Small items of the week

                  IIt’s Sunday afternoon – hot (only 24C but feels hotter) and muggy – there are clouds in the sky, but it is definitely the start of dry season, so whether anything will fall from them is uncertain.  There are hundreds of small yellow weaver birds around in the shrubs and trees.  And yesterday I noticed the white cattle egrets in the trees down near the cattle yard - a sure sign of dry season.  We are going several days at a time now without rain.    This means there is now standing water that is not being replaced on a daily basis – and mosquitoes are around.  I’m trying not to forget my anti-malarials.  (On that note, one of the best things I brought with me is one of those little pills of the day boxes for old folks –  last year was a disaster for remembering whether I’d taken the doxycycline or not on any given day).  The house still does not have screens – I’m really hoping they are done and on soon, because it is too hot to sleep with all the windows closed.

 

                  On Monday, Rene from the carpentry shop brought me a drying rack that I’d asked him to make.  It is a lovely little thing, made without any metal parts, of – naturally! – oroko wood.  When ever in my life will I again have a tropical hardwood clothes drying rack!!  Apparently one of the career missionaries years ago brought a rack bought at Walmart and Rene copied it in wood, and has been making them for Mbingo folks ever since.  I should not need it much more this season, but when the rains come back in April, it will be an essential in the house – clothes almost never get a chance to dry completely in one day outside.

 

                  In OR on Monday, our first patient was a 5 week old baby with a bowel obstruction.  Fortunately for me, Sande, our youngest nurse anaesthetist, has become very good with the small babies, so it really was his patient.  Grace, my student, did a lot of the work and did pretty well, for her first tiny one.  The child had Hirshsprung’s disease of his colon which had to be completely removed, so he has an ileostomy, and I hope will be ok with it – it is not quite the same here as in the western world.  He was a rather different looking tyke, with a long face – but when I went to the ward later to see him, he was lying by his mom on the bed, both of them sleeping, and he was JUST like her!  She perhaps has some Arabic blood.  He is just the cutest little fellow, and seems to be doing well over the past week.

 

                  Friday started as a big catch-up day.  Our slates are not very well organized, and we were so backed up.  This is terrible for patients who have spent  every bit of money they can earn, beg, or borrow to pay the surgical fee, and then they and their carers still have to eat for all the days they are here, and it is not cheap.  We had our first patients already in theatre when we were told that there was not a bit of morphine or other narcotic in the hospital.  Central Pharmacy which is in a town way down south had been warned a week ago, but nothing had arrived.  So – hold everything!  We did a few small cases, but otherwise it was a wasted day.  There are so many frustrations here – to get everyone on the same page seems almost impossible.  The day ended on a much happier note though, because 8 beautiful little monitors – for blood pressure and oxygen saturation, and one even for EKG – arrived from Dr Lees in Glasgow.  She has been in Mbingo more than once, helping to teach previous classes of anaesthetists, and she had found these being discarded by a Scottish hospital that was upgrading.  They are just perfect for us here – and we were desperate for them, being down to just 2 aging monitors for 4 OR tables.  A great gift.

 

                  Yesterday morning I went to market with my Cameroonian basket / backpack.  It provided a source of entertainment and amusement for a lot of people in market, but it worked well for carrying home by produce – easier than a heavy bag weighing down just one shoulder.  The rope shoulder straps do cut in a bit, but most of the weight rests on one’s lower back so it is not too uncomfortable.  Giideon says I have become more or less a Cameroonian – but I think it is still “less”.  I still live with way too many luxuries that I am not at all willing to give up!

 

                  There are now 3 garden beds planted with lettuce, beans, tomatoes, swiss chard, a few peas, cucumbers, and carrots.  Things germinate in just no time, with a stable temperature around 20 degrees day and night, and enough moisture.  Gideon has also done a lot more work on the flowerbeds and the rockery looks lovely for people going by on the path.  When I came back, I brought cabbage seeds for Gideon’s wife, and last weekend she sent about 20 seedlings down with him – (a 4 hour walk from up in the hills) and he planted them in the rose bed when he came to work on my compound Tuesday.  They seem to be taking root, so we hope to have cabbages (in abundance) before the roses really get growing big.  Last year a number of things in the garden got diseased and were a disappointment, but I do hope for some good produce this year – especially some greens which I badly miss.

 

                  Yesterday I sewed the curtains for the 2^nd bedroom, finishing off that sort of work for the house.  I borrowed Ellen’s sewing machine, and a transformer.  Electricity here is a menace, as there are both 220v and 110v lines around the compound.  My dread is that I will get confused – and for one awful moment, I thought that I had blown the insides out of her lovely little machine.  I called her to check on how I was plugging the machine into the transformer, and I know that her first thought too was that her machine was dead!  But all was well, and the curtains are done. 

 

                  Grace’s husband was able to take a couple of days this past week and come down from Oku to see her.  As is the polite custom, they came to greet.  Both my girls are married to very nice men, who are most supportive of their  wives’ endeavours.  For anyone who donated to the fund for the students’ 2^nd year here, I wish you could have seen his face as he tried to thank me – he says he just does not have the words to express the joy in his heart – and  I don’t have words to express to you either what a significant difference some Canadians have made to some people out here.  So thank you once again!