Little Jerry and the End

     As I write to you know, I am safe at home in America.  A lot has happened in the last few days and it feels very strange, in many ways, to suddenly be back home in the States.

    My last few days in Impfondo were very bitter sweet.  The sweet part was definitely the end of our dear friend Little Jerry the rooster.  James and I decided that Sunday would be his day of reckoning, which meant that Saturday evening we needed to find him and bring him back to the house.  You see, Little Jerry was a roving sort of rooster who never seemed content to be bound by our meager backyard.  He longed for the company of other chickens, and so naturally made frequent sorties to the patient wards, where patient families kept a lot of chickens to feed their sick family members with.  

     So on this Saturday evening, we headed to the patient wards to find our AWOL chicken.  Sure enough, he was waddling over by the Men's surgery suite (Chirurgie Homme).  As soon as he saw us approach, he began to scamper away.  We followed him at a distance, shepherding him gradually back to our house.  As we got closer to the house, an African man asked us if we were trying to catch the chicken to eat it.  He said he'd give us a hand and he promptly picked up a few hefty stones and began chucking them at Little Jerry.  I suppose they don't play a lot of baseball here and his aim wasn't very accurate, just enough to scare Little Jerry even more.  Jerry dived into some bushes by the chapel.  I jumped in after him, but he managed to slip out before I could catch him.  He took off running and the three of us ran after him, directly back to the patient wards.

    

     By this point, a sizable crowd was beginning to amass in the common area between the patient wards.  I really wish I could have seen this sight from their eyes -- a tall lanky white dude taking off after a chicken at full tilt.  They began shouting and cheering.  Some folks shouted "Mundele! Mundele!" ("white person").  Others shouted "Simbate, Simbate!" ("you won't take him").  Perhaps fueled by their cheers, I was running as fast as I could and steadily gaining on Mr. Jerry.  The other two had ceased pursuit at this point, perhaps to share this humorous scene with the Congolese.  

     I continued to run and Jerry continued to bob and weave.  He ran through one of the shelters where patients' families cook over open fires.  The women feigned attempts to grab him, but he dodged them and continued running.  Then, Little Jerry made his fatal mistake: he ran into the female medicine ward ("Medicine Femme").  The African fellow had caught up by this point and we both rushed in after the chicken.  We closed the doors and the African man dived underneath the bed of an old lady with tropical splenomegaly; in a few seconds he reemerged with Little Jerry's legs firmly bound in his fist.  I quickly tied them up with the rope I had brought, thanked him profusely, and then exited Med Femme to the celebratory cheers of the crowd.  I held the chicken aloft as a trophy and James and I headed back to our house, proud and content.

    The next day, after church, we made an end of Little Jerry.  I read a short article on the internet on butchering a chicken (yes, Google has the answers to all of life's questions) and then proceeded to the backyard with a machete and a stump of wood.  I'll spare you all the finer details of this process and simply say that we relieved Little Jerry of his head, which he wasn't really using anyway and then proceeded to butcher him.  While we were disemboweling him, James had the fantastic idea of deep frying our fine-feathered friend.  He got the oil ready while I finished the butchering.  

     We decided that we needed to cook him a bit before we deep fried him, just to make sure that he was cooked thoroughly (didn't really want any souvenirs other than a great meal).  So we put him in a pressure cooker.  I really didn't know anything about pressure cookers; I understood the general concept of heating water, locking down the lid, and creating a lot of pressure to cook with.  So that's what we did.  After about 15 minutes of cooking, we decided to take him out and put him in the deep fryer which we had jerry-rigged (pun intended).  This, however, proved to be easier said than done.  Like I said, I didn't really know how to use a pressure cooker and I suppose I hadn't really understood the logical consequences of continuously adding heat to a closed system like that.  We had opened the steam valve and tons of steam was pouring out, but we hadn't turned off the flame.  I set about trying to get the lid off.  For some reason, the lid did not budge.  This probably should have made me suspicious and cautious, but it didn't; I decided to muscle it open and I gave it the old Ben Cox heave-ho.  Well, those of you who are physics students can probably guess what happened: the lid shot off and scalding hot water splashed everywhere.  By God's grace, most of it missed me and I only have a small burn on my hand as a souvenir of my stupidity.  I guess I understand now why terrorists like to make bombs out of these things.

