Today we slept in till 8, then headed to the hospital to update blogs, send emails etc. After finishing we headed back to the mission to get ready to leave for the Aka village. Like I mentioned before, the Aka are a jungle-dwelling people who live very simple and humble lifestyles. We were going to the Aka village to open a clinic for the day so that the people could have access to free medical care. The Aka are some of the poorest people and they often don’t seek any medical attention because they know they cannot afford it. So Priscilla, Miles, the Lunsfords, Dr. Tenpenny, Mama Sarah, and I all packed up some gear to head to the jungle for the day. We drove about 6 miles to the Aka village, and when we got there, people started to crowd. The pastor of the church in this Aka village took us to the church so we could set up our stuff there, the church was the only “sheltered area” from the sun that wasn’t someone’s house. So we unloaded our medicine, set up chairs and tables to examine people on, and began the day. Lauren Lunsford and I took vitals all day and were situated at the front of the church. We both had a chair and then another chair facing us. We both had a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, but we had to share 1 thermometer and one pen. It was quite interesting. Pens are like gold around here, for some reason no one ever has any, you would think we could at least have like a handful, but no, we had 4 pens total. So Lauren and I switched back and forth using one pen to write down vitals for a majority of the day.

One cool thing that Congo, and I’m assuming other African countries do similarly is that each person keeps a carne. You’re wondering now, well what the heck is a carne? A carne is a little booklet that holds that person’s ENTIRE medical history. When a person goes to the hospital, they bring their carne, and the carne is where the doctor or consultant writes vital signs, diagnosis, medications and more. It is so handy! Any doctor from any hospital in Congo or in another country can then look back at previous illnesses and care.

So today, every Aka person would walk in with their carne, we would write down their vitals, and then send them to Miles to explain what was wrong with them. Miles speaks fluent French and is learning Lingala fast so he is quite the help! He would examine each person, ask very specific questions, write down what he could grasp from the conversation, and then send them to Dr. Tenpenny to talk some more. Dr. Tenpenny would then go over Miles' notes, ask more questions, and if necessary prescribe medications or refer them to the hospital if they needed to have surgery. Dr. Tenpenny would then send the patient to Priscilla who would give them what was prescribed, explain when and how many to take, and then send them on their way!

We spent about 6 hours doing this process, I did vitals on 50+ people and so did Lauren…it was a longgggg day!

After finishing up the clinic around 5pm we headed back to the mission. A few of us watched a movie at the Tenpenny house, ate treats, and then headed to bed around 9 because we were all so exhausted!

Below are pictures of the line of Aka people waiting to be checked, us checking them, and also a stud of a kid who is carrying a gun made entirely of plant stems, what a dude.

Let me start by saying that if you do not find yourself drawn to in-depth medical descriptions, if you tend to feel dizzy at the sight of blood, if you don’t like action-packed movies—then this is NOT the blog for you.

Once upon a time there were two college girls named Priscilla and Faith who decided to go to Congo to learn about nursing. Faith specifically was very interested in the medical missions field and felt as though working at a mission hospital over the summer would shed some light on this desire of hers.

Each week of their month-long stay Priscilla and Faith had been working in different areas of the hospital—Maternity, the Emergency Room, and the Operating Room. This week was Operation Week, and today was their last day scheduled in such an action-packed area of the hospital!

Their day began at the hospital like every other day—devotions, reports, rounds—neither of them had any sort of inclination to what the day would bring. However, by the end of rounds it was concluded that four surgeries would have to occur today in the Bloc (Operating Rooms)! This was more surgeries in 1 day than had occurred all week, their excitement skyrocketed! So the dynamic duo immediately headed to the Bloc to begin preparing for a long and action packed day ahead!

