon. She only got about 10 miles away and had a flat tire and then the spare was almost flat—so got someone to pump it up with a bicycle pump and came back to have both tires fixed! What an adventure! After getting lost a couple of times she made it to Harare on her own and back!
After I got back on Friday night from Mudzimu church at 11:30 p.m. I went straight to the hospital for a repeat C/Section. This turned out to be the C/Section from hell! We got the baby out but it has a cord tightly wrapped around the next twice, tried to resuscitate the baby without success, and then found the mom had ruptured her uterus behind a bladder that had adhesions everywhere! She went into DIC and we worked for 2 hours—sewed her up but she continued to bleed and got ready to transfer her for blood (we had none) and she died. One funny part of the surgery is that I had to scrub since Lori was gone and since I ran in to find them ready for surgery—I quickly put on scrubs and started the surgery—about 10 minutes into the surgery my scrub pants fell to my ankles as I obviously had not tied them on well—so had to kick them off and keep going! Luckily our sterile gowns go all the way around and cover up everything! Finally got to bed at 5 a.m. and by then another repeat C/Section had walked in, in labor! We said no we had to get some sleep so went home and took a 2 hour nap and then back up to do another C/Section. This one went well and healthy baby. Stayed to do rounds and discharges and see some emergency patients and finally about 4 p.m. laid down for another 2 hour nap! Got up in time to cook dinner and welcomed Lori and Rachael back about 8 p.m. to have dinner with Gilly and me.
Sunday morning went better! We had coffee and muffins at 5:45 a.m. and off to Sunrise service at 6 a.m. at our church—where we met outside and had our service as the sun rose! It finished at 8 a.m. and Major and family came over for another round of coffee and muffins.
Sunday lunch we had 11 people to help celebrate Easter. Dr. Zimudzi, Dr. Murenje and wife, Major and family and Gilly, Lori, Rachel and I. We had a pork roast with all the trimmings. After lunch we all collapsed for a nap. Sunday night we showed the Jesus film at the hospital for our Sunday service.
Today is Monday and Lori went to work so I get to enjoy a day off! I am catching up on email and planning another nap this afternoon-ha! Hope you had a special Easter! Cheers!The pictures show our sunrise service and also our Easter dinner.

More photos of the new matresses

2010-04-05T07:20:00.001-07:00

The Matresses have arrived!

2010-04-05T01:52:00.001-07:00

THE MATRESSES HAVE ARRIVED!
Because of the generosity of many people we were able to buy new mattresses for all of in-patient beds. Many of you gave gifts at Christmas to us for this purpose! We found a man in Harare who made them for $50 each and through a generous man in Harare (his home is Chidamoyo) he arranged for the mattresses to be made and sent by truck to us in Karoi. We were able to pick them all up in 2 loads! The patients are very happy and enjoying a more restful night because of you! Thank you to all!