     After doctoring up my hand a bit, we chopped up the chicken and made chicken fingers which we then breaded in Cayenne pepper and seasoned salt and dumped into the deep fryer.  James and I crossed our fingers; we had undertaken a lot of cooking experiments while we were here, most of which had turned out decently, but we were definitely venturing out into uncharted waters with this whole chicken thing.  Thankfully, the chicken turned out amazing; I'm sure its taste was greatly enhanced by how hungry we were, but I still consider it one of the best meals I've ever had. 

    Monday morning, I left for the airport with the Samoutous, the family that recently started an eye clinic at the hospital and who are travelling to Brazzaville and then to Gabon to visit family.  Leaving Impfondo was very difficult.  I felt like I had just become at home there and already was being stripped away.  I would have liked to stay much longer.  I guess I'll have to come back...

    The airport was a bit of a circus.  Coming to Africa, I had prepared myself for corrupt officials and inefficiency.  Thankfully, most of the time I was there, I did not experience any of this.  Monday at the airport, however, was another story.  We put our luggage on carts and joined the throng of Africans all jostling their way into an excuse for a line (the word "scrum", for those of you who play rugby, seems far more appropriate).  Eventually we made our way to a series of tables where police officers were going through bags to be checked.  I hoisted up my green backpack and opened it up for him to see. I showed him my clothes, my toiletries, and my few souvenirs.  He was just about to finish and close up my backpack when he saw the gleam of metal from my machete which was buried at the bottom of my bag.  He got excited.  He yanked out my machete and held it in the air, waving it around and making everyone within arms reach quite nervous.  Henri Samoutou, the eye surgeon, tried to talk to him and explain that since this was going in my checked luggage, it really wasn't a danger.  But the officer would hear none of it and began tearing every single thing out of my backpack.  I really didn't care about the machete, but was starting to get annoyed at how incompetent this guy was and how long it was taking to go through this check station.  Thankfully Henri is a very calm and collected man and he quietly went to go get the supervising officer who came over, told off the younger officer, and gave me my machete back.

    Our trip back to Brazzaville was very uneventful.  I was glad that I got to spend three days in Brazzaville with the Samoutous; not only was their knowledge of the city and of the language extremely useful, but they are a delightful family whom I enjoyed getting to know better.  During the day, Henri and his wife Joyce had appointments with government officials, so I stayed in Hotel Bravo with their kids and babysat.  They had a lot of fun playing with "Uncle Ben" and I did too.

    On Wednesday, I decided to make myself useful and fix things that were broken around the house.  On the top of my list were the bathroom door that kept getting stuck and the sink which was chronically leaking.  The door was easy enough; I got a wood planer from the tool box and shaved off a quarter inch or so.  Good as new.  The sink was another story.  I really have no experience in plumbing, but for some reason (masculine hubris, no doubt), I was pretty confident I could figure out what was wrong and fix it. I tried tightening a few of the attachments, but it was still leaking pretty good.  Then I saw that the faucet itself had a crack in it and needed to be replaced.  Thankfully there was a spare one, but in order to do exchange them, I needed to shut off the water main.  I looked around the building for the valve, but didn't find it, so I went to go ask Raul, one of the guards, where it was.  Unfortunately, my French plumbing vocabulary was essentially nonexistent, so I just led him into the bathroom so he could see the problem for himself.  He shut off the water and the two of us commenced to fixing the sink.  Of course, my lack of French and his lack of English made our efforts of teamwork very difficult and very amusing.  Thankfully, through charades and small words, we were able to figure things out.  After wrestling with the sink for a good hour or so, we finally had it operational and leak free.  Non petite travail, as he said.

    My travels Wednesday and Thursday were thankfully uneventful as well and I arrived safely in Cincinnati, where I was met by my eager parents.  It's good to be back in the US, it really is, but I miss the Congo terribly.  I'm still getting over the culture shock of coming from a place that has so little to a place that has so much.  Not sure if that's a shock I'll ever get over or that I should get over.  God has shown me a lot in Congo and has given me a lot of answers to questions I've been asking, but He has also given me just as many questions.  I know that I am certainly not the same person I was when I left, which is a good thing and is all part of his plan of sanctification.  I look forward to following the rest of the path He's set before me.

In faith,

Ben

Church with the Aka and other things

Greetings once again from Congo!

        This past Sunday I had the delightful opportunity to go to church in one of the nearby Aka villages.  As I mentioned before, the Aka are one of the pygmy tribes.  They are traditionally a hunter-gatherer people that lives in the jungles of Congo.  Lately, however, Bantu have been deforesting much of the rain forest and the Aka are quickly finding themselves without livelihood and without a home.  My heart really goes out to these people; they have been the underdogs in Congo for far too long.  Even now, they are still looked down upon; today in the ER I had to kick out a patient's family members who had taken over an Aka patient's bed and made her sit outside.

