Hiking the Gorge

Heading out for a hike of "The Gorge"

Our destination ... the beach in the distance

Having a quick nap to build up our energy for the hike!

Fascinated by the landscape, the plants, birds, ant trails

A termite house

Time for a swim and BBQ shrimp, fish and chicken

"Next time I won't hike in sandals"

Visiting Hospitals in Pointe Noire

Africa Mercy (in port, centre of photo) as seen from the balcony of one of the hospitals we are working with

Taking part in a tour of the cleaning/sterilizing area at one of the hospitals

Our two translators, Davy and Henriette, both from Congo

Henriette works with us and assists on the ship in one of the nursing areas

Together with hospital staff and our translators, we scrubbed and did our best to decontaminate the room in which all instruments are cleaned after surgery, heated in a sterilizer and stored in cabinets. The lone sink is also in this room and is where the surgeons scrub in preparation for surgery

Mr. M. has been great to work with. Trained as ward nurses, he and a colleague divide their time between nursing and cleaning/sterilizing instruments

Countertop after some scrubbing. We suggested they separate the room between a "sterile" side and a "contaminated" side so that it would be less likely that dirty and clean instruments would be cross contaminated. They were very open to our suggestions  

The "sterile" side of the room. Now instruments can be removed from the sterilizer, placed on the table while cooling and then directly into the storage cabinet

Living on the Africa Mercy

Living on the Africa Mercy Ship (MS) for the past week and a half has left us amazed at what is being accomplished through this agency. Over 400 people from around the world volunteer on the ship bringing hope and healing to the poor in Africa. One evening last week, Olive and I attended a presentation by Dr. Gary Parker. He was interviewed in a 60 Minutes feature that was filmed on the ship earlier this year. Dr. Parker is a surgeon who has been on the ship for over 20 years and his presentation was on the surgical process for repairing cleft lips and cleft palates. Absolutely amazing to see what can be done and the hope that it gives to people who likely have faced a lot of ridicule over their appearance and speech. We are delighted that MS is interested in partnering with Chris as her organization moves forward.

This was also an interesting week in our hospital visits. Previously we mentioned that we had visited 4 hospitals to meet staff, determine interest to collaborate with us and to have a tour of their operations. Since all 4 expressed an interest in further education, we are now going back to do a more thorough observation of their process in dealing with decontamination and sterilization of their surgical rooms, equipment and instruments. Chris has a challenging task ahead of her! The people involved in the process have minimal or no training in sterilization. They are nurses who split their time as OR nurses and sterilizers, using mostly old equipment (I am having a hard time trying to find operating information on the internet for the equipment that we are seeing) and doing things the way "the person before them did it". As a contrast Chris gave us a tour of the sterilization department on the MS and for the translators who accompany us (and who are not familiar with sterilizing or medical terminology), the contrast was stark!

On the positive side, all 4 hospitals have sterilizing machines that are working however due to either lack of knowledge on operating them or electricity issues, we have observed that they are not operating them at the temperatures required to sterilize the instruments.

Wednesday evening of this week we attended another presentation on board, this time by another surgeon, Tertius Venter (from South Africa) and his topic was plastic surgery and facial re-construction. He shared numerous photos of facial reconstruction that they have done on the ship and one of the things that struck me was his comment that to do many of the surgeries they face here, they do not have textbooks to refer to because it is so uncommon for these surgeries in the west or if they see similar problems in the west, they are often corrected very early in life. They also face a lot of serious burns and do some amazing things with skin flaps. For someone who gets queasy seeing any blood at the best of times, sitting through this presentation and seeing so many photos of various stages of surgery left me overwhelmed. I am in awe of the volunteers on the ship and their dedication.

I could go on and on with many stories we are hearing every day as we share meals with different people and get to hear a bit about their work.

Ice cream was served in the lounge area following the presentation – they even had chocolate sauce and sprinkles! While enjoying the ice cream we struck up a conversation with a nurse and a physiotherapist working on the ship. We ended up being given a tour of the hospital area. There are 4 “wards” – basically 10 bed wards in which the people recuperate after surgery. There was one for general surgery, two for plastics, one for maxilla/facial reconstruction, and an ICU. There was also a separate area for dressing changes and splint construction/physio. Each patient can have one family member stay with them – and the family member sleeps under the patient’s bed – sometimes for weeks at a time. There are no windows on this level of the ship, so patients are encouraged to go outside for an hour each day to get some sunlight. There’s a nice deck area set aside for them to enjoy the outside. Volunteers are also encouraged to adopt a patient and visit regularly. As French is spoken here and most of the volunteers speak English, there are interpreters available to assist with communication.

Yesterday (Saturday) we took the day off for an outing and a group of us took a taxi for about an hour’s drive to a gorge. From the top of the gorge, we hiked down to the bottom to a beautiful beach where we were able to get a meal of freshly barbequed fish, shrimp or chicken and rice or plantain chips. A few of us swam in the ocean and threw a Frisbee and just thoroughly enjoyed the day off. Some comments on the hike … saw cashew plants, a fruit that looked and tasted like passion fruit (but wasn’t), cassava plants, fascinating termite huts (look like toadstools), highways of ants and melodious bird songs.

Tried to download photos from our new camera today only to find out that our computer’s operating system is too old to handle it. Will have to try to find an alternative so we can get some photos onto our blog soon.

