May 20, 2012  

This has been another interesting week on the campus of Kamakwie Wesleyan Hospital. Bud and his team have finished the generator house for the Ashers and have been helping Simon and his team of eight men as they rewire the entire hospital for solar lighting. What a difference at night in the Peds, Men’s and Women’s wards even at this point...by Wednesday, they expect to have Maternity, Outpatient Building, and Administration Building completed as well. One of the nurses said, “We can even see well enough to start an IV at night now!”  What a blessing. The really nice thing is that there is twice the amount of light with half the cost…the initial cost was significant; however, that was funded by friends in the U.S. Simon is a Canadian who has lived in Sierra Leone quite a few years and works with a development NGO who assists rural institutions all over Sierra Leone. We are all grateful for his work.

The lady, Ya Yeleh, who faithfully does our laundry by hand twice weekly has a daughter, Pamela, named after Pam Giles when she was here in the 80’s. This week Pamela had twin boys and named them “Dr. Tom” and “Pa Leach”; see Bud & Tom with their namesakes! Both babies weighed over 6 # and seem to be very healthy!  It was interesting when Ya Yeleh stopped by our house yesterday morning and said to me, “Your man kept me up all night last night hollering and hollering!”  I just thought, “Hmmm”.  I really thought my man was in the same bed with me all night J. This early after delivery, Pam is being challenged by the amount of milk she is able to produce in relationship to the amount these babies want to eat. Pray for them.  Bud has stopped by the OB ward each day to check on them…this AM they were sleeping peacefully when he went to see them.

  Our students started working on how to give injections this week, and they have given the oral medications three mornings in the hospital. We had several grapefruit that each received multiple injections. Some of them start to “leak” when we move them now…guess we will have to find some more grapefruit to practice on before we let them inject real people!  Actually a couple of the hospital staff have volunteered to let them practice on them as long as we use new syringes/needles and sterile water rather than the used needles and tap water we use on the grapefruit J. I have assured them we will use only sterile equipment when practicing on people. When the students feel comfortable giving injections, and Meredith and I believe they are fairly competent, we will take them down to the local Government Clinic to their immunization clinic where they will have lots of patients on which to practice.

It rained again last night so it was a little cooler this morning; we do enjoy each time there are some hours of relative coolness. One day this week, I checked the temperature in our house when it felt fairly cool, and discovered it was 90.4 degrees. Guess it’s all relative! Although I’m really looking forward to air conditioning again, I’m wondering if we will feel cold a lot???  I will definitely enjoy the lower humidity than we currently have in Kamakwie.

Until next time…