         Despite the oppression they have and continue to suffer, the Aka are a very joyful people and extremely friendly, which was evident as soon as we set foot in the village.  We had driven in a Ford pickup truck, the bed of which quickly filled up with Aka women and children whom we picked up along the way.  In the village, Sarah gave us a tour.  There were many huts in this village, some mud but some brick or stone.   The church building look brand new; it was made out of stone and had a nice tin roof.  The pews were small wooden planks that reminded me of those in the Notre Dame football stadium (which is fitting, given that the service lasted about as long as a football game).  Men sat on one side of the aisle and women and children sat on the other side.  No one was in much of a rush to get things started; people gradually trickled in until a critical mass was reached, at which point the pastor got up and led us in song.  We sang a capella to the beat of a drum played by one of the boys.  They have this beautiful call-and-response style of singing (which, I'm told, the early church employed as well).  There were one or two leaders who would sing a couple of verses and the congregation would repeat them back. Since I really don't know any Lingala, this was a good way for me to learn!

        I'm not entirely sure when we had the sermon; there were several lengthy periods of monologue by the pastor, but I'm told a good bit of it was announcements.  The church is often a means of distributing news to the community.  Sarah translated a little bit, but a lot of what he spoke was in tribal language different from Lingala.  At one point, Sara got up to teach the story of Moses. This was very entertaining to watch, as the Aka people were very expressive and engaged in the story, ooing and aaahing with every twist of the plot.  Of course, the fact that Sara was telling the whole thing in an African tribal language added a good bit of comedy; I was reminded of that scene in Star Wars when C3P0 is telling stories to the Ewoks (that's right, I just made a Star Wars reference).

         After the worship service, everyone lined up to shake our hands.  There were no "Sunday morning greeters here"; everyone was a greeter!  After we made it through the line, Sara grabbed my arm and pointed to a mother with a little kid who did not look so good.  She asked me if I could check him out.  I went to the truck and brought back our little black bag that's full of medical supplies.  I examined the little kid and was pretty certain he had malaria (or "palidisme" as they call it here).  Sara had anti-malaria medication in the bag, so I divided it up and wrapped the pills in paper and wrote directions for taking them.  Before I was finished, another mother brought her child over to me and he also looked like he had malaria.  In no time at all, half the church was filled with sick patients who wanted healing.  I asked Sara what we should do and she simply replied, "what do you think we should do?".  I realized that I was kind of in charge here, medically speaking, which was a scary feeling.  Out in the middle of nowhere, with no book or computer to check the dosages, no attending to catch my mistakes (which are usually many), and no really good way to follow up on these patients and make sure they are taking their medication.  Well, I did my level best.  Thankfully, Sara is a nurse and has many years of experience working with these people, so she baled me out in a lot of ways.  There were also a couple pre-med students who pitched in.  At the end, I remember feeling incredibly nervous, not just because I wondered if I had done things right, but because I knew that if I hadn't, it would be hard for these people to get access to care.  So I prayed. I prayed out loud for all the patients in the church and committed their care to God.  A cop out? I think not.  I was simply reminded of the fact that they are in His care anyway, not mine.

          Before we headed back, however, there was one patient I was concerned about.  He was a man in his 40's who had a small cut on his foot that had swollen up pretty big.  I asked him if he had had a tetanus shot.  He said no.  Sara said we could take him back to the hospital, so we loaded up this man and his daughter into the pickup and drove back to the hospital.  When we got there, we brought him to the ER.  He looked so out of place at this hospital; such a small man in such raggedy clothes surrounded by the nursing staff  that towered over him in their cleanly pressed scrubs.  The on call nurse said we couldn't get him vaccinated or give him anti-tetanus treatment until Monday (nothing in the hospital is ever open when you need it!), so we went about trying to figure out what we would do for the night.  Sara had to head back to the mission, but she said she would return later. In the meantime, I tried to find him and his daughter some food to eat and a bed to sleep on.  The food was easy; James and I had lots of leftovers, so I made a big plate and gave it to them to eat while I investigated the bed.  The on call nurse had told me that all the beds in the hospital were full.  I was extremely skeptical of this, since I had rounded that morning and knew that half the surgical suite was empty.  Nevertheless,  I went to Jean de Dieu's house; he is the head of the nursing staff (but practically speaking, is much more like a PA).  He told me I could kick out patients who had been discharged but hadn't paid.  On my way back to the ER, I ran into Maski, a short little nurse who looks like Speedy Gonzalez.  He told me that there were beds free in the surgery suite.  Voila!

