Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Day 9: Rats!


Holly and I spent the morning at the hospital, operated on 4 patients and did wound care on 2 other patients.  Gilbert’s foot looks and feels better, but he still needs to go to Mansa for an x-ray.  I think Gilbert is afraid of me, since everytime I see him I cause him pain. 

Mr. Zulu finally showed up after lunch and tried to demonstrate how to operate the autoclave, but had the same problems we had.  We ended taking the front of the control panel off and much to our surprise found that some rodent (probably a rat) had worked its way up into the panel and chewed 14 wires.  Unbelieveable!!!  Mr. Zulu and I then spliced and soldered all the wires back together, but it still wasn’t working.  The temperature was reading correctly and the fan started, which were good signs that we got something hooked back up.  Then the power went out around 5 when Mark came to pick us up, so there wasn’t anything more to do.

Dinner at Mark and Carmen’s was nice as was our group devotional.  I think I’m going to get away from the autoclave tomorrow and let Zambian’s figure it out.  They’re going to have to be able to do it on their own.  I’m planning on going out across the lake tomorrow with Carmen and Holly to Chishi island.  None of our medical teams, or Carmen, have been before, but they recently have had an outbreak of probably typhoid and an assessment team is going (along with the local minister of health) to evaluate the outbreak, water sources, potential well drilling sites, health clinic capabilities, etc.  Carmen wants us to help her with the health assessment. 
Prayer requests:  1) Mr. Zulu can successfully troubleshoot the autoclave. 2) For safe passage across the lake.

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