Dr. Albert Schweitzer's Hospital!

While at annual conference in Lambaarene some of us took a tour of the Schweitzer Hospital. It continues to function today but the old buildings are now a museum.  I remember studying Albert Schweitzer in grade school but I kept getting him mixed up with David Livingston. Well, since 1977 when I moved to Africa and first got to tour the Schweitzer Hospital, I will not get them mixed up again!
Here are a few photos:

Dr. Schweitzer's home plus nurses' dining hall(now a museum), piano (no I was not touching the piano) and some of his microscopes:







Dr. Schweitzer's operating room and maternity delivery room:





Dr. Albert Schweitzer's original hospital buildings, grave (he died in 1965) and cemetery:







My trip to the Schweitzer Hospital last week was my last before I leave Africa in November, to return to the States for retirement.

Today's Positives:
1. After about 45-50 minutes of a wild bird flying around in the Nursing School office, a yardman finally got him OUT of the office!
2. I took a short walk outside today.
3. I sold some more clothes that were left over from my earlier garage sale.

Blowout!

On August 11th, on the way to our Annual Team Forum conference at Lambarene, my car had a blowout! I was able to control the car ok. I can no longer bend my knee enough to change a tire. Friends started to help to change the tire but those tires are SO heavy so everyone was glad when a man in a passing car stopped and did the actual tire change. We drove about a half hour to a town where I could buy a new tire before we headed on our way.







After buying the new tire we traveled another hour and a half to get to the location of our conference. I ate lunch then went to get my car washed. While there two different people told me that my new tire had lost a lot of air!!! Next I drove to a close by tire repair shop where a hole was found in my new tire, like it had run over a nail!!!! My new tire was already flat!!!!! It was then repaired.



Praise the Lord that no one was hurt, that the man came to change the tire, that we were able to get to Mouila to buy a new tire and that we were able to get to Lambarene before the next flat tire manifested itself!!!

I was exhausted that night!

Puzzled!

Puzzled, or should I say finishing a puzzle that was started many weeks ago. My neighbor Deb and I sometimes put together jigsaw puzzles on my dining room table. When (not if) I have company over for a meal I first put a plastic table cloth on the table, then a cloth one. My company do not even know that I have a puzzle hiding underneath. This past week of my vacation we finished this puzzle that had been "in hiding". Putting together puzzles is supposed to be good for the brain. :-)

Shopping at the local food Market!

Saturday I went grocery shopping "in town". Here is the main intersection in our town of about 10,000 people.



Here I am in the market which sells mostly fresh veggies.



A few of the veggies that are grown here: cooking bananas, peanuts, taro, winter squash and sweet potatoes.









Dried fish is also sold in the market.



There are many small stores in town too but the market is the only place where local veggies are sold.

My African TWIN!

 

I met Louise over 30 years ago in a distant village where I went once a month to encourage those in her Church. She was in my Bible Study for those years I visited there. As our hospital grew, Louise would come periodically to us to have a baby or get other care.

One time I had a piece of material that I took to a tailor for a dress. When I went to pick it up he proudly handed me Two DRESSES of different models. Since there had been more material than he needed for the dress that I  ordered, the tailor decided that I could get two for the price of one! Well, I really did not want two dresses with the same material so I gave the second one to my friend Louise. We had our photos taken. Since then she has referred to us as TWINS.

Louise knows that I will be leaving the country at the end of November for eventual retirement. She ordered nice quality material from a neighboring country and had it with her this time she came to visit the hospital. She paid for the material and I paid for the tailor. Today we had a number of photos taken in our TWIN dresses!! This was Louise's goodbye gift for me. I'll print up several of the photos so she can have our photo as a "souvenir" as they say in French.

Weighing with a Meat Scale?

Yesterday I accompanied the Student Nurses to a village for their Public Health class. There are 16 students and I drove eight of them to the far end of the village. They were divided in groups of two. It was my turn to observe Larissa and Albert and their teaching for the day was that of weighing babies and preschoolers and then giving a nutrition lesson to the adults who were there. They had prepared food which they used to demonstrate how to make a nutritious puree for babies then gave out samples for the babies to eat. The babies loved it.

Here are a few photos from our trip and NO, they did NOT use a MEAT SCALE for weighing the little ones. It was a REAL BABY scale developed for being able to weigh babies in the village, by hanging it to a beam or tree. The babies are put into the pants sling feet first and then they "hang" there until the weight is read. The scale goes up to about 12 kilograms which takes care of the babies who can not yet stand on a regular scale.

Here are some photos from this week's outing.