        I got a wheel chair for my Aka friend and had the security guard wheel him to his bed.  His daughter, however, was a little more difficult.  She was very frightened of the hospital and was beginning to cry.  It's hard enough trying to comfort a crying child, even more hard when you don't speak their language, but somehow, I managed to convince her that it was safe to follow me and I brought her to where her dad was staying.  I could see that she was still pretty upset, so I sprinted back to our house to get the last of our coconut cookies.  I put one in her hand and mimed eating.  She hesitantly took a nibble, but once she realize what it was, she got a big smile and wolfed the rest down.

         The sad part of this story, is that when I went to his bed the next morning, they was gone.  I asked Sara what had happened to him, and she had no idea.  It was frustrating, having gone to such lengths to get someone the care they need, only to have them reject it.  Just like life and death, you can't win them all.

         On a more positive note, I had the privilege of doing rounds with Jean de Dieu.  Jean is a character.  He's easily the funniest person here and fittingly also possesses the world's best laugh.  I don't understand what he's laughing at half the time, but his laugh is so infectious that I can't help but laugh too.  I just about lost it today when we were checking up on this overweight lady with a respiratory infection.  Jean was doing her physical exam and was giggling like a school girl the entire time, not entirely sure why; in the States, I'm pretty sure you could get sued for that.  Jean has been learning English and is probably the best English speaker of the Africans staff (admittedly, not a high bar to pass).  He is proficient enough to make puns in English, which made me pleasantly surprised.  We saw a premature baby this morning, whose weight we've been monitoring closely.  After looking the patient over, Jean said "and now we wait for weight."  He repeated it several times until he was sure I got it, and then let out a roar of laughter.

        It's really quite hard to believe I will be gone this time next week. I have just started to feel at home here and really wish I could stay here for a long time...

Ah such is life.  I hope to make the best of my last few days here and go out on a good note.  On the bucket list is eating Little Jerry the Chicken, camping with the Aka Friday night, and maybe playing music one last time.

As usual, here are a few photos to go along with the stories:

Here's a picture of the village we went to church at.  The stone building on the right is the church.  The village itself extended to the left for about 200 yds or so.

This is a picture from the Aka church service when the congregation all lined up to greet us afterwards.

I like this picture, or rather, what it reminds me of.  This appeared to be some sort of gathering place in the village; if you notice, the center of the shelter is a tree that sprouts up and then spreads over the top of the shelter in nice yellow flowers.  Also, you can see that the middle boy of the three on the bench is albino.  Yes, he's an albino African.  Apparently, it used to be (and still is, in some places) a great stigma to be an albino in Africa, but one of Dr. Harvey's daughters told us that now people around here generally understand what albinism is and are accepting of it.  This little boy looked pretty happy and everyone seemed to treat him the same.

Here's a picture of the back of the pickup truck with all of the Aka loaded in.  I think we counted 33 passengers in all!

Well that's all for now.  I will try to write again before I leave, but no promises.

Cheers,

Ben

   

Another week gone.

Hello again,

        I regret the time that has expired since my last post, but the last few days have been rather busy.  Andrew and I have become much more comfortable working here in the hospital, although the language barrier continues to be a challenge.  Thankfully between pantomime and our limited knowledge of the languages, we can usually figure out what's going on and communicate.  There are also a number of people around the hospital who are able to translate.

      There have been several interesting stories at the hospital this past week that have left a deep impression on all of us.  The most dramatic of these happened Tuesday when a woman came into the hospital to deliver a baby.  On Tuesday, Dr. Harvey works from home and Dr. Laura was packing up to head back to the states, so there was no doctor at the hospital.  This is normally not an issue; there is a midwife here who delivers most babies without a glitch and only calls the doctor when there are complications.  On this particular delivery there were complications and they needed to do a C-section.  For whatever reason, however, nobody called the doctor and they rushed the patient to the OR where Boniface, who is sort of a physicians assistant who does minor surgeries, decided to do the C-section.  Around lunchtime, some of the nursing students who were helping with the delivery came in and urgently told us to call Dr. Harvey; something had gone wrong in the procedure and he was needed urgently. It was very frustrating for me and Andrew to realize how little use we were; I wanted nothing more than to scrub in and fix the problem, but realized that I would be more of a hindrance than a help.  Thankfully both Dr. Harvey and Dr. Laura arrived soon and headed straight to the OR.  Not being able to really contribute in a medical way, I went over and stood outside the OR and prayed.  I should have prayed anyway, even if I was able to help out medically, but at that time it seemed like the only thing I could do.  I headed back to our house where I ran into some of the nursing students who said she had lost a lot of blood and needed to be transfused.  They didn't know her blood type so they needed someone with O+ blood (the universal donor).  As luck would have it, Andrew had just told me the night before that he was O+ and that he really wanted to donate blood before he came back to the states.  Funny how things work.