Life in the African bush continues

2010-03-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since I have written but life continues on. Sometimes it is discouraging, but we manage to keep going. In Zimbabwe we keep going on hoping for change and always “making a plan!” We manage to roll with the punches and keep coming up. Reminds me of those inflatable bozo clowns we had when we were kids, with weights in the bottom. You punch him and he comes right back up and always with a smile on his face!
The hospital work continues to be a challenge. First we almost ran out of TB drugs—and all there is nothing you can substitute and it is important not to stop treatment and cause resistant TB. No one seemed to have any. We “borrowed” some from Makonde Hospital and we have enough for 1 month and assurances that more are on the way “soon.” Of course we have a lot of assurances for many things in Zimbabwe and they never seem to materialize—so we don’t hold our breath anymore because people aren’t going to revive us from all our apnea spells!
Next we had a shortage of IV’s—not something a hospital can generally do without. Even private companies had nothing we could buy. A week later we found 400 bottles in a storeroom that someone had put them in and we had forgotten about! God provided just when we needed and it was under our nose all the time! They won’t last long and we keep hoping for more!
Our container of equipment and supplies from the US was sent on 22-February-2010 and is on the way here. We are anxiously awaiting its arrival. Pray for everything to go well and it will arrive safely without delays. We have a team in May arriving to unpack it for us—yeah! We have already started to collect more things for the next container and so keep sending any donations to Sue and Gene in Sebastopol. Their garage was cleared for all of about 1 day before they got more things in!
This past weekend Major, Lori, Gladys and I travelled to Hwange and The Hide for a 3 day safari to celebrate Karen Pennington’s birthday. I won’t mention it is her 60th! Ivan and JoAnne Martin joined us for 2 of the days. We had a wonderful time celebrating and had many game drives to enjoy animals and birds—check out my pictures! The last night we had a special birthday dinner in the “bush” and found out a big male lion was watching the celebrations from the shadows! That was exciting—especially to Major who had gone to the bathroom during the dinner—near the paw prints!
Our drive back was a big African Adventure—taking the Binga road (it runs the length of the western part of the country). We had tar for 4 hours and then 8 ½ hours of dirt. It had rained in the 3 days since we drove on it and it was a mess! We ended up in 2 feet of water when our car went off the road in the mud, got pulled out with a short rope and lorry—in the middle of nowhere and used 4 wheel drive on and off for the next 4 hours of terrible muddy road! It was really an adventure! I am sure you are all wishing you could have been with us! Next time I am flying-ha!
We have had some rain this week after nothing for 2 weeks so we were thinking the rainy season was over, but it is still here. It has been hot in between but already getting cooler at night. It was 66 one morning this week when I got up and so winter seems to be on the way.
Hey I read an excellent book recently about conditions in Zimbabwe from 2002-2006 and want to share it with you “The Last Resort” by Douglas Rogers. See what you think…

An exciting Development!

2010-02-13T01:37:00.000-08:00

Exciting news—our automatic washing machine is up and running in our laundry. For the 42 years the hospital has been functioning we have always had people scrub all the laundry by hand! Through the generous donations of the Mick family in the US, Australian Rotary and numerous donors in the UK, we were able to purchase a washing machine in South Africa as well as a pressing machine. We recently had the electricians and plumbers out to hook it up and yesterday we finally had electricity and ran 3 loads in a row! Wow the workers were so happy! We did all the laundry they take 2 days to do in 3 hours!
PTL for all the donors that made this possible!

February 1, 2010

2010-02-13T01:29:00.000-08:00

2010Major and I flew to Victoria Falls on January 26th and spent 3 days visiting with an alumnus of Chidamoyo, Cindy Kaess. Cindy came with a group from Adventure Christian Church in Roseville, CA during the summer of 2003. She also works at Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, CA where I started my nursing career. We have many friends in common who live and work there.
Cindy came with her mom Barbara, sister, Catherine, and group of 23 other people from the US and Canada who were touring South Africa, Victoria Falls and Botswana. So we were fortunate to fly down and spend the 3 days they were in Victoria Falls with them. We walked the Falls, shopped, bartered, walked in the rain and ate Mopani worms at the Boma Restaurant with them! They also paid for Major and I to fly over Victoria Falls in a helicopter—a first for Major to be in a helicopter! He was so excited!
We bid them goodbye and flew back later that afternoon to Harare and arrived in a big thunder and lightning and rain storm. We waited until Saturday early morning and drove home.

Life in Zimbabwe

2010-01-11T04:58:00.000-08:00

Some days it is not hard to know I am in Africa. Today I spent the whole day starting AIDS patients on ART (drugs to treat it). When doing a history on one of the patient’s they named their 6 children:
#1—Pride
#2-Perserverance
#3 - Purposes
#4-Prejudice
#5-Polite
#6-Pretend
Where else but Zimbabwe can you get such wonderful names?
Then on my way to the Lab a patient stopped me and needed her VD taken. When I said VD—she said yes VD and when I looked at her card she was a hypertension patient and I figured out she meant Bp!
As I keep the office doors open where I am counseling and the open to our outside courtyard, a chicken wandered in today. Not something you normally notice in a hospital in the US—I wonder if they are JACHO approved. Then I went to the outpatient department and saw a person sitting with his chicken in his hands—to pay for any drugs ordered and another one had left a pig tied outside for the same reason and we could hear it squealing throughout the hospital! Does he realize he will be dinner tomorrow for the patients?
This week we have had a lot of rain and the rivers are full, the fields are wet and the maize is growing! Everyone is certainly in a happy mood! Hope your week has been as good!
Yesterday (Sunday) I went out with Major and group of 7 young adults to Jinga church—only about 15 kms away but about a 70 minute very bumpy ride away. The kids sang all the way there with a drum. We waved to all the people on the way who were so happy to see us and were busy working in their fields—weeding! When there are good rains and people are able to see good crops growing they are so happy! We got to the church and waited. Within an hour we started and we had over 70 there by the time we were done. The chicken that was running around the church when we arrived quickly ended up in a pot and they served us sadza and chicken before we left for home. The kids sang again all the way back. What a fun time we all had. It makes me so happy to go out away from the hospital and really visit and see the people. So many have had babies here and are happy to show me how big they are now!
This week GOAL, an Irish aid organization, was in our area giving out soap for washing hands to prevent cholera. All the people in our area including our staff got 4 long bars of green soap. Sunday’s offering had several bars of soap in it! They gave them to us to use in the hospital.
This weekend the electricity went out at 5 on Saturday evening and came back at 11:30 p.m. and last night it went off at 7 p.m. during our Sunday evening service at the hospital and came back at 11:40 p.m. It was off by 7:30 a.m. Seems they are having more power cuts because they are “working” on fixing the system!
Major left at 4:30 a.m. today to take the kids to school. Carlton (Monica’s son) was dropped at the bus to go to Mashoko and start Form 6 tomorrow. Carolyn and Michael (Major’s kids) were dropped in Harare at grandma’s to start tomorrow. Carolyn is beginning high school—Form 1 and was so excited! Michael is in Form 4 and will be writing exams the end of this year. Carolyn was so excited she came fully dressed in her uniform last week to show me! I hope her enthusiasm continues throughout the school year! Michael told me recently he was the only person in his class that had actually seen a donkey in real life! I guess all of his classmates are city folks and don’t get to the rural areas!
Enjoy your week—who knows what God will bring this week!

New Year 2010!

2010-01-05T05:09:00.001-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR—2010!

Well today is January 2 and so far it has been uneventful New Year. We closed out-patients on NY Eve at 1 p.m. and finally got to go home about 2 p.m. for the day. I spent the rest of the day taking down Christmas decorations (5 big plastic bins) and my tree—by 6 p.m. 5 guys came to carry it and my tree off to my store room. As I get older is sure is nice to have help in carrying those heavy boxes!
At 7:00 p.m. we started movie night at the church. They watched 9 to 5 and then a Jet Lee Kung-Fu which was the hit with everyone. The church was packed and people even looking in the windows! We had a church service from 11-12 to ring in the New Year and at 12 they beat the church bell and blew the horn on the truck! It was nice to see the community come to some family time instead of going to the township and drinking to bring in another year!
Friday I took the day off and Lori went to the hospital and I continued to take down decorations and clean my house. I was sweating so much I was in out of the pool to keep cool! One exciting thing is since our 9 days of no electricity, since it came back on the 30th at 9 p.m. it hasn’t gone off—62 hours straight and counting! Maybe they forgot us! Ha!
Today I am at the hospital and Lori is enjoying a day off. Have a few patients I discharged and some new emergencies to see, but not so busy—should be out of here by 1 p.m.!
Major went to his village yesterday and he checked on my field (1 acre of maize) and the maize is doing well! We are thankful that crops are doing well so far!
One unpleasant start to the New Year—I started it with a urinary tract infection—so on antibiotics and hoping it will get better!
Take care and all the best for a good start to the new year for you! Love, Kathy

