Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

November is a month that our minds travel to the things we are thankful for and there are many things here that we are truly thankful for. We are thankful for Dr. Bill Holloman and his wife Kayleen who have been with us for the last 3 weeks.  He has stepped in and helped us so much at the hospital.  Even though everything is very different here (our charting, our limited drugs and no CAT scans or MRI's to order) he has helped with a smile and and has been encouragement to Dr. Isala who has been working on his own for 6 weeks before he came.  We are thankful for his sharing devotions and preaching on Sunday.  We are thankful his wife helped out in finding lost charts, going to vaccination clinic and teaching some health lessons.They are preparing to go home to Tucson, AZ in a few days and we will miss them being a part of our family around the dining table. We are thankful for Amy, our nurse from New Zealand who has been here for the past 2 months working in the...

Today is another warm day--up to 100+ (we don't like to look at the thermometer it makes us feel hotter) and gets to high 70's or 80's at night.  We pray this is a great build up to a good rainy season which could start by mid-November. This has been C/Section week.  We have done 5 C/S in a week--all repeat and started this morning with another one!  A busy time for us as we have our regular work to do too! On Thursday (30th of October) we picked up new visitors--Dr. Bill and Kaylynn Holloman from Tuscon, AZ.  Bill is an internist and they are here to help with our work for 3 weeks.  It has been a big encouragement for  Dr. Isala who has been on his own for 6 weeks.  We put him to work making rounds and seeing outpatients.  Kayleen started doing some work to clean up our ART records--a big job that I have been working on slowly in my spare time.  We ended the day with a crash C/Section for a prolapsed arm and Bill scrubbed in.  First t...

As usual we have been very busy.  For the last 3 1/2 weeks we have medical students from the University of Zimbabwe with us.  They have just finishing their 3rd year of 5 years and so don't have a lot of clinical experience so far.  They do 2 clinical rotations in rural areas in their 5 years and so this was their first time "in the bush."  This group had someone we knew--Jonathan Fernades who came in June and July last year during his school holiday to do some clinical experience.  It was nice to have him back again and meet new students, futures doctors in our country.  They left on Wednesday and found out they all passed their end of year exams and now officially 4th year students.  Congrats to them! Last weekend we had an area youth conference from Friday through Sunday morning.  The church was very full so over 500 youth attended.  We ended the church service on Sunday with 10 baptisms in my pool. We have a new visitors that arriv...

Friends of Chidamoyo have financed a chicken laying project to bring in income for the hospital. We took arrival of 100 chickens on the 17th of September and by the beginning of October the eggs started coming.  We have built 2 chicken coops and all 100 chickens are doing very well. We started with 5 eggs one day and a week later we are up to 65 eggs a day.  We sell the eggs to staff and at our Tuck Shop (Snack Bar).  We have encouraged our patients to eat eggs each day to get better and go home sooner (is this a conflict of interest?)!  We seem to be selling out each day and we are so thankful for this support.  Thank you to Friends of Chidamoyo for this help.  We plan to order 150 more chickens soon. Chicken coup Laying chickens

On Sunday the 7th of September we were joined here at Chidamoyo by Nicki, Justin and baby Noah and Tom came to visit to follow up on the schools program that Major is helping with in our area.  They spent 2 days visiting the projects they have in our area and dedicating a new school, Devare.  We have 4 schools in our area that their organization, ZRSDP, have helped with and we are thankful for their support and help to improve schools in are area.  We were happy to meet Nicki and Justin's first child Noah who was 4 1/2 months old.  Congratulations to them! On Friday the 12th of September we welcomed Bart, Cathy and Jennifer Holdener when they landed from Sacramento, CA in Harare.  Cathy and I met in 1975 when we began our nursing program at University of California in San Francisco.  We both started work at Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento when we graduated in 1977 and both bought houses in the same housing development in Sacramento.  All my ye...

On the 26th of August we welcomed family, my forwarding agents, Sue and Gene Beckstead and my Zimbabwean sister, Sylvia Majoni-Brown who live in California.  They came to help out in the work here and see the many things they pack in our containers in use. On the 30th of August they went with us when we travelled with 28 people from our hospital to celebrate our long service awards.  We honored 10 people who had completed 5 years or 10 years of work at the hospital.  We are thankful for their hard work and every year we celebrate with our staff who reach their 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 years of service with us. We walked on Kariba Dam wall and then had a wonderful lunch at Cutty Sark Hotel and then went on a 2 hour boat cruise on Lake Kariba.  It was a wonderful and long and tiring day (we left at 6:30 a.m. and got back at 10 p.m.!) but we all enjoyed it! On Monday the 1st of September an eye team from Norton Hospital joined us for 3 days of work.  The doctor...

We were sorry to bid farewell to our good friends John and Stephanie Woodman and their granddaughter Zoe on the 17th of August.  They were a big help to us and we enjoyed a lot of good times together.  We know we will see them back here again.  Zoe will have a lot to share when she gets back to school about where she spent her summer. We welcomed 2 doctors from Alice Springs, Australia on the 15th of August when Michelle Withers and Sonia Twigg joined us.  They are on the start of a 10 week African adventure that will take them from Zimbabwe to Botswana to Nambia and South Africa.  Michelle came as a med student  (from London) here in 1998 and has been back several times but it has been 12 years since she was last here. She was born in Zimbabwe and lived here until she was 14 so she has a drawing to here.   I have visited her 3 times when she lived in Sydney.  Her parents are the directors of our UK Trust in London.  We were happy to welco...