ANNE

Travel News: I will be making a previously unscheduled trip back to the UK early in 2009 for a very special reason – to meet Wendy and Martin’s first baby!  Baby Rowntree will make his or her appearance around the 3^rd January; there has been some doubt over dates as Wendy had been calculating it as she does for her four-legged patients! We are all thrilled to bits.

Work:

Scunnered! VSO has kindly given me the job of writing part of a tool to be used by new volunteers. This work has to be completed by the end of August. Schools start again here on the 1^st September so I am not sure when the holidays start for me.

Home:

After a couple of trouble free months, the new gas fridge has gone bonkers and is not working. In spite of François’ best efforts, the cooker is as bad as ever – if I use the oven, I can’t use the burners and vice versa. Unfortunately even expensive items like white goods do not come with guarantees here so the hospital has had a lot of expense for little or no gain.

On the bright side though, after many phone calls and visits, we finally got fresh milk and had cornflakes for breakfast today and coffee with milk. On top of that excitement, I found a mushroom growing in the garden yesterday. After checking with Lydia, we shared it and survived!

We have now had a bat, a cat, a rat and a komodo dragon in the house and 2 scorpions on the veranda. What next?

Godam:

This week he is working off some of the world debt he owes me by helping to translate the notes Shona wants to leave behind at the hospital.

Lydia:

This week Lydia gave her mother a choice – food now or seeds to grow food for later. Her mother chose food now.

Village life:

We were roused on Wednesday by insistent ringing of the church bell at 5.15am. When we asked the significance of it, we were told that it was the pastor summoning his flock to work in the church fields.

Market:

With the disappearance of mangoes a few weeks ago, there is little to buy – only onions, okra, a few small aubergines and meat. Only one cow was killed this week as there is little money about until there is something to harvest.

Random facts/thoughts:

• The standard of French spoken here is low; we were recently non-plussed to be introduced to a lovely young girl as “notre dernier fils, Benjamine” (our last son!).
• Things we miss: bacon rolls, regular fresh milk and fish

Hamish

There’s been a dramatic change in patients coming to the hospital. Usually folk will sell millet or corn to pay the hospital charges, but they’ve barely enough left to eat, let alone sell. Nobody has any money, so the number coming for consultation is down and those who do come are often desperately ill & usually too late. The result is a depressing increase in the number of deaths.

Enough doom & gloom! It’s great to be able to share Wendy & Martin’s news with everyone. We’re now looking forward to our first English grandchild! To meet Baby Rowntree, see attached scan photo. Glad to say looks like a child, not a dog or a cat!

We’ve just heard from my sister Elizabeth that the folk of Mannofield Church in Aberdeen, have sent us £970 to help with the work here in Cameroon. Elizabeth’s husband, John, was minister of Mannofield for over 30 years. This is a tremendous donation and we should be able to do a lot with it. The minimum wage in Cameroon is £28 a month, but here in the Extreme North most folk don’t have paying jobs and if they do few of them get that much, so you will realise this is a huge sum of money.

I recently heard of a Lamido who travelled to Maroua to consult a “white” doctor. He later checked with Dr Djemba that the drugs prescribed would be safe. Despite Dr Djemba’s positive response, he still found it necessary to have his Lawan (henchman) take one of each of the pills first. Only when he was satisfied the Lawan had survived would he take the medicine himself. Medieval or what!

We don't have access to sophisticated tests here, but I recently discovered how to check if a young child's kidneys are responding to a diuretic (water pill). Just sit beside the child to examine him and his bladder will promptly empty all over your trousers! I'm glad to say the kid's condition (heart failure) had improved, which is more than I can say for mine!

Shona decided her Dad’s hair was getting too hippie like, so offered to cut it. When I saw the look of anguish on her face when she finished, I wasn’t sure I wanted to look in the mirror! The only person in the hospital to comment on it was the head nurse in medicine who said it’s made me look younger! I’ve attached before and after photos for you to judge for yourselves. The hooded top she’s wearing is not a fashion statement – it’s for protection against the mozzies!

As well as treating patients, Shona has started a programme of training in basic techniques for the nurses. Attached is a photo of some of them learning how to turn a patient with a suspected spinal injury. To get them to use this “log roll” technique will be a major advance.

After a heavy rainfall, clouds of flying termites appear. It’s like driving through heavy snow, but the windscreen turns opaque with alarming speed! Meantime, the locals can be seen out in the fields gathering the termites in pots ready to cook & eat – YUK!

Shona

I have survived my first 2 teaching sessions with the staff; most of them entered into the spirit of things!  They seemed to enjoy it.

Things are quite quiet for me at the moment patient-wise, I’ve only had a couple this week.  It’s given me a chance to start writing out information to leave behind for the staff once I’m gone.

I had a paralysed patient at the start of the week, but he was desperate to get home, so left on Tuesday.  We’re hopefully going to go and visit him in 4 weeks time.  Dad’s pretty sure he has TB of the spine. It doesn’t look like there’s been any damage to the bones so we’re hoping that he should recover some function after more time on treatment.  He wouldn’t wait in hospital for that unfortunately.  Money is a really big problem for people, especially at this time of year.

He was a bit of a challenge for me due to the real lack of equipment here.  I had to do a lot more planning before seeing him in order to get him to do as much as he could for himself.  We don’t have things like transfer boards and the beds are really high here, so it was really hard work for him.  Luckily the people here have amazing upper limb strength, I suppose from working in the fields.  I didn’t have the strength to do what he was managing. When I tried to demonstrate how to get off the floor and into the wheelchair, I couldn’t do it without using my legs. Very embarrassing!

His mood was very low so we persuaded him one day to go round to the shower area to get himself washed, and show him that he can still do these things himself.  They definitely don’t think of disabled access here when they build!  The washing area is basically a high wall that you stand behind, which has enough room for someone to turn in, but definitely not room for a wheelchair.  To get to the washing area you have to cross a deep gutter, which has a few planks across it, complete with nails sticking out, to be used as a bridge.  We arrived at the area and realised that he wasn’t going to fit, so he asked us to leave him beside it.  We thought that he was just going to get washed in the chair.  When we got back he was behind the wall; he’d managed to lower himself out of the wheelchair with the help of his wife (something it had been taking three of us to do) and had slid himself along the plank and behind the wall.  They really are amazing people!

We have eaten Godfrey, well I only managed to eat the sauce around Godfrey, I didn’t quite pluck up the guts to try him.  I don’t know how Mum and Dad can eat something they’ve named! Mum and Dad are now threatening me with eating termites.  After it rains here, flying termites tend to hatch en masse and the local people go out to their fields and catch them.  You then soak them in water so that they bloat, remove their wings, fry them and eat them as an aperitif.   Yum!  Mum and Dad are becoming increasingly African now; they even squash bugs with their bare feet, no need for shoes here!

Dad will have already mentioned his haircut and inserted the photos.  In my defence I was trying to do a nice thing; it was really long and uncomfortable for him. I even braved an attack by the mosquitoes in order to do it (hence the hoody and socks over the trousers!).  Emmanuel thinks I’ve made Dad look younger, happy days!  However I think the hairdressers are safe in their jobs.  Dental surgery for Dad next…………. 

Poor Dad’s had a traumatic week. On top of the new do, he’s been piddled on by the same baby two days in a row. He’s a slow learner! I found it fairly amusing!

Mum and Dad are trying to auction me off to the highest bidder, the parents of the bride get a rather nice dowry as thanks for bringing me up.  Since I’ve arrived they’ve had seven offers. Thankfully nobody’s offered enough yet!