Once in the Bloc the team assessed the cases for the day:

1)    A woman was in need of a repaired ureter. The previous night this woman had gone into labor and was unable to push her baby out due to the fact that her pelvic region had swollen to threes times larger than normal! The baby was trapped in the birthing canal so the doctors preformed an emergency cesarean section around midnight. However, during the operation she began bleeding due to tearing in (literally squirting blood) her uterus and connecting arteries experienced due to the swelling and pressure. To stop the bleeding and future infection, the doctors removed her uterus (called a hysterectomy). After the removal, the stitching up process was complicated and tedious and one of the women’s ureters (the tube that brings urine from your kidneys to your bladder) was stitched too, causing a blockage in urine removal today. SO she needed to have that ureter unstitched and repaired.

2)    A man needed two hernias fixed. A hernia is when there is a weakness in around the abdominal area (occurring mostly in men), which causes tissue to penetrate the area, become stuck/pinched, and then lose a majority of blood/oxygen circulation. It is very painful, but pretty straightforward to fix.

3)    Two ladies needed to have abscesses drained. This required tubes to be put in so that continual drainage could occur.

So Priscilla scrubbed into the ureter repair and Faith scrubbed the hernia repair.

Priscilla would be working with the American/English speaking doctors Dr. Tenpenny and Dr. Wegner, while Faith would be working with all French speaking doctors and nurses—what an adventure!

Faith and her Congolese team prepared the patient by cleaning his abdominal area with betadine, and then covering all other areas that were not to being operated on with sheets and towels. They all prayed, and then the surgery began! Faith was in charge of passing tools to the doctor, and pulling skin flaps away from the area to be operated on. She was to pull on a hook that was placed under the skin flap. First the doctor cut through the layers of skin, fascia, and fat using both a scalpel and the electrical “flame-thrower” that Faith attempted to describe in a previous blog post. Then the real surgery began. The doctors cut out the spermatic cord (which consists of the sperm duct, the ureter, the inguinal ligament) so that it was free to grab onto instead of webbed into other tissue. The spermatic cord comes through an orifice (a hole) that is ONLY meant for the spermatic cord to come through. BUT often there is a weakness in this area due to the fact that in infancy a man’s testicles must descend through this orifice, so the hole must be pliable to some degree. Often the orifice does not become strong and tight, so it is an area prone to hernia formation.

So once you reach this area where the spermatic cord is located, it is easy to take the excess tissue (the hernia) that is coming through the orifice, stuff it back onto the other side of the hole, and then stitch the hole to be tight and small. Wahlah, that is it!

After the stuffing and stitching process, it was time to close the man back up. The doctor and nurse stitched the fat and fascia together, and then once it came time to stitch the skin closed, they handed the needle off to Faith! Faith had not yet been given full reign of the needle, so this was her time to shine! First the nurse showed Faith how to stitch so that the skin would come together tightly and neatly. He then handed the needle back to Faith. She made a stitch…decent but not great, so the nurse showed again. Faith made a second stitch...much better, but could still use improvement. Faith went for her third stitch…it was great! Faith’s fourth stitch wasn’t so hot…so the nurse held onto her hand for the fifth and guided it through. However, when it came time to pull the needle through, there was an inconsistency with how much force the nurse pulled the needle with, and Faith’s reaction time to the pull.

Now it is time to hold onto your seats people.

The needle came rocketing through the man’s abdominal skin and pierced through Faith’s glove into her finger. She froze. She stared at her finger as she saw blood begin to slowly ooze beneath her glove from the small hole that had just been made. She quickly informed the assisting nurse (his name was Ruffan) that she had been stuck, and he immediately ripped off her glove. He then yelled something at another assisting nurse (his name was Orcxance), who then sprung to his feet, ran to get some materials and then grabbed Faith’s hand! He submerged her hand in cleaning alcohol, drowned it in betadine, and then rinsed it under cold water while he squeezed out blood from the site that had been pierced. Orcxance then grabbed a towel, told Faith to put pressure on the site, and then he ran out the door to tell the lab! Meanwhile Faith prayed and went to tell the American doctors who were also in surgery what had just happened. The American doctors asked if an HIV test had been done on the man, and Ruffan yelled from the neighboring surgery room that Orcxance was running to see! Faith was worried. Faith tried not to panic. Then Orcxance ran in to the surgery room and made an enormous motion like that of a baseball ump that signaled to Faith that she was safe, the man was HIV negative! Everyone was relieved, especially Faith.

