Retirement lunch, Happy Easter and lots of visitors

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On the 29th of  March we had a retirement lunch for all our staff at the hospital to honor 2 staff who were retiring at the end of March.

Mr. Wise Makaza, our driver for 12 years and Mrs. Patricia Tapfuma, a Nurse Aide for 28 years and work in the Pharmacy retired.  We had a wonderful lunch and Major and his family sang and we gave them each 100 broiler chickens with fencing and chicken food to get them started in raising chickens to sell.  We also gave them $100 each in cash for their service to us.

On Friday the 30th through Monday the 2nd we had a 4 day Easter holiday here.  Many of our churches had Easter meetings from Friday night through Sunday morning so it was quiet here with most people away.  I had to stay and be on call for anesthesia.  We did 2 C/Sections, but both during the day--so I got off easy!

On the 1st of April,  Dr. Chiura, my urologist from Harare, came out with 2 residents to see some patients and be here for lunch.  We set up for him to come again later in the week for some surgeries.

That evening Tyler Sheetz arrived who is a final year medical student at Ohio State to be with us for a month.  He gets back just in time to graduates and starts a urology residency at Ohio State in July.

On Tuesday 6 people from our Research team from Stanford and Harare arrived to stay until Saturday morning.  We also had a busy week covering 3 outreach sites and our support group at Chidamoyo on Saturday to draw Viral Loads for our research project.

So I kept busy going out to the clinics and drawing blood and cooking for 8 people and all with no electricity!  Our electricity went out on the 30th and finally came back a week later on Friday night!  It's always a challenge keeping food cold, water cold to drink and food hot--all with no electricity.  Thank goodness for gas stoves!

Tyler kept busy helping us draw bloods and doing 2 C/Sections this week during the night!  

Dr. Chiura came back on Friday with a resident from Harare and saw patients but then left after lunch as no one qualified for surgery.  We are starting him a list to come back for.

Our kids who are under 12 showed up for their support group and medicine on Saturday morning and Tyler drew the 42 blood draws we had.  We came home exhausted to rest in the afternoon!  Then our electricity went out again all Saturday afternoon but came back about 6 p.m. so we were very happy!  Or freezers are frozen again!


 Mrs. Tapfuma and Mr. Makaza at their lunch

 Mrs. Tapfuma

 Mr. Makaza

Major and family singing

 Tyler drawing blood from kids at Chiroti

Group being drawn at Nhari by Kathy


 Kathy drawing at Chedope

 Tyler watching a surgery

Research group with Tyler and me

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