Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

This is one our youth leaders who serves Communion every week in this shirt! Sadza after church at Mukowe--we saw the chicken before he saw the pot! BIG THANK YOU TO ZRSDP FOR THE SUPPLIES! The Headmaster receiving supplies from Major Simra, Lindsay and Shavonne on the scotch cart! Major check out how deep that river is! You can see part of the bridge is gone! We made it! We have had rain and rain all night long and into the afternoon today! That may not seem like alot to you--but usually we have 1-2 hours a day--so for us to get so much rain at once is very unusual. We got 105 mls so far (4 inches). We really needed it because it hadn't rain much in February. In fact we had only had 58.5 mls up until yesterday for the whole month. Crops are looking good and this big rains has really helped us to keeps those crops going. We were able to travel to one of our far away churches 2 weeks ago in an area called Mukowe. We took our 3 visitors Simra, Lindsay and Shavonne and took off o...

The new generator being unloaded Major is so happy! Due to the generosity of many people especially, from Rotary Club of Sebastopol, Steve and Rosanne Prandini and friends, Larry Gail and Friends of Chidamoyo, a wonderful man in Ringwood, NJ and IDES we were able to purchase a new generator for the hospital. The last generator was brought 21 years ago and it was used then. For the past 2 years it has not been working well, eating up batteries (so we always had to have a car here to start it), not putting out more than 170 volts when we needed 220 and not allowing us to use it for X-rays, grinding mill and the air conditioner in theater. Through the generosity of so many donors we were able to purchase a new one and they delivered and set it up 6 days later! The generator arrived on Tuesday this week. It weighed about 3 tons and so they brought a lift on the truck to remove it with. Then we had 8 men to help roll it on poles and turn it to put it up on the stand that holds it! It took...

Kathy and her residents team and Buddy Dr. Murenje and wife Staff lunch to say goodbye to Dr. Murenje Michael at Monte Casino in Joburg Michael and Major in Joberg Dinner with Zebedee Togarepi, Michael and Major in Polokwane On January 23rd Major and his 17 year old son Michael and I went to Polokwane, South Africa (15 hour drive from here) to have our Land Rover worked on. The turbo had broken in it and the car smoked all the way down. We met up with Zebedee Togarepi , a minister friend who went with us in his car. I rode with him and we followed the “smoking gun.” We spent the week with the car in the shop and enjoyed running around and being in a “developed country” with a KFC on every corner and 2 McDonalds. What more can you ask for? We enjoyed walking in a mall, window shopping, going to a movie and grocery shopping where they have everything and 10 brands of each. We spent a day driving to Johannesburg (2 hours from where we stayed) to show Michael a 10 lane highway and traffi...

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...

We had a good week before the end of the year although the hospital was busy after Monday was a holiday here. We did get electricity for less than 24 hours from Christmas Eve night at 8 p.m. until Christmas Day at 6:15 p.m. (only 1 hour off in the morning) and then a big storm hit and we were off again! the whole week we struggled with no electricity for X-rays and computer work, etc. NY Eve we broke off work at 2 p.m. and got a few hours to relax (take down Christmas decorations) at home before the start of our NY Eve celebrations at 7:30 p.m. We had a packed church with some of our local churches coming and the community. We sang, dance, had a video, prayed the NY in and then at midnight went outside the church for fireworks. We bought some Chinese ones at the flea market in Harare and we were unsure what they would do but they were fun--one rocket went into the sky and then head back into the crowd! They scattered and asked for more! After the fireworks we went back into the church ...

Our Christmas dinner theme was Hawaiian Retro Christmas--so we had dress 1950's Hawaii. Michael, Major's son decided to add some tummy to his costume to look like his Dad! Enjoy these pictures!