Christmas at Chidamoyo

2010-01-05T02:25:00.000-08:00

Well Christmas 2009 has come and gone. We enjoyed many activities which included our local community. On Wed December 16 we started with the movie “The Nativity” and then had to cancel the movie on December 18th due to a heavy storm. Our chapel is still full of our bartered food for hospital services so we have to show the movies at my outside movie theater and so if it rains we have to cancel! We did show a movie on Saturday the 19th and on Sunday the 20th the youth group did a drama for the crowd who came to church on Sunday night at the hospital.
On Monday the 21st and Tuesday the 22nd we showed Christmas movies and then on the 23rd we went caroling around the mission. The tradition here is that we start with a small group and as we go house to house those people join us—so by the time we finished we had over 200! We gave sweets to all who came!
Tuesday the electricity went off and has not come back since. We sent people on Wed and Thurs to get ZESA workers to fix the problem but all they did was finally find 3 poles down and say they would fix it sometime! So in the meantime—no electricity until "sometime". I think this is our 4th Christmas in a row without electricity!
On the 24th we finished the hospital work by 1 p.m. and then we had our Annual Christmas party for the staff. We served 2 pigs, 24 chickens, 50kg of rice, 10 kg coleslaw and 6 cakes! People ate and ate! Two of the staff was sick the next day from all they ate! We played games and then gave speeches to thank our staff for all their hard work throughout the year. We ended with giving each staff member 2 kg flour, 2 kg sugar, 2 kg rice, 1 long bar of soap, and 2 litres of Mazoe drink. They were all so happy to have food to celebrate the next day with their families. This was actually our second Christmas dinner for the year as we had to cancel our last year one due to cholera and we finally had it in May! This year no cholera so far—yeah!
On Christmas Eve was had a candlelight sing. Didn’t have to turn the lights off since we had no electricity. We sang carols and then read the Christmas story from scripture. Afterwards the Mereki family and Dr. Murenje came to my house for snacks and opening presents! We had a great time and the party didn’t end until after 11 p.m.!
Christmas morning I was up by 6 to get the pumpkin pies made before church at 9 a.m. We had church in the courtyard of the hospital and over 200 people came! After church we had told people to bring their cups for tea and bread. We served 95 loaves of bread! Cut into 1 inch slices with jam or margarine, people ate until they were very full! One of the msasa women (those staying in our maternity waiting shelters) came for the service while in labor, because she didn’t want to miss the tea and bread—but after the service she had to go into maternity and delivered within 10 minutes, 2 boys! We named them Christmas and Noel! We brought her take out tea and bread!!
After tea Lori and I went home and started cooking and by 2 p.m. we were ready to serve up the Christmas feast. We had used the gas stove and turned the generator on to use the electric stove too! We had invited the Mereki family and Dr. Murenje. Dr. Murenje woke up sick and we thought he had the flu so we had told him to rest until dinner was ready. When we went to call him at 2 p.m. he had broken out in chickenpox! So we brought him dinner and I am now on call until he is better.
We ate turkey (I found a 7 ½ pound turkey for $31!), ham and all the trimmings! We had pumpkin pie and Christmas cookies for dessert! So 8 of us enjoyed! We finally finished about 5 and then we went to take a nap! I woke up long enough to watch some TV and then off to bed! It has been very hot to sleep with no electricity but jumped into the pool before bed to cool off and sleep better!
Today is Boxing Day and so holiday. I made rounds this morning and checked on the doctor—he is better but itching! Finished washing the dishes from yesterday—having to heat water on my gas stove to use for the dishes! Maybe we can hope today they might fix the electricity-ha!
Hope your holidays have been great and a time of Joy and Thanksgiving for the birth of our Savior!

Part 2--Home in the US

2009-12-13T07:36:00.001-08:00

I had a wonderful time being home from Nov 4-Dec 13! I have been to almost every store here and anywhere i traveled, have 3 full suitcases to go with and am glad to be going home to warmer temperatures. They had a record breaking 3 day cold of 24 (-5 C) F while I was here--that was one record I didn't care to be part of!

I have had lunch and dinner with so many friends and family--I am sure i gained weight! Thanks you for all I got to see and catch up with and sorry I missed some of you.

Kim, Dennis and Kathy--2 of my 4 siblings!

Keep in touch by email :sistermakate@gmail.com

I celebrated Christmas with my family all day yesterday. We started the day with 3 of us girls having manicure and pedicures and ate crab sandwiches and crab Louies! We ended by playing Triominos and Attach Uno--what fun!

I am carrying back money to buy 75 matresses so far--thank you for all who helped!

I'll be in touch after I am back!

Merry Christmas to all and may 2010 be a better year for you and the Lord!

