End of fires, Major arrives home safely, Disneyland, meeting old friends!

- November 11, 2019

Major arrived home safely in Harare, Zimbabwe on November 1^st and after a night in Harare travelled home to Chidamoyo in a light rain!

He was happy to be home and was busy all week at work, working long hours to catch up. He called me over What’s App several times last week. Saturday the electricity had a fault from 11 am onwards and was not fixed as of today (Monday) and no phone because their generators ran out of diesel! Too bad we don’t have PG & E to sue or complain to-ha! Before the fault it was still 8 hours or less of electricity a day and only at night!

The day after Major left, my nephew’s wife, Derekca, took my sister-in-law Kathy and I for a pedicure at the Spa. This one you sit in recliner chairs with warm towels around you and your feet up in the air! What a relaxing 45 minutes!

After the fires ended and people got to go home on Thursday the 31^st of October, my 2 great-nephews had no school for another week as all the schools had to be inspected before reopening. So, guess what? We decided to go to Disneyland!

We left on Monday morning the 4^th of November the two of them and my sister-in-law Kathy (their grandma) from Santa Rosa and flew in Orange County airport. We stayed in a timeshare less than 2 miles from Disneyland and we went for 2 full days to Disneyland. We enjoyed the new Star Wars part of the park and the boys built their own light sabers!

We rode the rides and enjoyed our time there. It was fun seeing some Halloween decorations up and most of the Christmas decorations up! We had 2 beautiful sunny days in Southern California and flew back on Thursday afternoon to nice weather in Santa Rosa. It is getting to 30's and 40's at night which is too cold for me!

Today (Monday) I met with old friends from my nursing job at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, most from the OB Department (38 years ago)! Most have retired but a few are still working. We had lunch together and talked about old times and caught everyone up on family news. Four of the group had been to Chidamoyo to visit. What a great time we had. They try and meet every 2 months and so it was a privilege to get to be part of the group while I was home!

News from Zimbabwe continues to be bleak. Animals and people are dying from the drought. The cost of groceries, electricity (8 hours a day only), bus fares, and all transport is so high most people can’t afford it. Still long queues for fuel, if you can find it. Government doctors have been on strike for 7 weeks and so they fired over 250 last week. They have no one to replace them with so the government hospitals aren’t working, bringing us even more work!

This is the time to buy seeds and fertilizer to plant for the new rainy season. A 10 kg bag of seed is $300 Zim (half a month salary for most of our workers)! So, people aren’t ready to plant as the rains begin.

Maize to eat is in short supply even in the grocery stores where it is so expensive. Inflation continues to increase, and the local dollar continues to de-valuate—20:1 from 10:1 on September 1, 2019.

God provides and we keep trying to keep going at the hospital. We are thankful for our faithful supporters. Major was able to buy 10,000 liters of diesel to store in our tanks at Chidamoyo the week he got back. We are thankful to Friends of Chidamoyo (like on Facebook) for purchasing this for us from the money they raised at the auction. This helps us provide Immunization and ART outreach clinics in our area.

I await my December 9 appointment with the Stanford specialist to know what the next step in my medical issues is! Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts!