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!
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
Thanks for sharing this, Ben. I look forward to all your posts here.
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