          So I took off to go find Andrew.  Oddly enough, I found him in the laboratory getting blood drawn for donation.  There were two other students there who are also O+ and were getting ready to donate.  Unfortunately, there was so much red tape to go through -- screening his blood for HIV and hepatitis, filling out paper work.  It seemed so unnecessary when this woman's life was in danger and this was the only blood we had.  They transfused her with a unit of Andrew's blood and brought her out of the OR into the emergency room.

           Andrew and I had to head out to go visit an Aka village, so we left feeling very glad things turned out well.  Unfortunately, we returned to a very sad story; about 20 minutes after we left, she declined fast and passed away.  We've seen a lot of death here, but this lady hit a lot of us close to home, I think in part because of how involved all of us were.  I was frustrated as much as I was sad; it's hard to see babies dying of malnutrition or young men mangled up by motorcycle accidents, but all these atrocities are caused by factors beyond our control. It was hard to see a woman die from a procedure we had done; it seemed like her death should have been within our control.

           We are thankful, though, that her death was the only one; she left on this earth a brand new beautiful baby boy. He is honestly one of the healthiest looking babies I've seen here.  They are currently trying to find a home for him; his mother's family blames him for her death and his father has yet to be seen.  Thankfully, one of his mother's friends has offered to raise him.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

             On a much lighter note, on Tuesday Andrew, James, and I followed Sarah (one of the long term missionaries) into the villages around Impfondo to check up on patients.  We visited an Aka village where there were several kids recovering from Malaria.  Now, they are perfectly healthy, rambunctious boys.  That day, they were frying up a good mess of caterpillars.  Yes, I said caterpillars.  Naturally, I had to ask if I could try one.  They naturally said yes and took great delight in watching the tall white guy try to down the caterpiller.  I was pleasantly surprised; it tasted very good, and I'm not just saying that.  It had a nice buttery, garlicky flavor (and no, it didn't taste like chicken).

            We stopped at a few more houses and then Sarah took us to the government hospital.  Until then, I had no idea that there was another hospital in Impfondo. This hospital seemed like another world compared to ours; brand new buildings, clean hallways, huge patient rooms, 5 doctors, and tons of equipment.  And yet, they continue to send patients to us...

             Close to the hospital is an old building in which those suffering the effects of Hansen's disease (aka a leper colony).  Leprosy has often been a feared disease and those who suffer from it have often been ostracized.  Part of this was due to misconceptions about the transmissibility of the disease and part of it was due to a lack of good treatment.  Today, leprosy can be easily treated, but here in Congo, there are people who live so remote from healthcare, that their disease progresses to more advanced forms.  Such were the folks living here.  We talked with the patients about their disease and their living conditions.  Many of these men had lived deep in the forest before contracting their disease.  Now they are forced to stay in this house while their children take care of them, if they are lucky enough to have children.  We talked with them about ways they can improve their functionality and then we prayed with them before leaving.

             We then went to visit Mama Catherine, one of Sarah's friends, who has a chronic ulcer on her leg and needs her dressing changed daily.  She also bears the much coveted title of "coconut cookie lady" among the missionaries.  After we finished changing her dressing, we asked if we could order a batch of coconut cookies. I gave her some money to get the ingredients and she said she'd send them with Sarah when they were finished.  Well we just got them today (friday) and they are delicious!  They're basically balls of shredded coconut mixed with sugar -- hard to go wrong with those ingredients.

