Laboratorys and Kitchens

Last Saturday the new Laboratory opened. There was no formal opening ceremony. However it was important that there was no interruption to the service given to patients. 

Although there was still some construction work going on it was remarkable that the service never closed.

The old Lab was a cramped, single room where different types of testing were carried out and there was no separate area to take blood samples from patients. The new laboratory, which so far has cost little more than £18,000 has separate rooms to see patients, and carry out the different types of tests.

 

We were invited to a meal at the home of Sarah, the woman who cleans for us. Sarah has for Uganda a reasonably sized house with a lounge and a bedroom for herself and her son. This is an improvement on her previous home which just had one small room and no cooking area.

Cooking is done in a small, outside room.

And if you think (wrongly) this method of cooking is inefficient, go to the following linK

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-cooking-stoves.html
 
This week we saw an enormous caterpillar.

This week’s proverb from the BBC Africa web-site is from Kenya: “No matter how hot your anger is, it cannot cook yam”

Doing It With Coviction

Its been Sarah’s final days here.
 

 

The Hospital has a Ministry Team which visits a number of the prisons in the region, This week Sarah went with them to a low security open prison (just one murderer and one rapist) to speak at a short service.
 

All of us spoke with Sarah talk about the parable of the Prodigal son. Fortunately we all managed to escape! (from the prison, not the talk)

 

We had an ‘escapee’ at our house. A couple of birds have built a nest in our verandah and hatched 2 eggs. One of the fledglings had a bit of a hard landing on its first test flight but seemed to recover OK. He and his brother left the nest for good the next day. 

 

We then had a day away ourselves with Dr Corrie. On route the ladies took the chance to do some more bird watching.
 

 

Then there was the chance to try out some of our swimming skills

 

This week’s African proverb from the BBC Africa web-site is from Cameroon:  “As man has learnt to shoot without missing, the birds have learnt to fly without perching”


  

Winter Tour 2011/12 - A bunch of pirates?

24 hours flight, 24 hours driving, 1 birthday party, 3 different beds and a brokn car!!!!!

It seems more than a week since we arrived back in the UK. the flight was not as bad as expected despite a 5 hour stop-over in Addis Ababa and we spent a pleasant weekend recovering in Chesham and meeting friends from our church. And then more travelling.

Briefly:

- we had Sunday lunch with our son, David with his wife Sarah and her parents in Smallford, Herts

- we spent 6 nights in Plymouth with our other son, Staphen, wife Lara and grandson Jonah where we celebrated Jonah's 4th birthday, and witnessed Stephen dressing up as a pirate for a Halloween day at the Infant School he is teacher training at

- we have arrived in Newcastle under Lyme to see our youngest daughter Pamela and meet friends from Malcolm's work here.

The one drama is that within 5 miles of leaving Plymouth the brakes on our car seized up with clouds of smoke coming from our front wheel (despite a new brake caliper being fitted 23 months ago) so a 5 hour journey became 10 hours - thank goodness for Recovery services. The silver lining was that because of a major accident on the M5 no-one could tow as on to Newcastle so we have been given a courtesy car.

After couple off days here, Birmingaham, Amersham (to get brakes repaired) and Milto Keynes!!!