Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

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 Thanksgivi

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.

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 peopl