              In the afternoon we went for a forest walk with some of the Aka villagers.  The Aka are basically like the Native Americans of Congo.  They were the first people group to live here.  In the middle ages, the Bantu people came in and conquered them and made most of them slaves. Slavery was still legal here until the 1990's, but it still exists in some forms today.  A Bantu might "hire" an Aka to clear an entire field for him and then pay him something ridiculous like a carton of cigarettes.  In any event, I really grew to like them after spending the afternoon with them.  They are all so friendly and so polite.  We went hiking in the forest, guided by the village chief, but all the kids came along to.  The chief pointed out particular plants and trees that they use to make traditional medicines: a plant to help with gastritis, a tree bark to help with diarrhea, and another to use "if your wife doesn't love you enough".  Yeah.  When we got to the end of the hike, we saw a number of villagers were already there pitching camp.  Every single person was running around getting things ready: some were making shelters, some were cutting wood for firewood, and some were scurrying up trees in their bare feet like monkeys, tying up vines for some unknown reason.  We soon found out why they tied up the vines: they had made a swing for us.  The three of us took turns swinging while the chief pushed us and the kids all sang a very enchanting song.  Unfortunately, we had to leave to get back to the hospital, but we hope to return at some point.

            Later that day, we discovered ice-cream.  You don't know how happy we were to find this humble soft-served ice-cream stand on our way back.  They have only one flavor (banana), but it was exactly what we needed after a long day biking.

            Another highlight of our time this week was last night, Andrew's last night in Impfondo before he headed back today.  After getting some chicken from the chicken lady, we headed down to the Oubangui river for a little dip.  We were soon joined by about 20 men from the village who had come down for their evening bath.  The water was surprisingly warm, far warmer than my shower water.  Andrew and I got in and swam out about 30 feet or so.  We then noticed all the men swimming back into shore, so we followed, but at a slow pace.  When they had all reached the shore and we were still a good 15 feet out, one of them yelled and pointed up stream from us.  He motioned for us to come over towards him.  I'm still not entirely sure what he was concerned about, given my poor understanding of French; my two theories are that there was a car submerged in the water he wanted us to watch out for or that there was a crocodile in the water.  In either case, we went back to shore.  The men had started to wash; one of them had lathered himself up in soap and pointed to me saying "mundeli", which means white person (the little kids love to shout this at us when we walk through the market).  We all had a good laugh.

Below are some pictures from these past few weeks

This is a picture of my first surgical case.  His name is Jean Robert and I helped take out his appendix and sutured him up.  He's doing great now; whenever I see him around he gives me a big smile and yells "Ben zha men!"

       This picture is from a youth camp we had here a few weekends ago.  The camp was designed for boys and girls in early adolescnce to talk about Christianity and specifically sexual purity.  Sexual promiscuity is just as much of a problem here as it is in America, so the mission wanted to reach kids early and hopefully steer them on the right path.  It was fun to see all the kids marching in from their different villages, each group singing their own songs.  The picture shows everyone in the chapel singing and praising God, which they must have done for a good four hours solid!

As you may have guessed, the above picture is of myself and the aforementioned caterpillar, pre-ingestion. Like I said, not all that bad really.

This picture was taken at the home for those suffering from Hanson's disease.  This poor fellow had lost control of his right eyelids, ended up developing an infection had has lost sight in his right eye.  Thankfully, he had family there who are able to help care for him.

Couldn't resist adding this one.  This is a picture of me suturing up a lady after we performed a myomectomy for uterine fibroids, which will hopefully allow her to conceive children (a huge status symbol in Congo).

Well that is all for now.  I thank you for battling your way to the end of this tedious blog post.  I thank you even more for you prayers and support.  It's hard to believe I'm half way done with my time here.  I know already I will not be ready to leave.

Until then,

Ben

Of Independence Day and Such

Greetings!
      This past Thursday was the birthday of my native land and though we are far from home, we did not refrain from celebrating our American heritage.  After a full day in the clinic, we went to the mission for an evening of celebration.  In true American style, we whipped up a game of baseball, which attracted a rather hefty crowd of curious Congolese, wondering what this strange barbaric game was.  The Harvey family hosted us for dinner, which consisted of corn beef sandwiches, potato salad, and some rather tough corn on the cob, with red, white, and blue cake for dessert.  We didn't have any fireworks, so Dr. Harvey turned the lights out and squeezed a lemon onto a candle, which made a nice homemade sparkler.  We spent the rest of the evening playing music and singing songs (one of the other short term missionaries has a fiddle and plays bluegrass and Irish music, so we had a blast!).

       While it was certainly very different celebrating our nation's birthday so far away, I think it was a good reminder that our real nation is not the United States or Congo or anywhere else on earth, but is the Kingdom of God.  Independence from foreign rulers, though a great blessing, is a mere trifle compared to the independence we have from the bonds of sin.  The affairs of nations and the kingdoms of men pass away, but the Kingdom of God endures forever.

