"This is Your Hospital"

Sunday was fairly slow for us this week. We walked to the church on the mission, back to the house for lunch, and to The Haven to play with the kids in the afternoon. There was a little girl named Memory in the baby haven who was sent to South Africa before Christmas for heart surgery with money raised from overseas who died Sunday morning. We had examined her only ten hours before and did not detect anything immediately alarming, but with an acute heart problem there was little else to do for her here. I keep thinking about how ironic it is that her name was Memory, because I know we will remember her as our first child here that we wished we could have done more for. The Aunties were very attached to her, as they are to all the kids, and we distracted the other children for awhile. Opening the gate to the toddler haven ensures that seconds later there will be babies swarming your feet, reaching their arms up towards you and asking in Tonga to be picked up. I carried a set of twins around (Lee and Lynn) practically the whole time I was there; one on each hip. Loveness, one of the Aunties, taught me phrases in Tonga and asked me about life in America.

We left The Haven in time to trek back to the house for our flashlights and head back off to church in the African sunset for devo and a welcome reception thrown by the members there. They cooked chicken, rice with a curry sauce, slaw of some sort, and “cornbread”, along with a special cornbread topped by powered sugar icing which said “Welcome 2 Zambia”. There was a Zambian girl who stood at the head of the line and washed each of our hands in a basin before we got our food. I immediately thought of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples and how selfless an act that was. We walked home by flashlight to discover the power was out. We had no way to heat the water so we took “baby wipe baths” and called it a night.

Monday Dr. Black, Ba Janice, the PA students and I went to the clinic after breakfast to meet with the administrator, the head nurse, and the two clinical officers (what we would refer to as doctors). We talked with them about our expectations, the medications and supplies we brought, and went on an involved tour of the clinic, meeting all of the staff. We were told, “this is your hospital now”. It was two hours later when we finally finished, and the clinic was packed with people, none of which had been seen since the only two doctors they have to see patients were on the tour with us! We helped set up Dr. Black’s office and saw a “referral” from one of the other doctors-a man with terrible osteomyelitis and open oozing sores on his knee. He was barefoot and appeared to be in a good deal of pain. Unfortunately the clinic is out of the antibiotics he needs, and even if the medicine was available it would be impossible to get him the months supply that he requires. We sent him away with a prescription for some pain relievers and the apology that there was nothing else we could do. We rounded on a few more patients with textbook signs of new onset HIV/AIDS they are holding overnight in order to do HIV testing tomorrow with the weekly AIDS clinic. Since the clinic closes at night, the patients will be looked after by their families until morning. Though Monday is often the busiest day for the clinic, their lab technician is loaned out each Monday to the hospital in Kalomo, so no labs can be ordered until Tuesday. We are finding that even though the clinic possesses some nice diagnostic equipment, much of it is unused due to the lack of education on how to run the machines. At one point during the tour, the administrator pointed out a piece of equipment they had been given that they had no idea what it was for-I told them it was an Ohio Warmer for infants (an incubator), but it would not be useful because the bed piece was missing. There is a radiology student running the xray room for now, but he will leave in September and there is the “hope that the school will send someone else” to help out; if not, we will be processing our own xrays. There are no sinks in the wards, so upon request we obtained a basin for washing our hands in-between patients. The two midwives employed by the clinic are away right now, so we are on call at night for any potential births (if pregnant women come to the clinic at night, the night watchman calls one of the midwives to come in for them). All in all the clinic is well stocked (minus antibiotics), but there is such a feeling of helplessness at the lack of resources available to treat patients. I’m sure that feeling will only intensify as I spend more time at the clinic seeing more people we will be unable to help. The part that makes it worthwhile is focusing on those we are able to assist, and simply trying to bring some comfort to the lives of those we cannot heal physically.

Today the same group of us went to the clinic to see patients while the students had language lessons. I saw patients with Ba Bingham, and made friends with our translator (the maintenance man for the clinic) named Ba Smart. His wife works at Haven 2 with the toddlers and her name is Beauty. I told them Smart and Beauty made a good match. The problems we saw were primarily either HIV/AIDS, malaria, or STDs. I worked with the women in the front helping with registration (writing down the patient complaints and triaging), and we all took a turn at the arduous process of the ART program (the weekly government-run AIDS clinic). Seven babies from the Haven with known HIV exposure were brought over for the official send-out HIV diagnostic test.

After lunch we walked up to The Haven and saw our regular babies. When Cathy, the American missionary who helps with the children returned from the clinic with the babies, there was a brand new baby who had been dropped off. Often the children are brought to the Haven if the parents know they do not have to capability to care for the child. In this case, both parents are HIV positive, and the mother is deathly sick. She is two days old and weighs just over four pounds. Most of the babies come unnamed, so she was named Janice after Ba Bingham. She will be tested at the clinic for HIV when she is old enough that she will not show a false positive due to her mother’s antibodies. At Haven 2 we were swarmed with toddlers as usual on the porch during “tea time” and Loveness, one of the Aunties who had been teaching me Tonga phrases, had written me four sheets of English to Tonga words and phrases. She went over the pronunciation with me one by one and I promised her I would practice.

After dinner the power went out again, and the water in our sink stopped working, but no one was much bothered by it. The night air feels so good (especially compared to the Texas heat!) and the stars are so bright you are distracted by them just walking outside. Almost everyone is having allergy problems due to the dry climate and immense amounts of dust, but I have not heard anyone complaining. One thing that is apparent is how blessed we all are and how much we have to learn from the people here, our new benzinyoko (friends).