October 2009

Dear Friends:

Lori arrived 2 weeks ago and she is busy helping me in my work. We are busy adding more and more people on ART and this month broke 1000 people on ART! We are so happy that people are living well on drugs and not dying—but we still see a lot of people coming too late to benefit from ART.

People always ask how things are in Zimbabwe. I can say they are better because the store shelves are full, there is now fuel in petrol stations and people are paid in Obama dollars, but… teachers are on strike, government hospitals have no equipment or supplies or drugs and very few doctors (so people still flock here), we have been out of antibiotic liquids for children for 1 month (but just got some), prices keep going up, doctors are paid $172 US/month (and they wonder why the leave the country), our electricity bill is $100/month, more and more people are coming in with full blown AIDS and too late to treat, we keep having more power cuts, farms are still being invaded, VOA news is still being jammed on the radio and we see no change in the “new” government. People seem depressed and keep trying to see some changes for their lives.

Major and family and Lori and our visitor Charlotte and I spent last weekend at Kariba, about 3 ½ hours from here on the Zambia/Zim boarder. It is very hot there and it got up to 108 the day we left. We swam, ate fish and walked across the dam wall into Zambia. We were celebrating my 55th birthday (I am now officially a Senior Citizen) and Major and Patience 17th wedding anniversary. We had a great time.

We now have a new visitor, Shelly, who is a medical student from Israel and here with us for a week. She is going out for outreach this morning to do immunizations with our team!

Summer is here and it is hot. We are enjoying a swim in the pool to cool off and really enjoy the fan at night when we have electricity.

We are busy trying to finish up some of our school building projects and making bricks to start building a storeroom and a duplex. We have 50,000 bricks to burn this week. Last night we had some thunder and started praying that the rain would hold off until the bricks are burnt! Today it is hot and sunny.

Thanks for all the prayers and support.

In His Service, Kathy