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Better Year

2009-12-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

Well it has been 6 weeks since I wrote something because I was in the U.S. After dealing with chronic Urinary Infections and then bleeding from my bladder I decided to hope on a plane and see a uroligist in the US after my family doc in Harare said "I don't really know what to do for you anymore!" So on Nov 2 I left Harare with a foley in and smartly thinking--I can sleep for hours since I don't have to get up to go....then....

Between Joburg and Harare about 3 hours into a 10 1/2 hour flight my foley got blocked, I was in agonizing pain and tried to figure out a way to irrigate the foley that had got blocked with blood clots! In the small airplane toilet i tried everything--we nurses are always inventive--but having no syringe I finally gave up and went to the steward and asked for scissors or a knife! He looked at me funny and asked "what for?" (like I would tell him I wanted to hijack a plane or something) and when I explained he gave me some blunt pointed scissors and when I said I would return them right away he said "keep them!"

I was able to remove the foley and then started praying I could go before the 7 1/2 hour flight ended! God answered and I was able to pass urine fine the rest of the way home!

Since I have been in the US I was able to see a urologist, have a cystoscopy, biopsy and caterization and the conclusion was I have radiation cystitis caused from radiation I had 20 years ago for cancer! So I am on a nightly antibiotic for the rest of my life. I have no infection and I feel better--so PTL for all the good care here!

Medical Problems

2009-10-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

Sorry to have been off for a couple of weeks but have been having some medical issues. After months of chronic UTIs I went for an IVP which was normal, no stones and within 12 hours started pain and passed a stone! So much for tests! I had Major drive me to Harare to see my doctor because of the excruciating pain and about at the end of our dirt road felt a lot of pain and then relief! I knew that bumpy road was worth something!
All the way on the road I was curled up in fetal position not talking and Major was sure I died and kept asking if I was OK! I couldn't talk because it would hurt more and so he talked more! Funny now that I look back at it, not when I was using my Lamaze breathing techniques! That pain was something else and the drugs didn't touch it--and let me tell you I tried quite a few!
Now I am feeling better and only missed 1 day of work so that was good timing! My doctor in Harare gave me more drugs which helped a bit but seemed to make me more sick so didn't take them for long!
This week we have been dealing with so many patients who have been mistreated by other local hospitals. We finally decided that they might as well close the other hospitals and refer all people here because no one is going to them. As one of my patients said "I would rather die than go there," which is almost what happened!
Lori is helping me a lot in the work and this week she is being our computer expert as 2 of our computers started to crash! I am glad someone knows something besides how to turn it on and off like me!
We are always amazed that training of nurses and doctors has deteriorated so much due to the brain drain and those who could teach leaving for greener (even just a little less brown) pastures! This week one of my nurses wrote "dislocated diagram (meaning diaphragm)" as a diagnosis for a kid who got knocked out of scotch cart. That was a new one for me! I gave her a short anatomy lesson to tell her how that was an impossibility! The patient recovered so didn't need to google how to treat that dislocation!
We keep having hot weather and expect the rains to start any day--but nothing so far. People are wanting to buy seed and fertilizer but it is costing more than most people can afford!
We were blessed by a local farmer in Karoi who sent word he has 2 tons of maize for us and we can come and get it. After all the farmers have gone through in getting kicked off their land, it is truly a blessing for us to have him share so generously with us!
Today I was thinking I would be nominated and win the Nobel Prize for medicine--and you can say you knew me when! I was counting on how to spend that 1 million dollar prize too! I was counselling a patient and his wife for ART (drugs to treat AIDS) and asked the patient if he had been sick at all. he told me he had cancer. Immediately I began looking for K/S lesions (cancer in AIDS patients) and I asked where and he showed me in his armpit and he had a fungal infection. I told him I could certainly cure that "cancer" and prescribed some Diflucan! Maybe they will still consider me for the prize or at least the million dollars!
Take care and have a good week! Love, Kathy

Pictures to share

2009-10-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from a recent trip to Kariba

Hi from Kathy

Top 10 Reasons for Missing Chidamoyo

2009-10-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Reasons to be Missing Chidamoyo

