Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

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

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 i