Muzungu Moments Part 1

The day started at 7 am with breakfast at Sheila’s. I think she’s still amused over our American accents. At 7:30 we went down to the hospital for morning prayers and got introduced to the hospital staff. After experiencing some technical difficulties with the French translations of our documents, we decided to wing it with our English versions. This morning’s class (Monday) was for the ER staff. We had to teach the class in the x-ray room as many of the staff who were in attendance were also on duty.
Our translator this morning was the anesthesiologist. After class he asked if would teach the material to his staff in the OR. By the end of the afternoon we were booked for three more classes than anticipated including two all day seminars. We are finding we have to make a few alterations in the material as we go but overall things have been going quite well.
After class I went down to the ICU for bit. I walked by a bed which appeared empty and noticed an IV dripping into the bed sheets. Upon further investigation I found a tiny 5 pound baby lying in the bed. The baby had quite the hernia for being such a tiny thing and was in need of surgery. Unfortunately the hospital’s only surgeon is out of town so the baby will have to be transferred to another hospital far away.
After lunch Naomi and I worked on our ever evolving curriculum to meet the demands of our unanticipated class load. When our brains could take it no longer we ventured down to the hospital just to see what was happening. Naomi is quite in to photography so we wondered about saying “photo?” Everyone we asked was delighted to have their pictures taken. They laughed and giggled to see themselves on the screen of the digital camera. Many of them have never seen themselves before as they do not have mirrors. Naomi soon found herself surrounded. I sneakily went to the balcony of another building and shot a photo of her “Muzungu moment.” In late afternoon we took a walk about the town. As I’m sure you could have guessed we once again surrounded by children curious of the muzungu.

Kibogora

The internet here is pretty slow so I apologize for the rather short and incomplete posts. I’m trying the copy and paste method this time so we’ll see if this works any better. So far all is going very well. We are sharing our house with Kate, a British medical student, which has proven to be a lot of fun. The view from our little house is breath taking!
Friday morning Julie took Naomi and me into to town to an elders gathering. It’s actually like a mini Bible study for the poor elderly. They have a time of singing and dancing and short message. Afterward they serve everyone tea and bread and then send them home with a small bag of rice, beans, salt, and a bar of soap.
We toured the hospital and met most of the doctors and nurses we will be working with. We found out that there isn’t a backboard here. Julie and Sheila (our gracious hostesses) have suggested that we could help design one so they could have one made. Probably doesn’t sound very exciting to most people but it’s quite exciting to us! We will start teaching our classes tomorrow.
On a walk around town with Kate the idea that we are celebrities around her finally sunk in. We seemed to cause a bit of a stir and I think had there been more cars on the road we could have caused an accident! The children followed us smiling and giggling saying “muzungu, muzungu.” (Muzungu means ‘stranger’ but it’s used mostly around here for non African people.)
In a few minutes we’ll be heading out to church. I hear the choir is amazing! After church we’ll take a picnic lunch to Kumbya by the Lake Kivu and enjoy some time relaxing before we start our curriculathon to prepare for tomorrows class.

The Monkey Incident

We made it safely to Kibogora on Thursday afternoon after a 6 hour drive through numerous small towns and a rain forest! Julie told us to keep an eye out for monkeys as we drove. Yes, we saw several monkeys and yes we have pictures to prove it! Naomi had the window rolled down to facilitate the prime photography opportunity. This little guy seemed to enjoy the attention as he modeled for us until he jumped up on the side mirror and nearly into Naomi's lap! We all laughed so hard we could barely breathe. As Sheila says "we were all creased." (She's British and apparently this means doubled over laughing.)

We're Here!

Hello all! We've made it to Kigali. We arrived last night on schedule and overall the trip went smoothly. We were fed 5 times during our 9 hour flight to Amsterdam and three times on our flight into Uganda. It appears we're off to a good start with the eating sleeping healthy person thing...There was brief moment in Uganda where we were missing our luggage and we thought we were going to miss our plane while trying to recover our bags. But... With lots of prayer and Naomi's assertiveness we ended up being expedited through customs and excorted to our connecting flight. Upon arrival to Kigali we were pleasantly surprized to find all of our bags accounted for.
Oh yeah, and we were also locked out of the car at the airport in Kigali but that turned out just fine too. We slept at the mission house here for a night and now we are about to hit the road for Kibogora.

I Don't Know, Ask Me Tomorrow

In exactly one week to the hour my plane will be taking off for Rwanda! Everyone keeps asking me if I'm getting excited or if I've started packing, or how I'm feeling about this whole thing. Lately I've had to answer that with "I don't know, ask me tomorrow."
Today I met with my committee chair and presented my lecture materials for review. I knew there had to be something I overlooked and indeed there was.... I used literally hundreds of copyrighted graphics. Yes, I cited them every time and even looked up the fair use laws but I neglected to think about the fact that we would never be able to print handouts! OUCH!!! I can always just print the outline as a handout but of course that is never the same.
I must say that I'm a little disappointed with myself and even more disappointed that now I've probably disappointed a whole bunch of other people.
I guess I just never really thought about that as the students here can actually log on to our lectures and print the slides themselves. They can't really do that in Rwanda; bummer of the year award!
Long story short, I'm feeling like my work isn't what it should be and wishing that it was so much better and knowing that it could be. At the end of our meeting I was told, "you should be very proud of your work." I guess we are always our own worst critic.
It's true that there are other people in world who are much more qualified to do this task, but it was given to me for some reason. All I can do is my best and trust God for the rest.
You ask me how I'm feeling about all of this? Well, today I'm a little bummed but I hope the answer will be different if you ask me tomorrow.

Pressing On Towards Goals

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a walk to raise funds to fight MS. We couldn't have asked for better weather and it felt so great to be out in the sun and spending time with friends. The walk was only 5 miles and it was relatively easy but nonetheless it felt good to complete it. When we reached the end we had to all walk through a balloon arch as people clapped and cheered.
This whole experience got me thinking... Goals to strive towards and markers to reach are important things, they keep us focused and motivated to reach the end. I recently talked about goal setting and celebrating milestones with one of the new nurses I am mentoring. We each came up with some goals for ourselves and we update each other frequently when we take the bus to work together. My goal was to one day become an "eating, sleeping, healthy person." (She actually helped me choose that goal :)
It's been exciting to be able to finally make some progress! Though I suspect that this will be a lifelong journey,a milestone is in sight. I've been offered a 20 credit contract next year at Northwest University to teach a clinical group, manage the skills lab, and do a few specialty subject lectures. While this actually means a salary cut, this also means more time with students, more variety, more daylight exposure, and I can reduce my hours on the "red eye" shifts at the hospital. I am hoping the more normal schedule will allow me to spend more time with family and friends and not miss so many important days in the lives of the people I love.

"I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained this, or have already been made perfect. But I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3: 10-13

My Office Runneth Over (again)

I'm not exactly sure how this happened but today I found myself in the store room of a surgery clinic practically burried in donated medical supplies. It seems that the mother of a good friend of mine has been "chatting" with her coworkers at the surgery clinic. Before we knew it a nurse named "Mary" was directing me to drive my car down to the loading dock. We crammed it with as many boxes of gloves, IV needles, sutures, sterile drapes, and medical tape as we could. Mary kept asking me if I would take more! "There's still another warehouse," she says.
Being an ICU nurse and not a surgical nurse there were things in that warehouse that I can't even identify so I told her I would inventory the current load and then get back to her. It seems that I am once again sharing my office with a growing mountain of random medical supplies. Only this time I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to ship it. I guess this is God's way of telling me that I gotta stop dinkin' around get working on the further development of Shiloah Health Outreach.