Christmas 2007

Well, my Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas either, so I guess we're all matching! I brushed my hair since it was Christmas... then the four of us girls (John and Nancy brought 2 girl sm's with them) made a fruit salad with fresh mangos and bananas and went up to Alan and Pauline’s for breakfast. We ate and then we opened gifts. It wasn’t really a big deal.

Then the boys went back to bed and uncle Alan challenged the rest of us to make six- sided snowflakes out of paper, which apparently is really hard, opposed to 4 or 8-sided ones. We did it though, and Pauline got really excited about the pretty ones. She squealed and put them on her scrawny Christmas tree.

Then they all went for a hike and me and Heidi, one of the visiting girls, peeled potatoes for mashed potatoes. We spent the rest of the time getting dinner ready. We didn’t want to waste the potatoes peels, so we deep fried them with oil, salt, and a little Cajun seasoning and they were quite the highlight of dinner if I do say so myself!

We were too full for dessert, so after we ate, we all loaded up in the cruiser and the dirt bike, taking candy and soap and Lil' Bruce the python, and went out to see Ellen (the lady who does our laundry.) on the way we handed out soap and candy to everyone we saw. At Ellen’s, all the guys put a tarp over her roof which leaks really badly. Then on the way home we stopped to see a family that I visit sometimes (the ones with 10 children) and I gave them some clothes and money to buy shoes with. Then we stopped at Bornface’s house and I gave him Christmas cookies Elena and I had made on Christmas Eve and a bag of mangoes. We found him sitting on his floor, sick with malaria, so we gave him some malaria medicine too. On the way home, I rode on the dirt bike with uncle john and he went so fast!! I screamed a lot. The road was sooo bumpy and muddy!!! Then we had dessert for supper. After that, it was pretty late, so we went to bed.

That was my Christmas. It didn’t feel like Christmas, but it was a good day, and I think it was the most productive Christmas I have ever had since we actually did things for others instead of just gorging ourselves

We washed clothes on Christmas Eve and they’re still dripping wet hanging on the line because it’s been raining every day since then.

December 20, 2007

We were on bush clinic Tuesday and Wednesday. It rained the whole time. We took care of 256 children under five. I think that's our all time record. There is a little girl named Dorothy at this clinic who May told me about before I came. May sends money and I buy food to take to her each month. I see her every time and play with her a little bit. This time, she learned to give kisses! She is the sweetest little girl ever. There’s a picture of her on my blog . This time we took her and her aunt (both her parents are dead) with us and dropped them off at the nearest health center on our way home so that Dorothy could get an HIV test. They don’t know why her parents died, so it probably was AIDS. I hope Dorothy doesn’t have it. We will find out the results next month when we go back there. Usually the guys come over to eat when we get back from this particular bush clinic because we get back so late that we miss supper. Last night we made macaroni and cheese and mango/banana smoothies. We had Christmas music playing while we ate! It was so festive. The song that was playing was, "I’ll be home for Christmas" ahhhhhhhhhhh. That’s one of the few times I’ve missed Christmas. Normally, its not that hard because it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all here. Nobody celebrates it really, and all we get is Christmas day off. Anyways, I’m missing home right now. I took a video and we all told about one of our favorite Christmases. It’s actually kind of a funny video, and it really shows the dynamics of our group and how we all fit together.

Tomorrow is Friday and I’m really glad. Elena and I are probably going to help Pauline get ready for next week. John and Nancy are bringing 6 other people with them. Then I also might teach Chaluba (My friend, and the receptionist at the clinic) how to ride a bike.

December 20, 2007

I forgot to tell you that I helped deliver another baby on Sabbath! The girl was Angela, the daughter of Ellen, the lady who does our laundry, so it was really exciting since I knew her. Elena wasn’t here because she went to some place to help with some orphanage. Amy Armstrong was here though. She and her brother came to Vic falls with us and then stayed here with us until this morning when they left to go back to Kibidula in Tanzania. (Amy and her brother, Chris, were the people Bjorn and I originally thought we were going to be at Riverside with, but Alan decided to send them to Kibidula because they were more suited for that place.) Anyways, so it was me and Amy helping out. This delivery was different from the others because it was in the middle of the day instead of the night. And it was nice and short! She had started going into labor the night before, so by the time she came to the clinic at 2:00 Sabbath afternoon, it was almost time already!

Amy and I got busy cleaning all the dust off of the things in the birthing room and then Angela came in. Joyce, the nurse, wasn’t around much. She was there, but she kept disappearing. I wasn’t worried because she always does that, but she always seems to come back just at the right time.

I started to doubt this though, when Angela's water broke while she was pacing back and forth. Immediately, Amy and I were next to her and we lifted her onto the bed and took off her slip and panties. I was so scared!!!!! Amy and I were both giving each other looks of disbelief and panic. Where did Joyce go??!??!?!! So then the contractions were almost constant, and I was so scared the baby was going to come before Joyce did. Amy and I kept busy telling Angela not to push yet and telling her to keep breathing. Ellen, Angela's mother, went looking for the nurse but came back alone. We sent her out looking again and when she came back alone again, I told her to stay while I went to look, but she wouldn’t stay!!!!!! She was like, "no, YOU STAY” and in my mind, I was thinking, "Ellen, if you only knew how much I DONT know what I’m doing! At least you have given birth to 8 children!” She disappeared again and Amy and I kept trying to sound like we knew what we were doing. Angela wanted us to hold her arms up in the air. Then she was saying she was paralyzed and that she couldn’t feel her hands. Sure enough, her fingers were really cold and they were curling up in weird positions. I was so freaked out. Then she started telling us she was dying, which to me, seemed like a good idea. No, seriously, I wasn’t too worried because I’m sure lots of women say that when they’re in labor, but I actually started to believe her when she seemed to stop breathing and her head fell to the side and her eyes kept rolling back in her head. The trickle of blood coming out of her also worried me. It was really intense. I feel really stupid now thinking about it because nothing was wrong with her, but I was just so panicked without the nurse there.

