Day 8

It’s Monday. Morning report at the end of chapel service brought news that the premie baby died over the weekend. The news came especially hard for nurse Ann who had spent quite a bit of time caring for the baby last week, trying to get nourishment into it, and trying to get it to nurse. In the end, the challenge was too great. It was another reminder how fragile life is -- how much we depend on the grace of God for our very existence.

Today, the construction team planned to repair the sagging water tower platform. We had built a beam from four 2 x 6’s to span the metal cross-members of the tower below the sag in the platform, another beam to be positioned directly under the sag, two more that would serve as support posts between the ends of the other two beams, and another shorter post for the center. The center post was to be positioned midway along the lower beam and jacked up against the upper support beam to jack the sag out of the platform, raising it enough to position the posts at the ends of the beams.

Glen had figured out the plan for the repair, but the whole team worked together to get the improvised support structure in place. The hard part was finding a jack to raise the center post. Raising the center post to take the sag out of the platform required also lifting the water tank resting on top of the platform. Bud wanted a hydraulic jack for this purpose but we had difficulty locating one. When we finally found a source, the person in possession of the jack wanted a $100 to borrow the jack. We all agreed that was way too much for the roughly one hour we thought it would take. We said no deal. Then we had to come up with another solution.

After rummaging through several vehicles at the mission house, Glen and Bud found two automobile jacks we thought were worth trying. In fact, they worked great. By early afternoon, we had the platform sag repaired at least temporarily. We (Glen and Bud) also managed to improve the seal on the water line leading into the water tank, greatly reducing the leak that had corroded the metal platform leading to the sag in the first place.

If the sag and leak had not been repaired, it seemed highly likely that the sag would worsen and eventually lead to the collapse of the tower and the primary water tank supplying water to the whole hospital. It wasn’t a very glamorous task but it was absolutely critical.

While we worked on the water tanks, we had two younger men dig a trench about a foot deep and 3-4 inches wide from the well pump house to the water tanks. The trench would be used to lay conduit in which to run electrical lines from the pump start mechanism from a float based switch we will insert in the water tanks. This will turn on the pump when the water in the tank gets too low and automatically shut off the pump when the tanks are full. There is no such automatic switch in place currently and the tanks occasionally get drained of all their water before someone notices (enabling back pressure induced contamination of the water in the water lines to the hospital) or the tanks get overfilled, spilling gallons and gallons of good water onto the ground where it is wasted. We had decided to hire the two young men to dig the trench, which would be about 300 feet long. It was a very difficult task but they did a great job and managed to finish about two-thirds of the trench by the end of the day. They’ll finish the rest tomorrow.

In mid-afternoon the construction team had a chance to watch several of the local workers try to chase a green mamba out of a bush. Green mambas are the even deadlier cousin of the black mamba which are known as a “two step” snake, two steps representing the number of steps you are likely to be able to run before the venom of a bite would kill you. We’re told that is an exaggeration, but the locals were being very cautious as they tried to scare it out where they could kill it. When it did come out, we were totally amazed at how quickly it moved. It was very fast and ultimately escaped. We were quite impressed – and much more cautious wherever we walk.

The medical team had a fairly calm day, at least until late evening. Since there weren’t any surgeries scheduled, anesthetist Barb and Dr. Kari got a chance to see patients on the wards. Ann gradually recovered from the news of the premie’s death and then worked on the wards with the other nurses. Diane helped out on the wards and then helped Janet (missionary from Tennessee overseeing the construction of the new nurses’ quarters) for the rest of the afternoon.

In the early evening, three representatives from World Hope, the Wesleyan affiliated mission organization, stopped by as planned to talk with us about their activities in Zimba. We were especially interested in the efforts to relieve the plight of orphans. They spent about an hour with us describing their various programs: some economic development, some legal aid, some home based care, some literacy, some community health, etc. They also described how individuals or churches can arrange sponsorships or support efforts for individuals, trusts within a community, or the overall World Hope program generally. They suggested we visit the headquarters of World Hope: Zambia up in Choma. Glen and Dr. Kari may do that on Friday.

Late in the evening after the team had gone to bed, several missionaries from South Africa arrived at the gate to the mission compound looking for a doctor. They had been traveling toward Livingstone from Tezi Tezi in the distant north. About 3 kilometers from Zimba, they hit a man walking a bicycle who had had too much to drink and was in the middle of the road. They hadn’t seen him at all. Away from the street lights, the night is very dark. Almost no one wears light colored clothing, and we never see anyone other than us using a flashlight or reflectors. The driver said he’d been briefly unable to see because of the bright headlights of a passing truck.

Dr. Kari and anesthetist Barb (accompanied by Larry) went down to the hospital to see the patient. They gave him an IV and stabilized him then decided it would be best to transfer him to Livingstone. He was moving all his limbs, was breathing OK and his pulse and blood pressure were good. He had several bad cuts on his face, some bleeding from elsewhere on his head, and was mumbling in a way that neither Dr. Kari nor the Tonga speaking nurse could interpret. Not being able to tell if the mumbling was the result of the head trauma or the drunkenness, they decided he would be better served in Livingstone. So they arranged to have him transferred and transported to Livingstone along with a young boy who had been brought in earlier in the day with an increasingly bad infection that wasn’t responding to treatment.

The South African mission team of about 16 in four vehicles had been traveling and camping for about two weeks taking the Jesus film to show in remote villages in the bush. The night before last while they were setting up in one village, a man who was walking to the village to see the movie was attacked by an elephant within eyesight (about 100 meters) of the mission team. The elephant trampled the man, breaking his leg and then goring him under his arm with a tusk. The mission team had spent much of the previous night at the hospital with that man, then they had the car-bicyclist accident to deal with. They had a tough couple of days – not nearly as bad as the two victims’, but a tough couple of days nonetheless.

When Dr. Kari and Barb finished with the accident victim, a nurse let them know that a laboring woman wasn’t progressing and that a C-section was probably needed. They stayed at the hospital to do the C-section, returning to the mission house around 3 AM.