      That said, this past week made me very thankful for my home in the U.S. and the life I've lived there thus far.  I am thankful that our government is relatively just, that we have good sanitation and infrastructure, and that we really don't have to worry about most of the basic necessities of life.  Here in Congo, things are obviously different.  People die from things here that would be easily treated in the U.S. and would also be easily preventable if there was good sanitation here.  Healthcare is often just the tip of the iceberg; poor health can be sign of other larger problems.  Poverty here is rampant; many folks survive on a dollar a day or less.  The reason there is so much poverty is because there are so many unemployed.  There are so many large factors that seem to play a role in the great disparity between nations like Congo and western countries; it is hard to understand why God allows such gross differences to exist.  There is certainly nothing special about Americans to warrant the rich blessings that we have received and there is nothing about the Congolese that condemns them more than others; in fact, we all deserve much worse.  God works His justice and His grace in His own timing; we are not to judge or question, but simply to work in faith, knowing that it is He who has torn the veil in two and it is He who lifts this world from the curse of the Fall.

         Now that my sermon's finished, let me move on to some of the more everyday things from my first week in Impfondo.  Our living conditions are quite pleasant; we are staying in the house of an American missionary family that is currently on furlough.  We have a gas stove, gas refrigerator, a faucet that works (until this afternoon...), a toilet, and a shower.  In a lot of ways, living here reminds me of the old Outing Club Cabin at Grove City, very primitive, but also very pleasant.  We have recently invested in what we thought were two chickens.  We named them Debbie and Little Jerry.  As it turns out, Little Jerry is actually a rooster (which explains both his incessant crowing and his poor egg production).  Unfortunately, Debbie flew the coup last night.  We saw her up in the tree, rather close to the wall that surrounds the hospital.  When we returned from the market later that day, we discovered she was gone.  Tomorrow, we're going to do a recognizance mission to see if we can locate the AWOL hen. Whether or not we find her, Little Jerry's days are numbered as Andrew leaves next weekend to go back to the states.

         During the day, we have a cook come in who cooks lunch for all of us working at the hospital, but for breakfast and dinner, we fend for ourselves.  A few nights ago, we discovered a chicken stand in the market that is absolutely delicious.  For the equivalent of about 4 U.S. dollars, she cooks up about a quarter of a chicken over an open fire.  She serves it with onions, mayonnaise, and this really spicy sauce she makes.  Over the last couple of days, we've become very devoted patrons and enjoy coming down there in the evenings to try our broken French on her.

         Well that is all for now. Tomorrow we are going to church in one of the Aka villages (one of the tribes referred to as "pygmies").  Hopefully, they will be taking us on a walk in the forest after church.  Can't wait!

God bless,

Ben

Our arrival

Mbote!

     Greetings from Congo!  As I write to you know, it has been 7 days since leaving the states to set off for Pioneer Christian Hospital in Impfondo, Republique du Congo.  The last week has been filled with more events than a simple blog post can entail, but I will do my best to give you a picture of what our week has been like.

    Tuesday, Andrew and I left our happy homes in the states to cross the broad Atlantic.  Our flights were thankfully on time and rather comfortable.  We landed in Brazzaville, the capitol, after 24 hours of travel.  After negotiating  customs with the little French I possess, we picked up our bags and headed out the door to meet our driver. The entrance to the airport was a scene of organized chaos; Africans jostling past each other, yelling greetings, trying get to their taxis and SUVs.  We were shortly picked up by a driver named Honore who works with Global Outreach and taken to Hotel Bravo which was to be our stay for the next two days.  Bravo was thankfully quite close to the airport and we arrived in no time.  We were greeted by Michelle, the cook for the guest house, and she showed us where to put our things.  Unfortunately, no one there spoke any English, and our French ranged from non-existent to spotty at best.  We soon began what has continued to be a long game of charades, looking up what words I can find in my pocket French dictionary and miming the rest.  It's amazing how much language we can communicate without words!  Michelle cooked us a bite to eat and then showed us to our beds where we promptly crashed.  I slept in to 9:30 the next day, which seemed a respectable time to me for someone just coming off a jet plane, but I would only realize later that this is grossly sleeping in by African standards; most get up by 5 or 5:30am.  

