New Pictures uploaded

I uploaded a few of the pictures from the safari, and after that, Victoria Falls. The very last picture is of the Lunar Rainbow at Victoria Falls that happens once a month. We were there very late at night, the picture actually looks much brighter than it was. I had to use a 15 second shutter time in order to capture any of the light.

http://picasaweb.google.com/2jslagle/Africa2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCNGU0Mv4tpHDKw#

Back from Safari

We are alive and well having returned from Victoria Falls and an awesome safari in Botswana at Chobe National Park. Both were truly an experience of a lifetime. I can't wait to write in more detail about all that we have experienced. I never thought I would be this close to the African animals. To briefly touch on 2 of the highlights, I'll mention the lion we saw devouring a fresh kill of a water buffalo, and the mother leopard with 2 cubs we saw. Both were incredible.

We are at the Livingstone airport now, waiting to fly out. We'll be home soon.

It's been very difficult for me the past almost 24 hours. I found a young girl named Manga who is 3 years old at the hospital yesterday doing very poorly. Unfortunately, there were no doctors here, even though one is meant to be on call at all times. Even the missionary doctor from New Zealand who is here waiting for his credentials before starting practice was out fishing. It is a very difficult case and Manga is very sick. I worked with Ida, the NP from Scotland who is the Hospital Administrator (but hasn't practiced much medicine in a while), along with a fellow PA (here called "Clinical Officers) who is fresh out of school and several nurses. We did our very best, working together to try and figure out what was even going on. Her breathing has been the most obvious problem, and she has to be on oxygen continuously. She has also basically been in a coma since yesterday.
We worked for about 5 hours trying many different things with everyone contributing as they could. At first it seemed to be croup, but did not improve with an injection of steriods. It turns out that the child most likely has Reye's Syndrome, a rare but very serious condition caused by the combination of a viral illness and aspirin. The New Zealand Doc, Trevor, came back yesterday about 5 pm and took over care. He was also so puzzled by her condition. He went back to check on her several times through the night, and as he was walking home one of those times, God reminded him about the Reye's Syndrome. It causes increased pressure in the brain as well as an enlarged liver, both of which she has. She is getting worse and worse.
The only thing we can do now is give steroid injections (it turns out that I did the right thing by accident by giving her the steroid) and pray. She will most likely die. I am finding this very hard to deal with. I am a little better knowing what is wrong, but my heart is so heavy with the suffering she is enduring. It will be a very difficult ending for her, as over here we don't really have the option of sedation to make things easier for her. I felt so inadequate yesterday, and all I know is that feeling pointed me to beg God for his presence, which I believe He granted. There was nothing of me that managed through yesterday afternoon, I was at a total loss. It is only by God's grace that we as a team kept her as well as we did.
Part of me thinks I should have a feeling of accomplishment, since I didn't know what to do and yet made it through the situation. Instead I just feel very sad. I am sure that if anything was accomplished, it is God who did it. I have just now, as I rest and pray, felt very strongly that God is able to heal her. I am not sure that He will choose to, but I am absolutely certain that He can. I feel peace in that. If He chooses instead to take her to be with him, well then I hope I will be able to rejoice in the knowledge that Manga is running through open fields of wild flowers, laughing and holding on to Jesus's hand.
I'm sorry to share such a difficult story with you. But in every struggle, there is the peace and mercy of God, and I hope that you will be able to see that through the suffering, as I am trying very hard to. God is good all the time, even in a run down mission hospital in Mwandi, Zambia. Even to a little girl named Manga who is very sick. He is with her now, and always will be. Just like He is always with each of us if we want Him to be!

Shackletons

Tonight we went to Shackletons for dinner. Shackletons is a fishing lodge right on the Zambezi river. They rent boats and offer fishing guides, however, we just went for dinner. The lodge is incredible...it's an open air veranda with a bar, comfortable sofas to relax on, and a huge fire pit. The pictures I took just don't do it justice. It truly was a traveler's paradise. We had a wonderful meal, drinks, and spending time with friends. I posted a few pictures.

The mission house where we're staying has a bus to transport the groups, and that's what we took over to Shackleton's tonight. It was surreal riding down the African road at night. It really gave a new meaning to the phrase "in the middle of nowhere". We truly went to eat tonight "in the middle of nowhere". I guess it would be hard to get lost though, there's only one paved road.

