Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

This week went very quickly.  On Tuesday the 19th I picked up a new visitor, Julie Gibson, from CA and Florida.  She has been accepted into Medical School in July and came her to get some hands on experience.   She has been busy and her first day here she learned to draw blood and watched some bones being set. Thursday we went to Harare and got registered with our truck to be able to transport.  We bought a baler box and packs for tobacco to start transporting to Harare and Karoi soon.  We are excited that we will be having money to help the hospital, with the truck. Friday we had 8 visitors who came for Harare to spend the day and night with us.  Dr. David Katzenstein, from Stanford University, lead the group and brought Lab and ITC people with him to talk about the start of our research project we will be doing together.  We will be doing Viral Loads by drawing blood and Dried Blood spots to look at adolescent/children from age 5-18 who are on ...

Last weekend after 2 days of rain our weather took a turn for the cold.  It got down to the mid 60's in the early morning which is winter weather around here.  Mid-April is too early for winter here.  I even had a fire in my fireplace last Saturday evening, brrr....  It warmed up again this week--back to high 80's during the day and 70's at night! This week we had an interesting patient.  A women was doing her wash in the dam right behind the Secondary School at Chidamoyo and was attacked by a crocodile on her hand.  It was a small croc so she was able to beat it off and get out of the water.  When she came to the hospital we took an X-ray and noticed that besides three breaks in her fingers--the croc lost a tooth inside of her!  We pulled it out and are bandaging her wounds everyday! On Wednesday the 13th it was Dr. Isala's birthday--29th!  We made him wear the turkey hat on rounds and then we had a birthday cake for his birthday!...

This week on Wednesday a container arrived from Sebastopol, CA that had been sent the end of December 2015.  A truck delivered it first thing on Wednesday morning.  We have had 2 times to open and unload some of the things. This container has supplies for the hospital that are so needed and helps us not to have to spend money to buy things that we need.  We were so happy to unpack syringes, sutures, gauze, tape  and other needed things.  We have been waiting for these things and it will help us for many months.  We will be able to unpack the container slowly, day by day and it is always exciting the things we get.  It's like Christmas for the hospital! We are so thankful to the many hospitals, doctors offices and pharmacies that save supplies for us and for Dr. Palleschi who spends time making contacts and picking things up for us.  We also appreciate Gene and Sue  Beckstead who collect the things from many hospitals, store it in their ...

We enjoyed a visit the week leading up to Easter by Carolyn Hall and her husband Russ McFarlane, daughters Grace and Juliet and son Emanuel.  They spent 3 days here at the mission and then went to Rhino Camp with Major and his wife Patience to see some animals.  On Thursday on their way home from Rhino I met them in Karoi and took them the rest of the way into Harare where we spent a day and half before they flew home on Easter Saturday. Carolyn first came in 1996 to Chidamoyo and spent 3 months with us.  She was a nurse in NYC.  Then she and "boyfriend" Russ came and spent 2 months with us in 2004.  Life has changed since then as they married and had 3 children.  They took a job with CDC in Pretoria, South Africa in 2015 and they finally got to come up and see us and introduce their children to Zimbabwe and Chidamoyo!  They liked it and wanted to move here! After I dropped them at the airport I drove straight to Chidamoyo, put my groceries away ...

Last night we got electricity back at 11:08 p.m.!  In the last 32 days we have had electricity 1 ½ days in between blackouts of 14 days and 16 days!  We began to think it would never come back! Since we got back from the US 10 days ago, I got my first warm shower this morning!  I stayed in longer than usual just to enjoy it!  I could move fridge things back to the fridge from the freezer and clean out all the fridges and freezers that had not been working!  Of course we always lose some food.  I have one freezer that keeps very frozen if you don’t open it a lot and my fridge in the kitchen works on my solar back-up at least most of the day.  We have been having rain (yeah!) so the cloudy days don’t help to charge my back-up well and it runs out by 7 p.m. each day and comes on with the sun about 8 a.m. This past week on Friday we got our solar back-up working at the hospital for the first time in months!  Friends of Chidamoyo in Seattle helpe...

Major and I arrived back safe and sound at 5 p.m. on Tuesday evening.  It was a long flight—25 hours total but we had an overnight break of 14 hours in Dubai which helped a lot to have slept in a bed and got to eat dinner and breakfast before heading out on the flight again! We arrived in the middle of rush hour and it took us an hour to get across town.  Then we stopped for groceries and were on our way to Chidamoyo at 7:30 p.m.  We got in at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning and welcome back to Zimbabwe—there was no electricity for the past 5 days!   We were at work the next morning and from then on it has been busy and back into the routine of life at Chidamoyo.  We were informed a team from Global Fund was coming for an audit on Friday and everyone was so nervous!   Thursday the solar team from Chinhoyi showed up to get our solar back-up  running again.  They worked until Friday and got it going—good thing still no electricity from ZESA—but...

The memorial service for Jo Anne Minnis was held on Saturday the 27th of February.  It was very nice with pictures and videos and over 200 people came from all over to celebrate her life.  They had a wonderful reception with fresh Mexican food cooked there, a dessert bar by her granddaughter and a great time to catch up with many of the family. We were happy to see Chidamoyo alumni Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick from Washington, D.C. and Chidamoyo board members and alumni, Patty and Gary LeDonne from Sebastopol, CA. There was no graveside service, but we took some of the beautiful flowers from the service out to put on their grave after the reception. We left the next day to travel 2 1/2 hours North to the small city of Solvang, CA.  This city is all built like a small Danish town.  We met up with my brother and sister-in-law Dennis and Kathy for 3 days at their timeshare they have there.  Kathy and Major visited many bakeries to try out all the goodies....