Kalukembe

This past week ended up being a fairly quiet week with Tim being able to work on a couple things around the house. The airplane inspection that they had planned to do got postponed until this week.
Late Wednesday afternoon Brent asked if one of us would like to ride along with the Drs. to Kalukembe and see the hospital there. They would leave early Thursday and be back Saturday afternoon. Tim encouraged me to go, as it might be the only opportunity I would get this trip. I jumped at the chance. 6:15 a.m. saw us on the way to airport and 8 of us loaded into the MAF airplane for the 45 minute trip. I was beginning to wonder at the speed we were coming into land on the dirt strip until I realized we were doing a flyover to clear the runway of goats and people. A crowd was at the strip to meet the airplane and the hospital personnel took us by road to our Angolan “bed and breakfast”. I had a nice room and comfortable bed with two bathrooms down the hall to share with the rest of the team. There were flush toilets and sinks but no running water most of the time, however large containers of water and usually buckets of hot water morning and evening. Meals were simple bread and jam and coffee or tea for breakfast. A simple soup for lunch and dinner, usually accompanied by rice, noodles and a corn meal mush, as well as either boiled chicken or goat. Condiments were jars of black olives and a very hot spicy relish. I tried it all, but ended up with abit of “Kalukembe tummy” on Friday morning so I stuck to the rice and broth soup or bread. I think I could lose weight on that diet.
After settling in we did a tour of the hospital grounds . I followed the Drs. on rounds to see some of the patients and viewed my first Angolan baby being born. Over the next two days I spent quite abit of time in the surgery watching Dr. Foster with the aide of nurses and students do amazing surgeries under primitive conditions. Here is a partial list of what I saw: bladder repair , orthopedic surgery, removal of tumors, removal of elephantitis skin liesions, dental surgery, prostate surgery, plastic surgery,. The surgery book showed almost 900 surgeries that had been done since January and a good majority had been done by the nurses at the hospital . Dr. Foster is only able to come every couple months and they leave the more difficult cases for him. We had an anethisitist with us who did mostly spinal blocks, but some injected anesthetics as well. The people are very brave and seem to trust the Dr's. I was amazed at the little children that came and how still they would lie as the Dr. performed the procedures. One of the hardest to see was a little 3 year old boy who had fallen into the fire and had severe burns on his head and face. Dr. Foster has been working on plastic surgery for him over the past year. They see many things at this hospital that we would not see in Canada because the people often do not come until things are quite severe. One young women had a ovarian cyst the size of a soccer ball another young women a benign breast tumor the size of my two fists.

I was also able to watch Dr. Bently -Taylor as he taught students and tested people for cardiac problems. He comes every six months and has arranged for some of children to have heart surgery back in Canada.
The three days were a very stretching time for me, spiritually and emotionally but I learned so much and I am so glad I went.
Our friends that we met here last time Gary and Tammi Goertzen have just returned , from Alberta. We are glad to have them here. Tammi and I are going out tommorow so she can show me where to buy some things that I need.

Tim has just returned home from the airport and they completed most of the inspection already today. Thank you for all your prayers for that. It is taking much less time than he had anticipated.

Prayer Request:

For successful repairs to our power generator

Building of strong and supportive relationships between the missionaries in Lubango

For leadership and future direction for MAF in Angola