Earlier in the day, I taught some Excel skills to the hospital staff. They are largely still based on paper for many of their accounting needs, but they are trying to move towards entering more and more of the information on computers. In the afternoon, I taught some math skills to the 8th graders at the Orphan center. We played some math games on the laptops they have at the school. These kids were so excited to be using a computer and to be learning math. They really enjoyed learning...it was refreshing.

The past few days have been pretty interesting. I have a couple experiences I would love to share with you guys! (this is Jen) Two evenings ago I was at the OVC (orphans and vulnerable children feeding program) and noticed a sweet little girl of about 3 years old sitting on a mat and crying quietly while she stared off into space holding her hard boiled egg and her spoon for her untouched bowl of rice, while everyone else was singing loudly and jumping around like kids do. I came close to her and noticed that her left parotid area (jawline) was very swollen and seemed to be tender to touch. She wasn't talking and wouldn't open her mouth. I did a quick exam (I carry my stuff with me everywhere here) and all I could find was the swelling.

So I took her on to the hospital with an older girl I thought was her sister (turned out to be a neighbor), and waited there for the doctor to get out of a meeting. She didn't have much of a fever, but felt pretty hot (that counts for something here, oddly enough-I think the thermometers just aren't good enough to depend on) and she still wouldn't speak, even with a translator. Anyway, the doc finally came in and thought it was most likely mumps (they have no vaccine for that here), but we tested for a CBC, HIV and malaria. Unfortunately, it was 4 pm, and the power was still out, so the labs had to wait for the next day. This meant that she would have to stay overnight.

Her mother was sent for, and all in all I waited with her for over 3 hours. Her mother hadn't come yet, and she wet the bed twice. I was very concerned....however, come to find out once we got some words out of her, the real problem is that she is quite shy and was terrified of the Mukua (mu-koo-a), namely, me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry...I felt terrible. The poor thing must have thought I kidnapped her! To make matters worse, we had gotten a ride to the hospital in a vehicle that had a huge bull mastiff in it! I didn't think she was scared because she didn't cry...but again, stupid Mukua!

The end of the story is that her bloodwork came back HIV negative (Praise you Jesus!), no malaria and a good CBC, so we diagnosed her with mumps and sent her home. Her mother, yesterday, I thought at first was upset with me because she didn't understand why the Mukua had taken her daughter to the hospital, when that morning she had been fine. I explained through an interpreter and the next thing she said was how grateful she was to me for taking care of her daughter. I fought back the tears for sure. The girl's name is Sibeso, if you were wondering, and she will always be dear to my heart!

Today I got to assist in a c-section and it was amazing. It was my first birth and to get to be right there and help with getting the kid out...wow! A beautiful and healthy baby girl. I haven't found out her name yet, but I'm hoping to get a photo of mom and baby tomorrow. Mom is just 16 and HIV + Thank God there are now drugs we can give to knock mother to child transition down to 3-5% instead of the 30%+ it was before. That little girl now has a future and a hope, just like Jeremiah 29:11 promises!

On Cattle and Computers.

Seeing as we were without power for about 36 hours, and there wasn't much I could do with the computers, I decided to join the team that was going out in the bush to deworm and treat the cattle around the local villages. This meant driving in a land rover all in the bush along dirt roads to little village settlements where there were herds of cattle. We visited 3 such villages, and each one had about 50 cattle. Each cattle was wrestled to the ground by the locals, then the vet (Toby) that came on the trip with us treated it with various drugs. My job involved injecting about 30 ml of de-wormer down the cow's throat and then marking it with a big orange crayon. The cattle were interesting, espcially seeing how calm they were, although some of the bulls weren't as calm. However, the coolest part of this trip was going out into the bush and seeing some more of the African wilderness.

Later on in the day after we returned, the power was restored. I fiddled around with a few of the hospital's computers, trying to clean them up so they work a little better. It's a shame really, we throw out computers of this vintage of the US. In fact, I just threw one out a few weeks ago. Shipping them can be so expensive though, it's often more economical to just get a new computer sent. One of the laptops, a Dell, is now completely useless because it has a dead battery. No matter that it works fine other than the battery....Dell has designed it so that a functioning battery must be present in the laptop in order for it to be powered on.

I posted about 20 or so new pictures. I'd post more but the upload speed is slow, and I don't want to use too much bandwidth (also why the pictures are shrunk down so small).