Dan's observations

I (Dan) will add a few more general observations … wild bougainvilleas and crown of thorns bushes are now in bloom here, we have seen papaya’s and avocado trees loaded with fruit almost ready for harvest, small white cranes are in abundance, we are amazed at the colourful and flowery material that women and men wear and the accompanying head pieces that the women have, we still find it strange that it gets dark at 6:00 pm yet it is so warm and humid at that time when we expect it to get cold as soon as the sun goes down and finally, we are told the rains will be coming soon but so far no rain - just warm mostly overcast days.  

We found out yesterday afternoon that there was a cabin available on the ship for the month of October and that we were welcome to use the room. We thought we’d won the lottery! Needless to say, this is an unexpected gift and is making the work of collaborating on Chris’s project so much easier. We thank God for the many blessings he has already provided and look forward to the days ahead.

Pointe Noire, Republic of the Congo

We are finally feeling somewhat settled in the Congo and have internet access right now so will take this opportunity to share a few of our adventures over the past few days.

          We left Calgary Thursday morning (Sept 26) and arrived in Pointe Noire, approximately 24 hours later. Our flights were uneventful and relatively pain free – basically moving from plane to plane with just enough time to grab something to eat or a washroom break between flights. We were met at the airport by Krissy, a Mercy Ships project manager who is our liaison, and Anna-Lee, a friend of Christina’s from a previous trip. It was wonderful for Chris to be greeted by familiar faces. We hopped into the Mercy Ship land rover and traversed wide, well-paved streets – a pleasant surprise for both Dan and Chris, who’s previous visits to Guinea and Sierra Leone had prepared them for poorer road conditions. Our first stop, of course, was the Africa Mercy Ship. We were warmly greeted by many people, most of whom had worked with Christina on previous occasions. The full extent of Chris’s comfort on the ship wasn’t really known to us until we arrived at her assigned cabin. Around the door were many white balloons with a big “Welcome Home Christina” sign on the door. We have since had the opportunity at every turn to meet more of Chris’s friends – wonderful young men and women with a passion for serving others with amazing selflessness, a real joy in living, and seemingly constant smiles on their faces. Once Chris had given us a short tour of the ship we were ushered into the cafeteria where the “hospitality hostess” had set out a lovely cold meal for us as supper had come and gone before our arrival. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten white bread – but there’s a lot of it here and I’m learning to appreciate it again – especially the freshly baked baguets that seem to be served regularly. Once we had received our guest identification cards and completed the necessary paperwork, Krissy and Christina took us to our arranged accommodations, the SUECO Guest House, approximately 1.5 miles from the ship. The apartment we rented included a bathroom, dining area, kitchen, living area, and bedroom. The windows had louvered panels of glass which are nice to direct air currents into the room however, the screens were either broken or missing and therefore let in many mosquitoes.  Fortunately we had a large mosquito net over our bed to keep out the pesky critters and for the most part it has worked, other than the first night when we failed to kill all of the mosquitoes inside the net before going to sleep! Mosquito’s here aren’t like mosquito’s at home – they seldom announce their arrival with buzzing, and you only notice they landed on you after you’ve been bitten and they’ve left you with lovely welts all over your body!

Saturday morning Dan and I managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 11:00 am and head down for breakfast. The Republic of the Congo is a French-speaking country – a language we unfortunately are not nearly as familiar with as we need to be while here. We’ve spent the past four days at this guesthouse and unfortunately today was the first day we were actually able to communicate with more than a “Bonjour” or “Oui”, as we finally had an interpreter come with us to help us communicate some of our concerns. That being said, we did manage to order breakfast from a menu – omelets with onions in them, baguet’s, and coffee with milk powder. We also enjoyed a fabulous “sugar bun” – for those in my family, remember the ones mom used to make, then double them in size and make them twice as heavy – absolutely scrumptious when you’re hungry! Our guesthouse was across the road from a stadium – so we were entertained throughout the day and evening with concerts, political meetings, and I think an old-fashioned revival meeting. We were also located on the intersection of two roads – therefore trucks, cars, people, motorbikes, etc. roared by our window well into the night. We were pleasantly surprised to come back Saturday night - following a lovely birthday party barbeque with friends of Chris’s (and now ours) – to hear some great live blues music coming through our window from a nearby bar.

Sunday we again woke up to music, only it wasn’t across the street but right beside us! There was a church group meeting in the compound – therefore great African singing and beautiful people surrounded us as we had our breakfast. Due to our still screwy sleep schedule we spent most of the day resting. However, we had the opportunity to join the volunteers on the Africa Mercy for supper and an evening church service. It was wonderful to worship in a small congregation again, but even more amazing was that each individual there was a volunteer, having come specifically to help those less fortunate than themselves.

We’ve met individuals who’ve been on the ship for 17 years, 10 years, 4 years, 2 months, or just recently arrived like ourselves. Many of those who are here for 2-4 months have come back for their 3^rd, 4^th, or 8^th time. It amazes me to see the bonds of friendship that have developed between many of these men and women, and how easily they have welcomed us into their group.

Monday we began our tours of the hospitals. We spent the morning doing some initial planning, then visiting one of the local hospitals. Tuesday we toured three more of the hospitals here. Conditions, according to Chris and Dan, are much better than they were in Guinea and Sierra Leone. Having said that, there is still much to work on here. The wonderful thing is that at each hospital we visited they expressed a sincere desire to improve their knowledge of sterile processing and were anxious for Chris to assist them in this process. Think of her as she has taken on a daunting task – one that will take much time, patience, and perseverance to complete.