Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

We have had a busy couple of weeks here.   The good news is that on Monday this week we were in Harare for Carolyn Mereki’s (Major’s daughter) interview at the US embassy for her student visa.   She was in and out in 10 minutes.   She called her dad to pick her up and all she could do was cry.   He said don’t worry, it’s ok and tried to comfort her thinking she had been turned down and finally she was able to get out—I got it!! Since then we have been on the move to get her a ticket, start packing, doing her physical, etc.   She leaves in 2 weeks on August 12.   She will be attending Kentucky Christian University in Grayson, KY.   She is majoring in Business Administration.   She has received a full scholarship for her tuition, but we must come up with room and board and books which is about $5400 a semester.   We put out a letter of appeal to help and many of our friends have answered and given generously!   We are working on sec...

On Sunday the 8 th of July we celebrated Carolyn Mereki’s 21 st birthday with her family and the Dr. Moyo and Dr. Mudzingwa’s families with dinner and cake after Sunday night church.   Carolyn was so happy to reach this milestone and we had a great time celebrating. On Tuesday the 10 th we left Chidamoyo at 0500 am to drive to Harare and catch a flight to Johannesburg and then Durban, South Africa.   Major, Patience, Carolyn and I travelled and met their son Michael in Durban, who had flown from Joberg just before us.   We were spending 6 days together on a family vacation.   We have a condo right across the street from the Indian Ocean and a quick freeway drive to Durban city and surrounding areas.   We have gone to see the Moses Mabhida Football stadium and took a car up to the top to see the sights of Durban city and the ocean.   The 2010 World Cup final was held in this stadium.   We also walked along the beach front, went to Marine ...

This week we had visitors from our Research group from Stanford and Harare and those working here at the hospital from Tuesday until Thursday.   We had a great visit and we seem to be making good progress in our research study.   We have added 347 kids so far and hope to increase each month. We are seeing that our kids are doing better in their viral loads, which means their ART medication is working!   We are excited that most of or outreach clinics have achieved 90%  immune suppressed on ART which is our target goal!   Yeah for us! Since we had a little bit of extra time this week in between seeing patients, I have had Carolyn Mereki helping me to unpack boxes from the container.   She sorts like things together and then I tell her which department to take the items too.   We are so thankful for all who help to collect supplies, sort supplies and pack the containers to come.   We really use the items and are in great need. ...

Many people ask if the things we send are worth the money it takes to get them here in a container.   Let me tell you something that happened this morning to illustrate.   An old grandmother of 80+ years was beaten up with a brick from her psychotic daughter at 0400 this morning.   They found her about 6 a.m. when her other daughter went to see her.   She was slumped over in a pile of blood.   They luckily had a vehicle and put in the back of an open pickup truck and brought her here to the hospital (2 hours away). When she arrived she was gasping for air.   She had lacerations in two places on her skull—she had 2 depressed skull fractures we could feel.   She was bleeding from her mouth where her front teeth had been, and her nose was bleeding as well as bleeding blood from the inside of her right ear.   Her eyes were both swollen shut and bruised and her cheek was swollen and bruised. We had to put an IV line in her neck, take a blood...

This week has been very busy with patients and working on or research project.   We have hired two new people to work with us in the office to help with our weekly and monthly reports and to do data management for or ART patients. Mrs. Marceline Moyo is Dr. Calvin Moyo’s wife and mother of almost 2-year-old Matipa. She is helping in our Data management.   She is developing a new data base for our patients and putting lots of info in the computer, so we can follow our patients better. Mrs. Ntombizodwa Mudzingwa is Dr. Garikayi Mudzingwa wife and mother of 14 month old, Abigail.   She is helping to do our weekly and monthly statistical reports that need to be done.   As more and more reports have been required it was impossible for me to continue to do them and my other work.   Both ladies will be a big help to our program and take some of my work away that has been piling up.   We are thankful for our mission hospital organization ZACH and ...

This weekend winter really hit and believe it or not it gets very cold in Africa! On Monday Major and his wife Patience and his daughter Carolyn and I headed for Harare about 11:45 p.m.  We were supposed to leave at 11 a.m. but with a hospital to run it is hard to get away! I had a doctor's appointment with my urologist, Mr. Chiura, at 4 p.m. and we managed to get there by 3:45 p.m. and then wait!  He decided that due to my worsening hydronephrosis he wanted to try a procedure in surgery to put stents in my ureters to help with the constrictures I have due to radiation 28 years ago.  He had booked me for surgery first thing Wednesday morning. Monday night we got together with Dr. Kajese and his family.  They had a new baby girl, Zoey, born in March that we hadn't seen and Lexi, daughter number 1 had grown so much.  She is almost 3 and quite a handful of excitement!  After dinner Dr. Kajese and I went to the car and he started an IV cannula on me so ...

Monday our lorry from the hospital went in to pick up a container from Sebastopol, CA that arrived.   This is the first time that we have been able to transport our own container.   Tapson, the driver said it was very heavy—but they made it up Zvimaiwei Hill with no problem and arrived Monday night.   We got it unloaded on Wednesday off the lorry and opened it Friday to start the unloading progress.   We put lots of boxes in the hallway outside my office to start unpacking as I have time between patients. This week we kept busy with some guests from ZACH—our church hospital organization that works with CDC-PEPFAR program to sponsor or HIV/AIDS work.   They were with us from Tuesday night through Friday morning visiting 2 other clinics in the area they sponsor and us. I cooked dinner for the 3 guests for the 3 nights they were with us. They brought us a nice tented room that we can use when going out on our ART outreach clinics.   We learned to pu...