Medical:
10. You ask someone’s name to write in the Lab test book and he says “I’m Innocent” and you reply “I don’t care if you are innocent or guilty, I just want your name” and then you figure out that is his name—Innocent!
9. Your order an X-ray and when the patient asks how much it is you reply “8 chickens or 1 goat, if it big or 2 if it is small, or 10 Obama dollars, 100 Zuma Rands, 1 blanket or 6 litres of cooking oil.
8. You ask for warm water for a surgical procedure and they call the driver and car and when you ask why they said you asked for “wamotor” (Shona for car).
7. You ask a nurse why this order was not done in the last 24 hours and the answer is “I did not admit the patient” so if the order was not followed it is the fault of the nurse who admitted the patient!
6. As a visitor you are at Chidamoyo the last week of the month and Sister McCarty greets you with “lucky you—you can do the end of the month reports for the next 4 days and you are leaving in 2 days—so work fast”!
5. You go to tea and everyone tells you “don’t touch Sister McCarty’s butt or she will be very upset!” Only after a few days do you learn that the butt is the heel of the bread and that Sister likes that piece best and so you can’t touch it because it is her’s!
4. During tea you talk about patients, their stories, their diarrhea, vaginal discharge, sore and sex life, until one of your visitors says “I think we need to call the chaplain to pray for all of you!”
3. You ask an ART patient why they are late for their meds and they said the river was full. When you point out they live where there is no river to cross to get to the hospital—they repeat “but, there was a full river at Badze”—the opposite direction of where they live!
2. You treat a patient for dysentery and while doing a health education lesson to prevent them from getting this disease again, in the future, you mention that maybe they shouldn’t get their drinking water from the river where cows, goats and people void and poop into it. They then look at you and say “that’s why it tastes so good!” End of health education!
1. As you are catheterizing a 88 year old man who has BPH (benign prostatic hypertrophy) he tells you he can’t void because he used a condom last week and so now it is blocking the urine from coming out!

Non-medical Reasons:
10. The electricity (ZESA) is on for 24 hours straight and you feel guilty you don’t have a phone to call and tell them they forgot to turn us off!
9. You eat a cake with chocolate sprinkles on top and wonder if it is really chocolate or dead ants on the cake.
8. You bake a cake and the gas runs out before it is done and so it is still uncooked in the middle. Instead of throwing it out you frost it and bring it to tea the next day at the hospital, where it is demolished and proves your theory once again “they will eat anything at tea”—even a raw cake!
7. You stop alongside the road where someone is holding up a box of washing powder—you ask how much it is and as you negotiate people come out of the bushes with bars of soap, oil, flour and sugar—the first drive through shop in Zimbabwe!
6. You ask the price for anything in shops and they ask “Obama dollars, Zuma Rands or Brown pounds?”
5. You cross the border by road from Zimbabwe to South Africa and in the toilet on the SA side is a big sign behind each toilet that reads “Do not flush Zimbabwean dollars as they plug up our septic system!” Which proves once again the Zim dollar is worth sh--!
4. Eating sadza and vegetables is now called eating sadza and grass because it is all you have to graze on each day!
3. You are visiting in the US and a stranger asks where you come from and you say Zimbabwe and they want to take you to dinner because they know you must be hungry!
2. You have 100 trillion dollars in your wallet and no one wants to take that useless money—including the Zimbabwe government who has outlawed its own currency as useless and illegal in their own country!
1. You are served communion at church by a youth group young man wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a chipmunk holding 2 acorns and the writing beneath in big letters says “wanna play with my nuts?”

Hospital prices

2009-10-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

This week we reviewed our barter prices and thought you might enjoy this. Maybe I can be an advisor for Obama on his health care agenda?

BARTER EXCHANGE RATE
1-10-09

USD SA Rand

Chicken 3 30

Cow 100 1000

Goat 15 150

Groundnuts (per bucket) 4 40

Hanga (guinea fowl) 3 30

Maize (per bucket) 2 20

Pig 40 400

Sheep 15 150

Sugar Beans (per bucket) 10 100

Sunflower Seeds (per bucket) 2 20

Turkey 6 60

Soy Beans (per bucket) 4 40

Nyemba (Cow peas) (per bucket) 5 50

Nyimo (Round Nuts) (per bucket) 5 50

We are no longer accepting Manure (mufudze) or Thatch (uswa)!!
Out of Area without referral—Rural x 2 Urban x 5
No prior cards you will be charged out of area!
Urban areas—money only—no bartering.

