Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

Today (Tuesday the 27th) is still a holiday here in Zimbabwe.  They decided since the Christmas was on Sunday to give us another day to rest--the 26th we always get off so it made it a nice 4 day weekend for people.  We need to recuperate a bit from all the activities we had in the last few days. On Friday, the 23rd, we had our annual staff party and lunch for all of our workers at the hospital.  We had 96 staff who came and got a beautiful lunch of beef, rice, coleslaw and gravy.  They ate so much!!  They love this.  We then gave speeches and then handed out a bag of groceries to each of the staff that had 2kg flour (4.4 pounds), 2 kg rice and 2 kg sugar, a long bar of washing soap, cooking oil, and 2 lt of Mazoe drink mix.  They always look forward to this so they have groceries to serve for Christmas Day.  We had some fun dancing and loud music and left after 5 to go home and come back quickly at 7 pm for our Candlelight service.  It was actually our first day with electricity i

Christmas activities have begun and people are busy preparing for Christmas Day.  The hospital  got decorated up and everyday I have a Christmas scrub top and Christmas socks to wear! Last week one of our doctors was gone to a workshop, so I was on call for anesthesia and didn't get called out one night--yeah!! On Tuesday Major and I took off for a 1 day trip to Harare--a killer!  We left at 0400 and got back at 0100 the next morning!  I had a doctors appointment to scope my bladder, but got there and had another infection, so he couldn't do the scope and back on IV medications for a week. Dr. and Mrs. Kajese picked me up from the doctor as Major ran around.  We went to lunch and then he started my IV cannula and got to spend some time visiting with them.  I made up the medicine and gave my first dose on the way home!  This time for some reason the cannula keeps infiltrating, so I have had to have restarted 4 times in 7 days!  Tonight is my last dose so let's hope t

This week we had many activities besides our work at the hospital.  Last weekend we had a great 3 days of rain and then it turned hot and dry the rest of the week! On Wednesday the new "Bond" note that is the equivalent to US dollars was released in Zimbabwe.  It is only to use in Zimbabwe and is designed to get us out of the cash crisis we are in now.  We started to see them here by the end of the week. Wednesday evening we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner (6 days late) as everyone was here and in Zimbabwe we can choose the date to celebrate since it is not a holiday here. Michael, Major's son, had made us promise to wait until he got home from college to have it since he enjoys eating so much!   We had chicken (turkey is hard to come by here and expensive) and all the trimming, even some Cranberry sauce sent from the US and pumpkin pies and green bean casserole and many more dishes.  There were 16 of us to eat.  They all stuffed themselves and enjoyed! On