    That day, Andrew and I exchanged our money for Congolese Francs.  This turned out to be quite the circus act, with our lack of French and Papa Mbossa (the business manager for GOM) speaking no English. Thankfully, Papa Siko, the lab director for the hospital was there to help.  We had some difficulty with a few of our bills.  We had been told to bring fresh, new $100 or $50 bills, but apparently they have difficulties with any bills older than 2006.  A few of ours were and this induced significant arguing in French between Papa Mbossa and the exchange man.  Whatever magic words he said, they worked and he accepted all our money.  With money in hand, Andrew and I set off into the city to explore.  We had lunch at a cafe and strolled around the shops. We met a couple of students at the local university, who spoke better English than we did French and they took us to see Brazzaville's Cathedral, which wasn't super ornate, but perhaps by African standards it is.  As we strolled around the city, we couldn't help but notice that although Brazzaville is  very well off by Congolese standards, there is a curious juxtaposition of poverty with wealth.  There were beautiful houses with large walls, but dirt streets outside and people burning trash.  Men in fancy suits and alligator shoes walked through dirty streets and sleeping in hovels.  The Congolese definitely take great pride in their appearance, but behind their elegant clothes is often a lot of poverty and brokenness.  

       That night, we enjoyed hanging out with Michelle and her husband Ruel and trying to teach each other our native languages, which resulted in us laughing more than speaking either language.  That night Michelle made it very clear that we needed to leave for the airport at 7am; "Sept heur", she kept repeating.  Well I woke up at 6:15 to very vigorous pounding on my door. I opened the door to find a very frazzled Michelle pointing to her watch and shouting "you go!"  As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I realized there had been a gross miscommunication concerning the time.  Andrew and I frantically threw all our stuff into suit cases and headed off to the airport.  We needn't have rushed, however, for the airplane was an hour late (right on time, for Congo).  

       It was raining in Impfondo when we arrived, but thankfully we were able to land safely.  It is the rainy season here, which means it is significantly cooler, but, as the name suggests, quite wet.  We were met at the airport by Sarah, one of the long term missionaries here.  We stopped by quickly at Mission and then headed into the hospital where we met Dr. Harvey, the man we had traveled so many miles to work with and who had founded this hospital in Impfondo.  Dr. Harvey put us to work right away, seeing patients with him. Dr. Harvey speaks fluent French and also Lingala, which is the language that Impfondo speaks primarily.  It is very different doing a physical exam when you know neither.  I've been learning to mime actions I want the patient to do (like breathing very heavily).

         In general, medicine here is like nothing in the states.  There is no HIPAA, no health insurance (except for refugees), and very different patients.  In the states, the most common problems we see come from having too much: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease.  Here, most problems come from too little: malnutrition, lack of sanitary living conditions, poor food preparation, lack of access to health care.  The first patient I saw in the clinic traveled a week by canoe to get to the hospital, and she is by no means alone.  Many of the diseases we see wouldn't happen in the states, or if they would, would certainly not progress as far as they do here.  But progress they do, and it's our job to treat them with whatever meager resources we have.  

         These past few days, Andrew and I have been in the operating room.  In the US, you would be hard pressed to find someone with one year of med school under their belts to be scrubbing in on surgery, but Andrew and I have been alternating surgeries the last two days as first assistant.  You would also be hard pressed to find a family doc doing surgeries in the US, but here in Impfondo, surgeries are being done by two family docs, Dr. Harvey and Dr. Laura.  There is simply no one else to do surgery out here.  The OR, which, I might add, is powered by a tractor, is a very medieval place.  Patients are simply given spinal anesthesia (so they are awake and conscious during the surgery, but paralized).  When I was sewing my first sutures yesterday, the anesthesia began to wear off and the patient began to wince and moan.  But however primitive healthcare may seem over here, it is worlds better than the care they would otherwise receive, were the hospital not here.  

         Despite the obvious physical suffering here, I am continually encouraged by the spiritual growth I see.  Hospitals, in America, are rarely Christian institutions.  It has been encouraging to be a part of a health care system that sees spiritual health as just as important, if not more so, than physical.  To begin with, all the hospital staff gathers every morning at 7am for a short devotional and worship time.  The doctors pray with patients after seeing them and help point them to the healing power of Christ.  The chapel has regular service for the patients as well as a service on Sunday mornings.  The worship leader for the chapel is a perfect example of the work God is doing here; Dr. Harvey found him on the floor of the ER several years ago with 5 bullet wounds in him.  He had ran away from home to fight in the rebel faction during Congo's civil war.  Through God's mercy, his life was saved, both physically and spiritually.  He is missing the head of his humerus (arm bone), yet he is able to raise his hands in leading the congregational worship.

        I'm afraid that's all I have for now.  It is quite late and I am in need of rest. Thank you all for your prayers; you don't know how much they mean to me.  I hope to write again soon when I can.

Yours,

Ben Cox