It's hot in the bush--19-September-2009

2009-09-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well it got to 105 today! We were in the pool after lunch to cool off! the water temp was only 80 and so it felt cold to me!
this week has been very busy. I have added 104 new patients on ART this month and it is not over yet! We could add a 1000 more a month if we had the staff and time! People say AIDS is improving and there are less new cases, but we haven't seen that!
Lori arrived last night and she is happy to be back and I put her to work today! The doctors are away today for their continuation education day so it was the nurses in charge day!
Last night Dr. Murenje called me to deliver a footling breech. I was able get both feet down and then the hands and finally the head--the baby and mom did well. My heart always races until that head is out! It weighed almost 8 pounds. It was her second baby!
Do you know we have become a bubble gum nation? Here they do not use coins so when you need change when buying groceries they give you bubble gum! I pass mine on to my kids I treat. If they owe you more then 20 cents you get a pen (which usually skips when you write). If it is a good day and they owe you 50 cents or more you get a chocolate bar!
This has not been a good week for electricity. No dinnertime electricity and last night it went off at 4 p.m. and didn't come on until 1 a.m. now it is off again at 5 p.m.

Life in the African bush

2009-09-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

Well this is the end of a busy week. Major and Dr. Zimudzi went off to South Africa to pick up Lori, a nurse who is joining our work for at least the next 2 years! She arrives in Joberg on Tuesday morning. My visitor, Charolette is being dropped off in Bulawayo this evening to spend a few days with friends while the guys go on to SA. she was born and grew up in Bulawayo so she is going home!

This has been a busy week with Wednesday having a staff inservice with our nurses and talking about a patient who got mismanaged in labor. This patient was complete for 5 hours and no one notified the doctor or myself until the baby came out flat and needed to be revived and eventually died within 24 hours. We used this as a "learning experience" to talk about what to do and what is normal when a woman gets to complete. Everyone said the understood! That evening just as I went to do some Lumbar Punctures on the wards, I noticed an OB chart at the nurses desk showing a patient had been complete at 930 a.m. and no further charting. When I asked why the chart was there someone said "oh actually she is not delivered!" I screamed what and went running off to the labor ward. It was now almost 4:30 p.m. and I quickly pulled the baby out with a vacumn extractor and laid into every nurse on that shift and sent for the ones that went home. Luckily the baby was strong and came out screaming! Now both of us were screaming--I am not sure who was louder! So much for understanding the in-service! The answer I got when I asked why they didn't notify someone, was that at 930 they notified the doctor who checked her, ruptured her membranes and told them "she will deliver, don't worry!" So they didn't worry and they were waiting for her to deliver! No charting from 930 a.m. on, no fetal heart, no descent of the head, no contrations because the doctor said she would deliver! I went home with a strong headache that night!
To top it off that afternoon Major got back from 2 days in Harare where he went to get the car serviced in preparation for the trip to SA. when he got on the dirt road he noticed something like diesel flicking up on the back window. When he stopped to check it he couldn't see anything dripping so he came the rest of the way. He got home and had the guys put the car over the pit and surprise--the found they had not put in one of the plugs in where they had drained out the diff oil in and didn't refill it! Amazing that he got here without the engine seizing--a true miracle to drive 350 kms without oil in the diff! He called the garage the next morning ( the main Toyota delaership in Harare) and had them shaking in their boots before he finished with our service rep! They kept asking if the engine was ok! He had them drive out immediately with a plug and diff oil to our doctor who was in Chinhoyi, since we couldn't move the car! We got it all cleaned up and ready to go to SA! Amazing! I think we can get a free service for our next visit, don't you?

Last night was movie night and we showed Madagascar 2--they loved it. We now have about 200+ people coming each Friday night for our community movie night. As they walked home I could hear a group of kids singing near the township "you've got to move it, move it!" the song from the movie! It was so fun to hear that drifting through the African bush!