After this adventure, Faith went to lunch before returning to the Bloc for abscess draining. Abscess draining is quite boring, so this story will relieve you from having to read about puss-removal.

The rest of the story for the day pales in comparison to the adventures in the Bloc, however it was Claire Harvey’s 21^st birthday today, so celebrations did take place, pie was eaten, and gifts were exchanged!

Goodnight all!

I’m sorry that this beginning paragraph is repetitive, so I will summarize it really fast, here we go: breakfast, bike to hospital, devotions, reports, debriefing, rounds. One notable thing that happened though was that a lady came to the hospital carrying a random basket that had some sort of wild creature in it. She came to have a checkup done by one of the doctors and just carried this animal right on in with her on the off chance that she could maybe sell it to one of us crazy mundeli that would consider them awesome exotic pets (otters, owls, lizards etc.) but that most Africans would consider dinner. This animal was a pengalin. I would describe it as a mixture between an anteater and a possum. It had hard scales, long claws, and a very long tail (pictured bellow).

Today rounds took a verrrrrry long time, from 9am till noon…wowza! It was a very thorough morning, which is very good, but it was mostly because there were 5 doctors on rounds and one of them is a visiting doctor. On rounds there is a lot of teaching done for the interns, the Congolese doctors, and the nurses. The American doctors exchange ideas with each other and then with the Congolese and try to come to a consensus concerning the patient’s problem before explaining it to the students. Then the doctors decide what tests, procedures, and drugs they want to start and then the doctors move on. There are anywhere between 5 to 8 patients in one room. The rooms are small, medium, and large sized—but they are all shared with multiple other people.

After rounds we went to lunch and ate at lightning speed so that we could make it back in time for a procedure that would be happening in the Bloc at 1pm. We really didn’t want to miss it because there haven’t been any surgeries for a while (there was a surgery two days ago, but when you spend 9 hours at the hospital each day, 1 day can start to feel like multiple days). The procedure was to realign the bones that had been severely broken and displaced in a man’s arm (x-ray shown bellow that was taken at a different hospital). The whole technique to realigning was pretty creative because currently Pioneer Christian Hospital does not have an x-ray machine. So we used an ultrasound machine during the entire procedure to find, move, and examine the broken bones. At some points I would hold the ultrasound tool to the man’s arm, Dr. Wegner would twist and press the bone into place, and Priscilla would apply pressure.

[Side note: If you read some of my posts and become super confused when I say “we” for almost every situation but do not address who “we” is, do not fear, I am not crazy, I do not have an imaginary friend. “We” is almost always talking about “Priscilla and I.” Ok that is all]

So after the bone was back in place, Dr. Wegner put the cast on, and we put the man’s arm in a sling. Both Priscilla and I have never broken a bone (well I fractured my skull when I was a baby, but that’s different, and no my parents didn’t drop me on my head, I just decided to go on a fun ride down the stairs in a bouncy walker thing), and we were commenting on how we had always wanted casts, but had never had one. Dr. Wegner then said, to our excitement, that we could learn how to really put on arm casts by putting them on each other—so we did!! It was awesome, people were so confused, but we had arm casts for today! We used plaster that turns hard when it is wetted (dampened, moistened—all of these words sound odd), and then allowed to dry. So we dunk strips of plaster into water and then wrapped them around each other’s arms to make casts (there is a picture bellow of Priscilla pretending to be in pain right before I casted her, and then a picture of my finished cast with some fun fabric wrapped around it)! So today I broke my arm!

