Hi there, family and friends,
So how are we doing? Overall, it is quite OK. Making ourselves useful and not too over-worked.
What about the food? More than adequate, but a bit boring.
- Breakfast: Oatmeal (from Scotland), French-style bread/baguettes, eggs (for Pat), and tea.
- Lunch: Bread & jam, apples (maybe France ?), and nuts.
- Dinner: Potatoes, rice, or pasta; vegetables (canned, China); chicken (canned, US) or dehydrated fish.
- Dessert: Apples/oranges, "fake” ice cream (mushed bananas & Nutella mixed and then frozen);- Quite good.
And, of course, there is always Coke (you already knew THAT), other soft drinks, and juices.
And no restaurants in the nearby village that we would consider safe.
How about the bugs?
Even though we are taking meds for malaria, I have not seen one mosquito and maybe have had one bite. They mostly come out at night, and we are mostly inside then, with screens on all windows.
But they do have ants on steroids! One day, an inch-wide column of ½" long ants crossed the dirt road in front of our building. Millions of them. The rule is don't mess with them, and they will go away. Sure enough, in a few hours, they were all gone.
And we do have tiny ants inside the house. Only about 2mm / 1/10th of an inch long. It is small enough to go through the gap between the keys and the top of my laptop. (A little scary). You see a few of them out scouting around;- on the floor and especially on the kitchen counter. They are all over it like mud on a pig if we leave anything with a hint of food around the counter. They appear to leave my pot of tea alone, but how can I be sure as they are the same color? You have got to admire their industriousness.
How about recreation options? Hmmm, not so much.
No TV. The Internet is OK most of the time. No restaurants worth going to. Other than a small village just outside the hospital, nothing but tropical jungle for dozens of miles in all directions. I did bring a DVD and some videos, but we haven't yet got to them. Often too tired at night.
And it's mostly too hot outside for anything physical. At the end of the day, before it is dark, I try most days to "hike” up and down "cardiac hill" 5 times (20 minutes max) and then flop in the pool to cool off. Cardiac Hill is the incline you take to get from the hospital to the housing area.
I got volunteered by the head doctor to do a presentation to the medical staff one morning after devotions: "Electrical Engineering Basics and Surgical Technology”.
So it was to the resident (trainee) surgeons (most of the "real" ones are still away at the conference in Greece), plus the nurses and associated helpers. This was for an hour. I used an overhead projector, translated into French, as many nurses don't have much English. My translator (“Junior”) is one of the residents and did a great job- at least as far as I could tell.
Fenton teaching Electrical Engineering Basics and Surgical Technology
Public speaking is not usually my idea of a good time, but I guess it went OK;- I got a few laughs and had quite a few good questions at the end.
The team working on the CVT equipment.
One of my "must-do” jobs while here was to swap out the failing capacitors in two of their voltage regulators. These are required to stabilize the voltage and isolate electrical surges from their almost daily thunderstorms. They supply the power to most of the outlets in the ORs (for all their expensive / hard-to-fix medical-type equipment) and overhead lights. Before the first one was installed in the Eye Clinic in 2015, there was a steady drumbeat of "fried” equipment, but after installation, almost none.
One each was done on successive Saturdays when the ORs could be out of commission for 2 hours.
In the nearby picture:
- CVT = Constant Voltage Transformer.
- Silvano is one of their maintenance staff.
- Mavouroulou is their technical director, responsible for keeping things running and planning for the new stuff.
- Jacques (behind me) and Jasmin are from a contractor they use to do most of the more complex electrical work.
As most of them were better in French than English, I wrote a detailed procedure in English, and then Google translated it into French. You can see it on the wall behind Silvano if you look carefully. I did that detailed procedure and then had them do most of the work so I don't have to be here next time.
Compared to when we were here last at Bongolo in 2019, we have both noticed a marked improvement. Not only is the Eye Clinic now fully operational, but they have also added an oxygen plant (so they have piped in O2 to the ORs) and are about to commission the 4th OR. But beyond those most obvious changes, we have noticed that things are cleaner, more "picked up,” and more organized, and both the maintenance crew and hospital nurses are more on the ball than previously. We are not sure how that all happened, but we welcome it. And Mavouroulou (the Technical Director) seems to be trying to instill an “esprit de corp" (a/k/a "band of brothers) in the workshop guys.
Even though Pat spends more time in air-conditioned areas than I do, (ORs and offices), she definitely has longer days. She is essentially substituting for FOUR surgeons who are away at the conference/retreat in Greece. Her days are spent between rounding on patients with the residents, doing some office/paperwork in the OR with the residents (more guiding than operating), and then being "on call" for the entire 2 weeks while the other docs are away. But whenever I look into an OR and see her there, she usually smiles, as in the pix nearby. In the OR, they are working on someone's foot. Pat has said she needs to take more pictures in the OR, so maybe next time, I'll have a picture of something a little more gory; ha!!
Pat working long days!
In Gabon, the richest 20% of the population earns over 90% of the income, while about a third of the Gabonese population lives in poverty. As Gabon does have some oil, the richest 20% are doing OK, at least by sub-Saharan African standards, while the poor are struggling. In the small villages, there are few ways to earn cash, and most rely on having a wealthier relative in one of the few sizeable cities with a job in government.
Pat sees quite a few sad cases:
Some people only come to the hospital when their disease is very bad due to the cost of traveling here. And then, of course, helping them is so much more difficult.
One answer to prayer was a young woman who had an emergency C-section, required CPR on the OR table, and for a day afterward was like a zombie. (The baby was OK). The maternity nurses were quite discouraged; they had another bad case the day before, and the family of the woman had threatened to kill them (for the bad outcome). Here is Pat praying for them and, of course, the patient. But now, two days after, she is talking and eating. Pat feared that she was never going to "come back”.
Pat praying with the women at the clinic in Gabon.
On that positive note, I'll sign off,
Pray that we will be especially helpful these last two weeks,
Blessing to all,
Fenton & Pat