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Sat.19.Mar.2005 1200h Kinshasa, DRCongo
Parting Observations : Upon Completion of my IOL mini-fellowship, Kinshasa, DRCongo
I have fought the good fight, I just completed my last ward rounds at Saint Joseph Hospital and am preparing for my return to Lodja tomorrow morning, Lord willing all goes well. I have expressed my gratitude to Dr Kilangalanga, Dr Makwanga, Dr Lotete, Dr Bambi, Dr Ngweme and all the O.R. and ward staff as well as the five Op-Cat students who have assisted me in this training. I am the first to complete this upgrade training to the satisfaction of the chief of service, and was applauded as a standard of exemplary attitude and behavior for all to follow. To God be the glory! We all celebrated with a big cake and Cokes and peanuts. It’s a "nice place to visit" as the saying goes, but I’ll be glad to get back to my own micro-hospital where I know what’s supposed to happen when and how everything is supposed to work; I know where to send the patient for labs and what forms to use and how to help the patient know what to expect. Not to mention that I have some influence on how things are run and what music we listen to in the O.R. It will be good to be home. I am very pleased with the skills I have learned and the results I see in my patients, and which they see as well. As I tell them, thank the Lord first. But there’s one thing which never ceases to tickle me: the names of my patients! Making rounds, my tongue often stumbles over the names. Try this list of my patients:
I imagine it’s like a modified game of Boggle®, you shake up the consonants and pour them out, then you shake up the vowels and put one between each consonant: voila! A good name! It sure makes for a whole different sort of phone book, if there was one; or patient chart filing system. Funny living in such a different culture. Speaking of different cultures, I’ve noted some other differences living around the hospital here. I think death gets a higher billing than life. The start of my training was delayed some days by national observation of the anniversary of the death of Kabila, then by the anniversary of the death of Lumumba. Americans, of course, prefer to celebrate birthdays, but many people here don’t know, much less celebrate, their birthday. We hear sirens several times a day around the hospital, but it took me a while to realise that it’s not ambulances, which are fairly rare even in this large city, but it’s the hearses leaving the morgue with vans full! of wailing family and friends following behind. If it’s a widow who has lost her husband she had many reasons to wail - they are very poorly treated, all worldly possessions are divided among the deceased’s brothers and sisters and she is often abandoned to fend for herself in that impoverished state. On a lighter side, it’s always funny to see O.R. staff using shoe covers as head covers, since they don’t wear shoes and the covers don’t go well over flip-flops. The radio seems to be dominated by competing milk companies and their five minute commercials, or back-to-back, three in a row competing cell phone commercials. At the Catholic guest house they have mastered the reverse of Jesus’s first miracle, by turning Wine into Water: every meal the bottle on the table says Sangria on the label, but has cool clear water inside! And the village habits are seen even in the city as they supply me with a fresh towel twice a week, though they insist on calling it a "hand wipe" -- because of the village habit of bathing in a stream and dressing wet, the concept of a bath towel is outside their mindset. So, don’t tell them I have been drying my body with their hand towel! I’ll get back to Lodja looking a little bit like Bozo, since the only cut I can get around here is a shaved head, which Sharon preferred I not do. There is an interesting phenomonem around town these days. Someone seems to have started a scrap metal processing plant of sorts out at this end of town, thus placing a value on such junk and little push carts can be seen full of all sorts of cast aside metal trash. Like an army of ants they are cleaning up the city of its refuse over the years of war and pillages and demonstrations. Engine blocks, burned out car bodies, truck beds and all shapes and sizes of junk which has blocked and littered the streets of this city is slowly being carted off. All you have to do is put a price on something to see interest mount. We appreciate some of the real ants as well that keep our dining room and kitchen clean. Sometimes, in retrospect, even my own blind faith teaches me and encourages me. The other day I had no ride to town, but really had to get there before the bank closed in three hours. So stepping out in faith, I was determined to find a Kombe (jam-packed rattle-trap taxi vans) to town. The first fifty or so passing by were all going somewhere else. A nice man asked me where I was going and showed me the sign to make with my hand to indicate where I wanted to go and catch the right van. With my hand flat and fingers together I was to move my hand up and down as if chopping the air toward downtown which meant that I wanted to go to the main boulevard downtown. Well I got a lot of smiles, but every van door man was pointing down and making a circle in the air with his index finger, meaning they were going to the big round-about of Place Victoire. I chopped the air for an hour, determined to stay the course. When it began to be apparent that you can’t get there from here, our FO.DE.SA. Land Cruiser pulled over and said they were going downtown. In a city of 8 million people! Thank you Lord. He knew what I didn’t, but I had to step out blindly. I even found a taxi back at the end of the day with the help of several others going my way. That evening after dark I went out to the busy street to meet the Jordon family coming to see me and lost my phone. I didn’t notice it gone from my belt until after their departure two hours later. Calling the number it was switched off. It seemed that someone probably found it and switched it off so I couldn’t call the number and follow the ring to locate the phone, or even ask its whereabouts. In spite of all appearances I was going out to do the impossible. After a quick search around the well-lit grounds, I went out the gate to the outer darkness to ask up and down the street if anyone might have seen or found it. Even as I opened the gate, I saw there on the ground a little green light flashing in the blackness, right in the dirt drive the Jordons drove over to go home. I stepped out, the Lord helped. Well, I’m off to Lodja, encouraged and enriched. Lord bless you, each one. Thank you for your prayers and support. Dr Timothy |