So that was pretty much our day. After the hospital we returned to the Mission, I ran, we ate at the Harvey’s, and then Claire Harvey braided my hair. It is really nice having your hair braided here, it is soooo hot having long hair and for some reason my hair knots a ton when it is wet which is all the time here because it is so humid that it never dries (try reading that sentence in one breath!)!

Goodnight friends!

There were no surgeries today, and there were also no American doctors at the hospital either. During the week each doctor is designated a day off and it is called their “alternative ministry day.” They can spend time with their family, spend time in the villages, get work done at the hospital that isn’t entirely medically related, etc. Today was Dr. Wegner’s alternative ministry day, so he was not obligated to work at the hospital; Dr. Tenpenny was sick at home and was throwing up most of the day; and Dr. Harvey was having visual disturbances (like seeing doubles/not seeing at all); so today was a little crazy! Priscilla and I rode our bikes to morning devotions and report and quickly realized that there were no doctors at the hospital. So there were no rounds to go on, or at least that we could understand. The Congolese doctors, Dr. Noah and Dr. Cyriaque (major guessing to how his name is spelled) always go on rounds with the other American doctors as well, but Dr. Cyriaque only speaks French/Lingala, and Dr. Noah speaks limited English. So we began by going on rounds with them for a little, but quickly realized that it would probably be a waste of time (not knowing what was going on) and we could be helpful elsewhere. So we went to the Wegner’s house and made some welcome home signs for the Samoutou’s house because they would be arriving today. So after making signs we walked to the Samoutou’s and began making beds, decorating, and cleaning for their arrival.

After that, Dr. Harvey called us and told us that he wanted us to come to his office so that he could teach us about tetanus. Dr. Harvey had come in late to work due to his lack of sight, and had been meeting with some outpatients for a while by the time he called us in. There is an 8-day-old infant in the ER who had contracted tetanus, which is why he wanted to teach us about it. He began by explaining that this baby had been born in the village of the woman because she couldn’t make it to the hospital on time. He hypothesized that a random knife probably cut the infant’s umbilical cord, and that the knife was likely not very clean. He then went on to explain that Clostridium tetani (an anaerobic bacteria = can’t live in the presence of oxygen) can be found in the dirt, and any dirt (and the bacteria) on the knife used to cut the umbilical cord could then find its way inside/live inside the umbilical stump. This gives the bacteria a perfect and easy entrance into the baby’s body. Dr. Harvey explained that it is not the bacteria itself that causes one to have tetanus, but it is the toxins that it releases that causes the harm. The toxins affect the neuromuscular junction (where your nerve meets up with your muscle to tell it what to do) and causes uncontrollable spasms that look similar to seizures but are not sustained. It is a full-body muscular contraction that cannot be controlled or stopped. The danger is that during the contraction, muscles in the trachea (airway) contract as well and close the airway. So the main ways to treat tetanus as a nurse are to 1) clean the wound so that no further bacteria can enter the body, 2) maintain an open airway within the patient, and 3) eliminate excess stimuli (light, sound, touch) that would cause the patient to unnecessarily contract. Further treatment involves giving a pre-cultured antibody blood serum (in America this can be cultured in human serum, in Africa it is cultured in horses because it is cheaper) against the bacteria’s toxin. On his day off, Dr. Wegner spent all afternoon searching for the horse serum and eventually found it! 

