May 2005

I thought I would take a few minutes to send greetings to all of you and catch you up on what has been happening at Chidamoyo the past couple of months. We have been happy to have 2 nurses from Harbor View Medical Center in Seattle, WA with us for a month in Jan-Feb. Earl Thomas and Cindy Carson were a big help to us and was enjoyable company for me for a month. They were kept busy going to Well Baby clinics and helping in the hospital. I also put them to work helping me gather statistics for my annual report for the hospital. They were not going to go home until they finished, and they did the last morning they were here!J They got to see some of the sights of Zimbabwe and I just "had to" accompany them to The Hide (my most enjoyable place on earth) to see animals! Cindy can tell you about a lion who came within 2 feet of jumping into the open Land Rover with her! They went on to Vic Falls to do rafting, bungee jumping, elephant riding and just relaxing before heading home on February 22nd.

The weekend they left we had water problems and had several days of 1 hour of water (usually when we weren't home but at work!) and then the electricity went out the night before they left and still wasn't back on the day we left! With no showers and no electricity for the 2 days before they left I think they were ready to go home to civilization!

This past week we had 78+ hours with no electricity and then Monday no electricity 7 a.m.-5 p.m. and an hour off on Tuesday. Wednesday we had it all day-wow! Part of the problem is faults and no money to do maintenance and part is no money to import power from other countries so we get turned off for hours! We had to postpone several elective surgeries and did have to turn our generator on for one C/Section! When the electricity goes off we have to resort to one diesel borehole next to my house to pump all of our water for the mission-since our other 2 boreholes are electric! It has no muffler and is very noisy. They run it for 4 hours at a time and then rest it for 4 hours-day and night to keep up with our water needs. There is nothing like being awaken at 3 a.m. by a noisy diesel motor right outside your house!

My computer batteries, my battery for E-mail and contact with Dale (our nearest missionary 3 hours away) all died by 56 hours, so it was listen to the radio and read and go to bed early-yippee!

By Saturday night we had electricity back and were able to run our electric boreholes! Sunday morning I had a warm shower with a good supply of water-that made my day! Electricity and water at the same time, what pure JOY!

Sunday we had an early start to our day when I got called at 6:45 to do anesthesia for a woman who had a postpartum hemorrhage after delivering her 4th baby. The baby was born dead due to multiple anomalies and we pumped in 4 units of blood in a hurry. When she arrived in theater (OR) she had no recordable Blood Pressure and it was a struggle to keep her alive. After 1 ½ hours the doctor decided to take her to Karoi Hospital where they could do further surgery with the doctor there and have general anesthesia. Unfortunately she died in our ambulance before they reached Karoi and the 2 doctors did a postmortem. They just found that the uterus was unable to contract properly due to excess of amniotic fluid she had. This woman was a teacher and the wife of a teacher and one of our fine Christian leaders at Njengenja (40 minutes from here). Please pray for him and the other 3 children left.

Although we had good rains early in the rainy season, by January they seemed to die out. We have had very hot days with many days of no rain. From the end of January into February we went 12 straight days without any rain! Most of the crops in our area and the rest of the country are a write off this year! It has been so hot in between the rains that most has withered on the stock. Please pray for enough food for the people for this year. There are already shortages of corn meal in the stores now!

In mid-February we received that tragic news that David Harrison, a missionary kid of Chidamoyo (1972-1981) and who had returned last year from Jan-Mar 2004 to build the shelves in our new library, was found dead at his home in Lemon Grove, CA. He evidently had a seizure and suffocated. We were all heartbroken over this news and we will surely miss him and his dry sense of humor! Continue to pray for his family (parents and sister) in CA. He had just celebrated his 40th birthday a few days before he died! We praise the Lord we will see him again soon in heaven!

We look forward to the completion of our AIDS Education/Learning Center, which includes an auditorium, offices, toilets, library and small kitchen area, and storeroom. Planned dedication is on 3-April with people from the UK and US as well as local officials attending. We are dedicating the library to David for the work he did in it and also to Lynda Nutt, another missionary kid from Chidamoyo who died in January this year.