This will be my last blog post from Zambia. It is currently lunchtime on Friday, but we will be busy packing tonight and leaving very early tomorrow. Our flight leaves Livingstone at 1:30pm tomorrow, but we are leaving early to go sightseeing at Victoria Falls before we leave.
Last night was a very dramatic night. Kari and Barb were running late on the two scheduled surgeries (not at all their faults). As soon as they finally finished the second surgery (at about 7:30), there was a woman rushed into the hospital from out in the bush who needed an emergency c-section. After already being worn out from the two other surgeries, they needed to start this new one. The problem was that this woman had given birth by c-section once before to a stillborn baby, so with this second pregnancy the clinic she was at should have performed another c-section before she even went into labor this time. The clinic failed to do that. By the time this patient arrived at the Zimba hospital, she had been in labor for two days, her uterus had been ruptured for a day, and the baby was already dead inside of her. They needed to perform the c-section to remove the baby and then perform a hysterectomy and then stitch together the rest of the organs that had been dislodged and rearranged. If they did not do this all quickly, the woman would probably die. We rarely see this kind of complication in the United States. Praise God, they saved the woman’s life. From hearing their descriptions it was an extreme tense and stressful and scary couple of hours as they performed this operation. Kari and Barb did not return to the mission house until about 10:50. Meanwhile, the rest of us had started getting concerned that they hadn’t come home yet even for dinner. We had sent John and Larry to check on them at 9:45, and since they hadn’t returned by 10:45 we were about to send two more people to check on all of them. It was a stressful night, to say the least.
Today has been better! We have had our now ‘routine’ activities. Larry, Bob, and John treated the water supply but it will take a couple days to see how well the cleaning worked. They spent some time this morning explaining and teaching to some other maintenance workers so they can carry out the purifying process after we leave. The medical people in our group did their rounds at the hospital this morning; and Lindsay, Tehanne, Lori, and Kari helped in the pharmacy. Since I am now done teaching, I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning shadowing Dr. Dan in the Out Patient Department. I am able to do small tasks and running errands for him, making me feel useful. We all took a trip through the market for the last time during lunch break to purchase gifts for our families at home.
This is good-bye from Zambia, I suppose. I will probably write at some point during our travels from Johannesburg or London. (If I have internet. I may not be able to connect, so do not worry if there is not any more posts in the next couple days.) We are sad to leave but excited to be home again. God has done many great things while we have been here. We have met dozens of amazing people. I, personally, have been so grateful for this life opportunity. We can’t wait to tell you all about it in person. See you soon!!
As a final summary, I wrote this small semi-humorous post below. I hope you like it, though you probably won’t find it as funny as we do. Enjoy!
A typical day in the life of a temporary missionary
4:00am – get woken up early by roosters and stray dogs making unnecessary noises
6:30am – wake up for real and get dressed
7:15am – have a delicious breakfast
7:45am – take malaria medicine and soak yourself in bug spray
7:50am – leave to walk to the hospital for morning chapel
7:55am – attempt to greet someone in Tonga
7:55:05am – be laughed at by the person you greeted because your accent sounds funny to them
8:00am – arrive on time for chapel, but you are the only people present so far
8:05am – chapel begins with singing in Tonga and a sermon
8:10am – all the other people arrive for chapel ten minutes late
8:40am – chapel ends, go to your separate projects/activities
About 9:05am – discover some kind of problem
About 9:30am – start to get a little frustrated with the said problem
About 9:45am – realize you can’t find a solution to the problem
About 9:55am – say a prayer to ask God for help
About 10:00am – find a solution to the problem
About 11:00am – meet one of many amazing Zambians that you can work with
12:00pm – come back to the mission house for a delicious lunch
1:00pm – continue to enjoy the Zambian 2 hour lunch break
2:00pm – wait for whichever Zambian worker you are with to return from lunch break
2:30pm – have someone mistaken you for the doctor because you’re white
About 3:00pm – witness/experience some kind of traumatic event (e.g. emergency surgery, see a man get run over by a semi, deliver a still-born child, find a water tank full of dead animals)
About 4:00pm – return to the mission house and relax a little bit (unless you’re a doctor/surgeon)
About 5:00pm – take a walk through the marketplace
About 5:15pm – be charged twice as much for whatever you’re buying because you’re white
About 5:30pm – power goes out
About 6:15pm – power comes back on
6:30pm – have a delicious dinner and dessert
About 7:30pm – have nightly devotional and praise God
About 8:30pm – shower (sometimes by candlelight)
About 9:30pm – Praise God for another day, go to sleep, and pray to have the strength to do it all over again.
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