In the afternoon we helped out with vitals at the ER since there were still no surgeries. It was another sad day at the ER because during the middle of vitals a young girl suddenly died. Priscilla and I took her vitals not 10 minutes earlier and they were normal, so we were completely stunned when we heard wailing from the room we had just left. We were taking vitals in the ER observation room when multiple cries were heard. We rushed to the opposite room to find Dr. Noah listening for a heartbeat, the heartbeat that I had just heard strongly beating a few moments earlier. The girl was cold, and her chest had ceased to rise. She had passed. It was so sad and so unexpected. She had been unconscious when we had seen her before, but she was breathing properly and her heart sounded strong, so we were all very confused. When the cries and wailing started, everyone, literally everyone and their grandma (no joke, when someone comes to the hospital the entire family comes too) came to see what was going on at the ER. All the ladies in maternity, all the other nurses, all the lab technicians, every random person at the hospital came to see what the commotion was about. Women were crying everywhere and yelling chants, it was like nothing I had ever seen. The ladies would run in to see the girl on the bed, yell chants, wave their hands, and then run out sobbing and shaking. It was so sad and slightly disturbing not knowing what they were yelling.

The rest of the afternoon was slow; we stuck around the ER for a while and then headed to the Wegner’s to be measured for skirts and other clothing by Corentin. Corentin (pictured bellow in front of the storm that hit us about 5 minutes later) is our hospital handyman, mechanic, plumber, seamstress, and carpenter. If you need something done, chances are he can do it…or figure it out. He is making clothes for us with the fabric we bought on my birthday; I can wait to see how it all turns out!

After that we headed home, I ran (put some extra distance between myself and a random man carrying 4 machetes today on the road), we showered, we ate some leftovers at the Harvey’s house, and then waged war against three cockroaches—it was a two-thirds victory.

Prayer: That Dr. Tenpenny would feel better soon, that Dr. Harvey’s vision would return or somehow be fixed, and the Mrs. Harvey’s strep throat would get better as well.

Goodnight!

Today we woke up at the hospital grounds; we spent the night in the Samoutou’s house. It was super nice being right where we needed to be, not having to bike 3 miles in the heat to the hospital at 6:40am. I slept till 6:20 before rolling out of bed, making coffee, and heading to morning devotions and then morning report.

We again started our morning by going on rounds with Dr. Wegner and Dr. Tenpenny. In the surgery/recovery room I saw a women who has been here for 2 weeks and today I witnessed her smile for the first time since her arrival. It was seriously such a joyous thing to see. For the past two weeks she has just pursed her lips and scolded us whenever we walked in, but today she almost seemed excited and happy to see us! Beautiful.

After rounds we headed to the Bloc (OR) to observe and help in some of the surgeries going on today. So here goes, the first surgery I have ever observed ended up being….drum roll please…..wait for it….removing a cyst from a man’s testicle! It was interesting and kinda hilarious because Dr. Tenpenny was doing the removal and Dr. Wegner walked in and dramatically screamed “ahhhhhhhhhhhhh” right as Dr. Tenpenny stuck a needle into the man’s scrotum (it’s a little weird writing this knowing my mother is reading this blog…). These two doctors are like teenage boys sometimes haha.

The next surgery we helped with was stitching up a huge laceration that a baby had behind his ear due to an abscess removal. Dr. Tenpenny sutured (stitched) and it was incredible. I have always thought that suturing was very similar to sewing, like hemming pants or something, but it was very different! I mean in many ways it is similar, there is “thread” and a very tiny needle, but the whole technique is very intricate and you basically don’t use your hands at all. He used multiple metal instruments (which I need to learn the real names of), and just made different loops and picked up different ends of the thread to make super smooth and tight stitches. Suturing is seriously an art.

The last surgery was to remove a baby, placenta, and all other dead tissue from a mother who had experienced a spontaneous abortion (also called a miscarriage). The baby was less than 3 months old so I couldn’t really even recognize that a fetus was taken out, it was mostly loose tissue and clumpy blood that needed to be removed. The placenta was smaller than the size of an egg. It was such a gruesome process, so many long metal instruments ranging in diameter were used to soften the cervix and increase its width so that everything in the uterus could be scraped out. This procedure is called a DNC = Dilate and Scrape (in French). I would almost describe it as violent, even Dr. Wegner said that we should be grateful to be women who can receive medical care in America. There is a picture of the ultrasound we used to make sure everything was scraped out, the red is circling the uterus which is a small oval inside, and the blue is the actual instrument of Dr. Wegner inside of the women, and the black area above the red oval is the women’s bladder.