A Few more thoughts on yesterday

I forgot to write about our experience yesterday afternoon. We went with several members of our group to join a great man named Percy and 3 of the young people he is discipling to go into the village and have a church service for some of the older women who find it difficult to make it to church on Sundays. We sang together, in Lozi (the local dialect) and English, listened to some words from the Word from Isaiah and a message from Kay who is on our team and then we were able to lay hands on and pray for these women.

What an awesome experience, sitting in the courtyard of a village hut, on our knees in the dirt with our hands laid on these wise, devoted servants of God. You could feel His presence there so clearly. And what a strange picture we must have been, a bunch of white Westerners (called Mikua, pronounced Mi-koo-a by the locals), on our knees in the dust praying over these truly traditional women. We took a group picture that I'm sure will show what I'm talking about! :)

All this to say, our God is so incredible and I am blessed beyond belief at His far reaching hands. We are all one in Christ!

Our first full day

My first blog entry! (This is Jen) Today was our first full day in Mwandi. We spent it getting oriented (or re-oriented in my case!) and seeing people that I knew the last time I was here. It is both wonderful and strange to be back in this place that was home to me for 5 months 6 years ago. So much has changed for the better, and yet so much is still the same that it still feels like "home".

I can't even describe what it is like to see my dear friend Fiona's dreams put into reality in a Feeding Center that feeds 236 children a day in a beautiful fenced in facility with its own bakery and kitchen...and playground! Fiona has a wonderful office in the counseling center at the same facility. It was overwhelming how amazing that place is.

Last night I was overjoyed when the puppy Fiona and I had gotten while I was here came for a visit and seemed to recognize me! His name is Bucky. Today, even though he usually guards Fiona quite closely, he followed me and two other women home from the Feeding Program for lunch and waited outside the door until we left again. I was definitely touched and it was good to see the little guy again. :)

We visited the lab at the hospital where we spoke to my friend Heath, the head of the lab. So much has changed and improved! They now have several new lab machines and are able to do some very specific tests for HIV to help with determining treatment. When I was here there wasn't any treatment available and the only test they could do was an HIV test. A positive HIV test has now turned from a death sentence into a life changing one, managable with medicines.

"I guess today was its day"

We awoke in Mwandi this morning after getting a ride from the airport from Godfrey. Godfrey is a very nice man who helps out at the mission house doing various tasks.

I uploaded a few pictures I snapped around Livingstone. Definitely a very bustling little city. The market was especially entertaining. We stopped to buy some beverages so that we might enjoy a little drink at night. There's no ABC here...you just buy it off the sidewalk. Needless to say, this guy had a nice little display of everything you could possibly want.

That was after we spent 62000 kwacha on a pizza, which is about $12. It was pretty good. We had asked Godfrey if there was anywhere we could stop and get a bite to eat, and he took us to Subway. We opted for the pizza place next door instead.

The ride from Livingstone to Mwandi was about an hour. The road is paved now, which is a huge improvement over the last time Jen was here. We napped a bit during the ride. At one point, we saw a dog standing in the road. Most likely a semi-wild dog, as there are a lot of those around here that scavenge for food from the villagers. Anyway, this particular dog didn't really feel like moving from the road. Godfrey did everything he could to avoid it while still manuevering the vehicle very safely, but it was unavoidable. Sad to say it was the end of the road for that little fella. As Godfrey said, "I guess today was its day."

Touchdown in Zambia

Just letting everybody know that we've safely arrived in Zambia. We're waiting for our ride to get picked up from the airport. We'll write more tonight once we get settled in Mwandi.

A few London pics...

Just sitting here in London Heathrow waiting for our flight to Johannesburg. I uploaded a few pics of our brief stay in London at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/2jslagle/Africa2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCNGU0Mv4tpHDKw#

London, UK

We successfully made it to London on a pretty uneventful flight. We've taken in a few sites here in London. We saw the Eye of London and Big Ben from a distance. We also visited Tower Bridge and Tower of London. According to a distant relative, I may have once had an ancestor imprisoned in the Tower of London...I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of or not.

Right now, we've just enjoyed some fish and chips and a few pints in a pub here right on the Thames river...very relaxing as we prepare for quite a long flight.

Also, apparently London has a great subway system...too bad half the stations are closed on Sunday.

Packed for Africa

Hey folks, we're all packed for Africa and are really excited to be heading out tomorrow. Needless, to say, we'll need to get a new picture for our blog. Stay tuned for more updates.

We'll be posting pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/2jslagle/Africa2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCNGU0Mv4tpHDKw#