The Hospital Grounds

Since we have been here for over a week now... I guess it would be good to describe the hospital grounds so you can get a picture of what it is like... Hopefully pictures can be loaded soon so you can see it!

If you read from our second post about the hospital grounds here is a further description. The hospital was originally designed to be a communist youth camp. So all the buildings and the wall surrounding the grounds were pre-existing, but were rehabilitated to suit the needs of a hospital in Congo.There are several different buildings. Each department is in its own separate building that serves as that area of medicines “ward” (Medicine female, medicine male, peds, maternity, surgical female, surgical male, Emergency, post-partum). Each building has about 6 or 7 beds, electricity, cable's installed high on the walls so IV's and mosquito nets can be hung, and a wash bin with soap on a rope to wash your hands. (little different than at home!)

The operating room (OR) is also in a separate building and has 3 operating suites. There is also a building with a lab, pharmacy, and xray (not currently working), an administrative building and a chapel. The property is beautiful. The buildings are well spread out with grass, flowers and trees between (as well as many lizards, geckos, birds and donkeys). There is also a soccer field!

During the day as we walk around you see patients and their families outside under the trees, washing clothes, sleeping in the shade, making food by fire (they make their own food here, there is no such thing as "hospital" food).  There are often children running around following their mothers or older siblings carrying and playing whatever they can get their hands on... sticks, avocado nuts, bottle caps, expired batteries, water bottles... they are so precious... I

 think they are more used to us walking around, because now when I say Mbote (hello in Lingala) and hold out my hand, most of the little ones shake my hand back... before they would just stare at the Mundella (White person).  
There are two doctors regularly here. Dr. Joe Harvey is an American physician trained in family medicine and Dr. Fuka is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and is trained in general surgery.

We live in the “blue house,” Which is a blue house on the edge of the hospital grounds. It’s great, we have a room with a mosquito net (we sleep under it every night), a kitchen, bathroom, dining room, and sitting area. Suzy who lives at the blue house as well has her own bed and

 bathroom. At night time the Internet works especially well since no one else is using it! It’s a great place to stay… it also makes it easy to access the hospital since we are just a 2 minute walk away from the OR or the wards! We hope to upload some pictures because they will obviously tell the story much better than we can.  

Fun Fact #5: We have some functional art hanging in our house... it is an entire "stalk" of bananas (around 50 bananas)  hanging on a bungee cord from the ceiling. Jean-Pierre cut them down from a banana tree here on the grounds, they were green at the time, but now the bottom ones are beginning yellow... we had a few tonight for dinner... they were delicious! So sweet! So not only do the banana's taste good... they also look cool hanging in the dining room!