The DNC didn’t even compare to what I got to do this afternoon though! After lunch Dr. Wegner found Priscilla and I and said he and Dr. Tenpenny would be opening up a girl’s abdomen because she was having lots of pain and pressure in her bowel area (large intestines). AND I got to scrub in for real, not just observe! Scrubbing in takes a while, you have to wash your hands for a while in a particular way, from your hands down to your elbows so that dirt doesn’t run down to your clean hands. Then you walk to the operating room with your hands up and open the door by pushing it open with your back. You then dry your hands off (also in a very specific way) so that nothing is wiped with the same part of the towel twice. Then you grab onto your gown, which is somehow folded like a book. You stick your hands in these holes in the folds of the gown and then when you drop the gown it somehow falls perfectly for you to just stick your arms into the sleeves. The gloves take forever to put on so I will spare you from any more boring explanations. So once I was finally scrubbed in I helped prepare the place where the doctors were going to cut. We placed a bunch of large abdominal compress pieces around the area and checked to make sure the lady was fully anesthetized by poking her belly with a forceps. Then the cutting began. They used a scalpel first to cut through the skin, and then an instrument that was like a miniature flame-thrower (that’s an exaggeration), but it burns through fat, fascia, and other stuff I don’t remember the name of. And when they had cut through all of that, we were staring at her intestines. It is crazy how much surgeons dig around inside their patients during surgery; no wonder people are so sore post-surgery! They began by sucking out all of the pus and excess fluid, and then they began feeling around for what could be causing the pressure and pain. They found it. It was an enormously hard and node-covered area of the large intestine and its peritoneum (connective tissue). They even had me stick my hand way down inside of her abdominal cavity to feel it. It was rock hard and would not move. Both of the doctors where shocked and extremely disappointed with the find because they knew that there was nothing they could do. They proposed that it was either cancer or lymphoma, and that this 27-year-old girl would probably die very soon, maybe less than a month. So they placed a tube in the side of the girl to suck out pus after the surgery. I got to assist in the suturing process; there is a picture bellow.

After the surgery Priscilla and I left to go back to the mission. When we got back I ran while she biked. At one point I had to run around two goats bucking-it-out in the middle of the road…oh the things you see in Congo haha. After we returned from the run, we showered (Fun Faith Fact: I shaved my legs for the first time in 3 weeks. Africa turns women into men) and then we began making dinner. For dinner we made fried bananas, it took a while, but they ended up tasting soooo good, almost like candy! We are often forced to be creative and resourceful here. There is basically no such thing as paper napkins or bags here because those things are banned to prevent excess waste. Sooo we used lady’s (unused) sanitary pads to dab the excess oil off the bananas after frying them! The creativity never ends people!

Prayer:
  For the 27 year old girl who I scrubbed into surgery for. The doctors are actually praying she has tuberculosis instead and not what they think it is, it seems really bleak that we have to pray in this manner, but that’s how life is here. Please pray that no matter what the outcome is, we would be able to comfort her and support her. It is so tragic that she might die at such a young age!

Goodnight!

Today began with sleeping in till 6am and then biking to the hospital. Priscilla and I just got our own bikes to use on Saturday and we are super pumped cause now we aren’t so dependent on the Harvey’s or the other missionaries to get places. By the time we made it to the hospital at 7 we were drenched in sweat. Before coming to Africa people would always say to me “you’re going to be so tan when you get back!” and I thought the same thing. When I think Africa I think hot jungles and deserts with lots of wild animals roaming the plains. I also think of people with dark skin, so it would all make sense that I would somehow come back from Congo super tan. Wrong. I have gotten paler and paler each day here. Yes it is very very hot and humid, almost 100 percent humidity all the time. Everything is sticky and hot. But it isn’t sunny, 80% of the time it is overcast here. So I will unfortunately come back looking whiter than when I left. Mundeli!