Finally Ellen came back with Joyce and things started to calm down. Angela stopped dying and Joyce massaged her hands to bring the feeling back. I found out I actually did something right by telling her not to push yet. I was proud that I had actually learned something from my other experiences. The baby didn’t come long after Joyce arrived. The head popped out and then it couldn’t come any further until Joyce cut the cord and unwrapped it from around the baby's neck. Both Angela and Ellen were really disappointed that the baby was a boy. It was awful! Angela already has a little boy named Progress.

Anyways, so that was what I did on Sabbath afternoon!

December 15, 2007

I went bungee jumping and rafting.

The rafting was really fun. There was one scary part though when the raft tipped over and I got stuck under the water for a long time. I really thought I was going to die. I was thinking, "so this is what its like to drown" when I finally came up, I was gasping for air and I couldn’t stop gasping. I guess you call it hyperventilating. One of the safety kayakers was there and he told me to hold onto his kayak and that’s how I went through the next rapids. Finally I got back to my raft just as they were flipping it back right side up. As they did this, one of the oars came and whacked me in the face. After that I was in some sort of shock I guess, cause Bjorn hauled me onto the boat and then we both spent the next set of thrashing rapids being slammed around the bottom of the boat, trying to untangle ourselves. When we finally got to calm water and I was able to start breathing normally again, I realized my braces were stuck inside my lip. (From when the oar hit me in the face) they went almost all the way through my lip, just a little puncture was showing on the outside, but the metal wasn’t poking through. Anyways, that was by far the scariest time of my life!

The scariest part of bungee jumping was the anticipation. I couldn’t sleep for the two nights before I went! Then when I finally got onto the platform on the bridge with my toes hanging over the edge, in a panic, decided I didn’t want to go anymore!! But by then it was way too late to change my mind! Once I dove off the edge, it was instant relief. It was amazing and wonderful! It wasn’t scary at all anymore once I was falling. Sometimes when you’re doing something fast like that, you aren’t aware of anything around you and afterwards, you can’t remember what anything looked like. At least that’s how it always has been for me jumping off high places into water and stuff, but this time was different. I was aware of everything! I could see the water below rushing towards me and I could see the rocks of the canyon passing by and I was just enjoying it, there wasn’t an ounce of fear or any feeling of going fast... it was very surreal. Im SO glad I did it. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone! Bjorn and Josh also went. SO MUCH FUN!!!

December 12, 2007

Guess what I did today! I jumped and did a 300-foot free fall off of a bridge! The second highest bungee jump in the world!!!! I can’t believe I did it! It was one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done! seriously!! so much fun!!!

We also went rafting all day on the Zambezi for one day. Victoria Falls is SUCH a nice place!!!

November 25, 2007

Last night we had another delivery. Kind of. The girl came in around 9:00 p.m. to the clinic (it seems like all the babies like to start being born around that time of night around here... and its always on the weekends...) We were up until 4:30 this morning with her, then we finally sent her to the hospital because the placenta was down, covering the cervix, preventing the baby from coming out.

This girl had been in labor though, since 12:00 noon, so she was exhausted. We put her on an IV before we took her to the hospital.

Man, I just can’t get over the conditions here though. The bed she was lying on has a plastic covered foam mattress on it, but it has a few tears in the plastic. So we patched them with tape so nothing could soak into the mattress. She just lay there naked, with a fan pointed at her, with last year's poster for child health week under her to catch the blood that was leaking out of her. When she had to urinate, we held a container under her. When she had to throw up, we held the same container up to her mouth, When she needed to have a bowel movement she had to climb out of the bed and squat on the floor and poop onto a piece of paper. Some blood and fluid spilled off the edge of the mattress and dripped into a puddle on the floor next to the bed. Now and then a lizard or a big black beetle would skitter across the wall. From a hole up in the ceiling, a huge black cockroach watched the scene. A thick black centipede made the bad choice of being outside the door of the room when somebody walked out, and its dead body lay in the doorway, split open on one side with some guts hanging out. A few mosquitoes filled in the empty spots in the room.

I hope that kind of gives you a picture of what it was like. And she had no painkillers either. Anyways, I heard this morning that she had a C-section and they spent quite awhile resuscitating the baby, which by the way came a month early. Evelyn doesn’t expect the baby to live. I am exhausted to say the least.

November 23, 2007

We had a good Thanksgiving yesterday. We spent it with the Stafford family. He is a dentist who is working as a missionary. We went to their very nice house in Lusaka and had CRANBERRY SAUCE!!! Along with mashed potatoes and all the fixing’s. It was awfully good! I made apple crisp for the occasion. I doubled the apples and tripled the crumbly topping because I always wish there was more. It turned out really good and everyone loved it, but I wished that I hadn’t tripled the topping because it was just a bit much after awhile! They have a nice pool in the community they live in, so we went swimming on Thanksgiving Day! It was a nice change to working all afternoon!

It doesn’t really feel like a Friday. I feel like I’m supposed to go to work tomorrow. I’m glad I don’t though!