an overdue update...

Hooray – I’m back online – sorry its been a while!

Its been pretty crazy at work - some terrible days, some good days and some somewhere in between. The hospital is in a complete state - they are about 70 Million Kwacha in debt and it is having a serious impact on how things are run. There is a real shortage of staff nurses and no money to pay the ones that do come to work (they get about 75p for a 12 hour night shift) so morale is extremely low (who can blame them?). Some days there just isn’t anybody to work, so the wards go without – I’ve been having heebie jeebies about it to anyone who’ll listen, but nothing happens and its now been like this for more almost a month. Ali and I are trying our best to cover as much as possible, but we just can’t get everywhere and our poor students are going unsupervised and unsupported, some are even running the wards on their own! Its incredible.

To make things just that little bit more stressful, most of our fellow tutors seem mysteriously unavailable to help…its not funny and we just don’t know where to go with it. We’ve tried the softly, softly approach – do you think maybe it would be possible, if you could find the time, maybe, to perhaps try to come to the ward, if that’s ok with you, to help out a bit because there is quite a bit to do…and it’d be so nice to be able to learn from you…blah, blah blah… All I really want to scream is ‘please could you get your flipping acts together and do your job’. I’m being ever so restrained but the joke is wearing thin and I won’t be able to hold it in much longer I don’t think. We’re going to give it until the 6 month mark, and if nothing changes…maybe it will be ultimatum time?

I could rant for ages but I won’t, lets move on…

The good things that have happened are:

- We had a brilliant storm, huge, fat rain drops, thunder, lightning – everything…it was just brilliant. The earthy smell afterwards was amazing – it made my day.

- We’ve found a place called Game Haven, which is just that, a beautiful, quiet place where we have nipped in for coffee and toast (I miss toast!)

- We did some work in a shanty town, it felt really good to be out and about. We did some health checks as part of a Church group women’s conference type thing in a place called Ndirande. We weighed lots of babies and handed out worming pills…a good afternoon’s work and they all sang and clapped and gave us flowers at the end – it was really nice

- I’ve done my Christmas shopping!
The cabbages are looking less sprouty and more substantial by the day, the maize has grown some cobs and the hairy bits are sticking out the top, I discovered we’ve got a peach tree and a guava tree – yum!