This week Priscilla and I are scheduled to work in the Bloc. The Bloc is where surgeries take place, so Bloc = Operating Rooms (OR). We will hopefully be scrubbing into a few surgeries tomorrow and help out as much as we can! We would have scrubbed in today but there were no surgeries to be done. The hospital is a little slow right now, mostly people with chronic illnesses that we comfort and surgery recovery patients. So since there were no surgeries we followed Dr. Wegner on rounds. We started in the ER. There were a few interesting patients there, one man had broken his wrist and insisted that he didn’t want it repositioned or splinted, he just wanted a massage. Sometimes the patients crack us up here because they won’t want to pay the money for something that could so easily fix their problem! We finally convinced the man (through reversed psychology) that he should go to the Bloc to have a splint put on, and he actually got up and started walking there. But somewhere between the ER and the Bloc he changed his mind and left, because we never saw him again. Another interesting and slightly uncomfortable situation was when we had to check on a women that had been admitted to the hospital due to “lunatic behavior” (ßher actual diagnosis haha).  She was scary. When we walked into her room she started yelling strange things, and pulling at her face and sticking her tongue out and staring at us all bug-eyed. We didn’t really know what to do, and the doctors didn’t do anything either. Apparently Congolese women tend to act crazy when they feel really sick so that people will take them to the hospital. They put on a whole show and often dramatically fall off their motorcycles when they reach the ER! It is hilarious. Obviously we know they are probably sick to some degree, but we are aware that their drama is just a cultural thing too. The women have to play-up their sickness, or else their man will not bring them to the hospital. So we all had this little cultural fact in the back of our minds when we went to see this woman with “lunatic behavior.” She was different than the other sick ladies, she wasn’t whaling, thrashing, sweating, or holding onto her hurting body part; she was just odd. At one point when the lady was saying weird things in Lingala Dr. Wegner leaned over and whispered to me that she was saying “I want to tear off the head of the blonde girl.” He was joking, just trying to freak me out, but if he hadn’t told me he was joking I would have totally believed him haha.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy. Priscilla, Millie, Sarah, and I made cookies and took some naps in the Samoutou’s house (they are a missionary family that have been on sabbatical for the last 6 months but are coming back on Wednesday). The Samoutou’s have a really nice house—relatively speaking—it has fans, a TV, a working fridge, 24/7 power, and two working toilets! Wahoo! I know people always say, “it’s the little things,” but seriously, in Africa that cliché applies to everything. Examples:

1)    The only showers are cold showers, but I wouldn’t want anything else in this hot hot weather.

2)    Finding ground beef in a can is an accomplishment at the market, I know that sounds gross, but it makes every meal so much better and keeps you feeling full for longer.

3)    Egg-less pancakes with syrup flavored water, incredibly delicious, seriously.

4)    When an email that has pictures attached sends in under 4 hours! That means I can send two emails with pictures during one day working at the hospital (the only place with Wifi), it’s incredible and has only happened once so far. Today it took 9 hours for an email with 5 pictures attached to send, but it still sent!!

5)    The fact that I have only had to kill 2 cockroaches while living in my house.

6)    Any drink that is cold (refrigerators are rare cause they use kerosene to run which is expensive and time consuming to pump into the fridge).

Blessings come in all shapes and sizes.

After working at the hospital Priscilla and I returned to the Mission and got changed so that I could run for a little while she biked next to me. This is the first time I have run during the day time, so Congolese life was in full swing. I literally ran past people practicing karate on the side of the street, how random! They even had different colored belts on and the full pajama pants with robe get-up! After my run we came back and showered and then spontaneously decided to head back to the hospital grounds to have a sleepover with Sarah and Millie at their guesthouses there! When we arrived they were beginning to prepare dinner and said that they were having Dr. Noah and a nurse named Anderson over for dinner too. So Priscilla and I decided to bike to a nearby food stand to buy onions, bread, and cokes to add to the meal. It was a delicious hodge-podge dinner and Dr. Noah and Anderson were super fun too! Dr. Noah knows a good bit of English if you talk slow enough for him to understand (he says girls are the worst to try to understand because they speak way to fast), so it is always a good time talking to him!

