by Fenton Rees
It was Monday, July 25th, at around 7am and I was finishing breakfast when Pat came back home steaming hot (and not from the outside temperature). She had been called out at around 1:30am to “fix” a grandmother and twelve year old granddaughter, both of whom had been slashed up by the drunken grandfather with a machete. The grandmother had a slashed up hand, while the granddaughter had a large slash in her scalp, another one across her face (just missing the eye and partially amputating the nose) AND a badly slashed forearm / wrist with some of the tendons cut. It was learned later that the grandfather has died, apparently after receiving a bump on the head when neighbors tried to intervene. He then apparently bled internally after that.
The granddaughter's arm is now in a splint, so it will be at least two weeks before Pat finds out if the tendons still work okay. This is one of those procedures that is far from routine for Pat, (and she is the only surgeon for over five million people right now), so it’s either do it even if imperfectly or leave it completely undone (by the way, one of the other doctors said Pat did a GREAT job)!
Even though Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world (average annual cash income of a $250), there is still a huge problem of brewing “moonshine” from bananas, of which there is an unlimited supply. I guess it is not that different from the poor people in the remote parts of Appalachia doing the same kind of thing. They definitely need a transformation of hearts and minds.
Upon my (Fenton's) recommendation, Caleb and I moved the controller for the water pump up from near the pump in the valley below to inside the campus, so any alarms would be easier to detect. The pump takes more than ten thousand gallons per day and moves them up to two big tanks above the hospital about a half mile from the valley. Then within a few hours of the move, the pump failed. (Oops, did we somehow cause that). Some soul searching as we contemplated reversing what we had done. We had to wait two days for a pump engineer to come from Buja to help us pull the pump out of the 140 foot deep well; neither of us had ever done that and didn’t want to risk damaging the spare pump we had on hand. During those two days, water was rationed, so enough to drink and cook with but not much else.
Well it turned out that the electrical wire down at the pump had somehow been badly damaged, perhaps happening over a long period of time, and almost certainly it had nothing to do with us. Just a crazy coincidence. So the water is now back on.
Today (Saturday) was the first “goof-off” day we have had since we got here more than a month ago. We typically don’t work Sunday, but we are still on campus and that is the only kind of "don’t work" for Pat. So we went about an hour away to a waterfall for a small hike and picnic with one of the doctors' families and a visiting college student who wants to be a doctor. Definitely nice to be away for half a day. Both Pat and I have been working harder than we have worked in quite a while, me doing 60+ hours / week and Pat easily 70+. It is easy to become a workaholic here, both because of the overwhelming needs and because there is not much else to do for relaxation other than books, DVDs, and internet news. So it is easy to see how long term missionaries really have to pace themselves otherwise they will burn out.
Pat is leaning on staying here until about September 20th when the full-time surgeon returns, and I’m still trying to get an answer out of one of my clients as to if staying longer will be okay. Pray we can get this sorted out in the next few days.
Well that’s about all for now.