French Lessons

...which are also English lessons. These people are a lot of fun to hang out with! We manage to have plenty of fun between rounding, seeing patients, translating and trying to learn French.

 Dr. Loes and Dr. Noe make a great team doing rounds and seeing outpatients.

I have enjoyed getting to follow them and have learned a lot from Dr. Loes, who is a very experienced internal medicine doctor. And Noe is great to have around with his sense of humor and his mad-ninja-skillz converted to Lingala, French and understanding those unintelligible medical charts!

Before and After

I came into Pediatrics today on rounds and saw a very happy sight indeed! I hadn't been in there for a while so I didn't really know what was going on, but when I saw this baby wearing the Marlboro t-shirt I remembered seeing him a few months before. It's hard to believe it's the same kid! I posted a picture of him earlier, but now here's the before AND after photos! Today he was discharged and the mom very happily took him home.

Just Another Day at HELP

Dr. Noe (from RDC) Dr. Loes (from Arizona) and their interpreter Destin, finishing up seeing the outpatients:

Drs. Esther and Tim; siblings from the south of England, doing a hernia surgery together. Since I was translating for them, I was thankful that they didn’t need much assistance from the staff for this one. Mostly I just got them what they needed, and explained to one of the circulating nurses how to do local anesthesia for a hernia. He was very impressed with Esther’s method and wanted to know exactly how she’d done it.

“When I was assisting Tim I was very good and didn’t give him a hard time, but then when it was the other way around, Tim was very naughty and told me everything I was doing wrong.” – Esther

Dr. Harvey and Boniface looking at the ultra-sound machine to try to align this man’s broken femur. Moving the external fixation pieces around and pulling on his leg to line up the bones was unsuccessful so they did surgery again.

 

Boniface and Tim on rounds in the surgical wards. For lack of someone better, I was serving as interpreter for them that day. Never an ideal situation because my skills as translator are well below average. Maybe that’s why Boniface’s expression is a mix of concern and mystification. Oh well, I do my best.

Quotes

“I thought you were running after me because you realized I had your alligator.”

“I’m sure if it’s broken Caleb can fix it.”   

“Well, a guy on a motorcycle almost whacked me in the face with a shoe, but mostly I just got called a mermaid.”

“Ask Obama for money so you can live here.”  

"Next time they better not shove leaves up his rectum when he's constipated for two days."

 “We have to wait for the weight!” 

"I... I speak British English!" 

 "You better not wash those. It makes me nervous to see you standing by that bowl of dirty dishes." 

“Total 45 patients plus 2 discharged and 1 that ran away.” 

"I need peanut butter; I'm losing weight."

"You have a little head with a lot of problems."

"Be careful...and say 'Amen!"

 

Key Stories

There are keys for everything. And I mean everything. In the office there’s a big cupboard FULL of keys. There are keys to every house and every office and all the sheds and the tractor and the carpentry shop and the Bloc and even the bathrooms. Sometimes having so many keys gets very confusing.

So one day in all my comings and goings I lose my key for the house. Thankfully Lauren has another, so we’re not locked out. Still, I need to find the key. No idea where I left it. Been all over the place…ALL over the place. And then I stop at Olga’s house for the fifth time that day, and what do you know? JDD who’s talking with the guard just reaches down and picks up my keys out of the grass. Wow. Thankfully somebody has better eyes than me.

***

We're having a party at the mission, and someone gets a call saying the power's out at the hospital, and Molimo needs to start the generator. But where are the keys? That's right - Caleb has them, and he's with us partying at the mission. Brief distressing moment ensues. Then, oh! he actually he doesn't have them. They're in that special box somewhere at the hospital. But where is the box again? So Molimo finds the box, but it turns out Caleb has the key to get to the fuel for the generator, but not the one needed to start the tractor, so that’s good. And he thinks the gas will last until he goes back. So the hospital has power again. Phew.

***

I need to get into Melanie's office again to work on payroll. But Eamon has the keys. And where is Eamon? He went to the market. With the keys. So I am told. But then someone else says, 'no he left them with Caleb,' in case someone needed to get into Admin. Hallelujah. Disaster averted. So I'm off to find Caleb. And he's all the way over at Casablanca. But when I get there, he's actually not. So I go back to Admin and he's in Dr. Harvey's office. But Caleb gave the key back to Eamon before he left. So I'm back to square one. But then I see Eamon coming back from the market. Hallelujah again. I can get to work.

***

One dark night someone steals the keys to the Samoutous’ house, the truck and Casablanca, as well as a phone – all in one go. I am sitting in the living room, oblivious to what happened out on the dark street, ready for bed, with kids falling asleep on the floor waiting for mom to come back, when I hear a knock. Before I even reach the door, it’s open and Sarah, Dr. Harvey and Noah are all in the kitchen. Within what seems like seconds Dr. Harvey has changed the lock, replaced my key with a new one and is moving on to Casablanca to do the same there. I hardly know what’s going on before it’s over, and I am left in a cloud of dust and amazement at the suddenness and speed of the operation. That is the fastest lock change I have ever seen!

 ***

I leave the Samoutous' House with key in bag, or maybe in hand. Perhaps this is why I lost it again in the first place. Will I ever stop losing keys? And Lauren left her key in Admin, at least that's what she thinks, but it's after hours and Clotilde has gone home, and she's the one who would know. So we're locked out of the house and it's dark and it's late. And we're searching for the key. So I retrace my steps twice, flashlight in hand, and look everywhere I can think of. And after an hour I’m starting to get really desperate, and then I find them on the ground back at the Blue House. Relief would be an understatement. Praise the Lord!

And I’m just naming a few incidents. I could go on, you know. But anyway, the keys are useful, but they’re also inconvenient. We lose them. We find them. Sometimes they’re in the key cabinet and sometimes they’re on a desk, and sometimes they’re in house doors or car doors or key rings or lost in the grass. They go the wrong places with the right people, or the right places with the wrong people.. Are you confused yet? We certainly are.

Snapshots

The monkeys at a house next-door. They were very adorable and very scared.

Hanging out at the Ngalipes before Sunday Night Live…We have our Sunday evening worship at the Harveys’ now and I usually go over a few hours early to play with the children and visit the neighbors.

A pile of shoes on the doorstep on this particular evening meant a very special gathering for us on the day Olga came back. It was a great honor to gather with the whole family because it was their first time being together for a whole month, and it was less than a week later that the menfolk left for Brazzaville – dividing their numbers in half again.

A moth we found in the house one night.

Marianna enjoying a gauva from one of the trees nearby the house. This fruit is definitely an all around favorite for every kid I know. They seem to never stop eating them, at least when they’re in season. (Warning: Excessive consumption may result in constipation)