Now we are getting ready for bed, (but not before Sarah gives me a massage that she promised me). Also, Priscilla is waking up at 4am to Skype her beloved boyfriend Daaaavid, so we figured sleeping at the hospital would be better than waking up at 3:30am to bike there.

Well goodnight friends!

 I woke up at 8:15am this morning, it was beautiful. I never thought I would say that 8:15 felt like sleeping in till noon, but it was so nice. Also, since Sarah Beth Harvey left Saturday, I got to move into her room. I’m not happy that she had to leave, but I am very grateful to have her bed now. In our little house there are three rooms, two have queen sized waterbeds, and the other has a less than twin sized normal, non—waterbed mattress; you can probably guess which one I have been sleeping on for the last two weeks. My bed is actually quite comfortable, and I naively picked it out from the beginning because I wanted a mattress with more support on my 80-year-old-women back. All of my back-pleasing desires went out the window after our first night here though. It is hot here. It is really hot here. It is so hot that you don’t want any of your body parts to touch the others. Everyone sits spread-eagle, arms are always outstretched to air out the pits, skirts are always hiked up a little when sitting…well actually they are hiked up and tucked while standing too. So you probably get the idea, sleeping in a narrow squishy foam bed does not compliment my desire to stretch out and release excess heat. At the beginning of last week I even covered my bed with a towel because I wanted to avoid sweating on the sheets. It is gross and I’m sorry I’m writing about it, but it is real friends. So back to the waterbed. I GOT MY OWN WATERBED LAST NIGHT. It is a queen-sized bed, and the water basically sucks all the heat straight out of you, it is glorious, I was even cold last night! So there, that is a small victory, thank you God.

After waking up totally not sweaty, comfortable, and rejuvenated, I headed to church with Mama Sarah and Millie. It was very similar to the other African services I have been to so far—lots of singing and super fun dancing, out-loud praying, and lots of small choirs performing. However, today I noticed something different, for the offering, everyone literally made a dancing Congo-line to go up and give. I got to be in a Congo line IN CONGO! Victory.

After church we made pancakes! This is another victory because I have literally had spaghetti for every single meal of the last week. Our lunch is made for us by two Congolese girls when we are working at the hospital, and for some reason we had spaghetti every lunch and then weirdly every dinner haha. So you go pancakes!

After lunch I biked to the hospital to attempt to Skype my family. It didn’t work for a very long time, the sound didn’t work specifically. So we spent the majority of an hour doing charades (which I have gotten good at here) and writing phrases on paper and then showing them to each other to try to figure out the lack-of-sound situation. But it eventually worked and it was nice to see my mom and Connor the bro.

Post-Skyping was pretty calm, Priscilla and I biked back to our house and took showers before Sunday Night Live at the Harvey’s house, which is basically a worship and testimony sharing time. Miles and Robin spoke and I was super encouraged by their testimonies. Miles’ story specifically was really incredible and he was very honest with the group—that was really brave of him. Sharing your struggles and victories with others is so healthy and I think we need to do it more often. Everyone has a story or something on his or her mind, we need to be less concerned with judgment and more aware of our health and focus. I do love the human body and I am amazed by its ability to heal itself and figure things out. But our body does need outside assistance as well; I wouldn’t be pursuing a career in nursing if that weren’t true. So goes the emotional part of the human body, we can try to figure things out on our own/self-medicate, but letting others in to help and share the burden is healthy too. God wants to do this in our life all the time. He took the burden on the cross and continuously begs us to let him continue carrying it. Give it to God.

Goodnight friends!