Dr. Kellert arrives--yeah!

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

New X-ray room

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.