BACK HOME

Back home just in time before the invasion of the bat! In the ceiling of the clinic, we had a bit of a bat problem. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your viewpoint, Mark knew how to trap them by simply putting a bucket below their hole. When they exit, they need to glide down to start flying, thus trapping them in the bucket. Here is a scrumptuous bucket of bats - he trapped about 200! Crazy.
Well, we are all safe at home, trying to recover from jet lag. God was very good to us on this trip, we did sooooo much and were so touched by the Zambian people. I will be starting to get our next team for October ready. Lesa Omepali (God Bless).

Besides running the Bible clinic in Samfya, we spend our day with the home base care clients. With Heather here the program has improved - now they are taking 10 new sick clients with AIDS a month, instead of 100 once a year, and helping them get stronger with their HIV meds, meal supplements. This allows them to get better faster, then when they are strong enough they will get a microloan af about $30 for seed and fertilizer and get taught how to do a kitchen farm. This is Vivian surrounded by her family. This is all done through the local Churches who are members of SCCP - Samfya Community Care Providers. The goal is for the community to be raised up economically out of poverty, to help support the Church with tithing, so that these programs become independent, then they can in turn start supported similar churches out in more rural areas, like the island. Mark and Carmen who have been here 3 years, thinks this is a few years away, but God has been strong here and things are improved sooooo much in the 4 years that I have been coming.

This is the kids ward at Mansa Hospital - filled with kids with malaria, vomiting, and boys with broken legs. There were two rooms filled with kids with malnutrition for slow refeeding programs. These work - the big problem is that many of these kids end up coming back in 3 months time.

Saturday we drove up to Mansa, 2 hrs North, to visit the closest government hospital, "MGH" - Mansa General HOspital. This is the free pay women's ward. For $30 a night you can go into the high cost ward, where you will get some meat with your meals along with a private cubbie hole as a room. The free wards are just open spaces, including the TB ward, with three meals a day of beans and mealie meal (a dried corn patty) that you use as the "silver ware." At least they can Xrays, surgery, labs here and have MDs, though they don't work at all on weekends. An eye doc does do cataracts here every Friday. It actually looked better than expected, though from local experience it takes all day to get seen. Mark had a kidney stone, he was to get an Xray - they had him fill up his bladder to get ready, then had him sitting on the bench behind 20 other people for hours with his legs crossed. When he was 6 people away from the test, they came out and closed down for the day until the next day!

Monday, we took a speed boat to one of the islands in the lake, Mbabala island. Here reminds me of Samfya 4 yrs ago when I first came - worse poverty, little food, more disease, more needs. One of the SCCP employees helped to start a home based care volunteer program here and they got HIV meds right out at a small local clinic, which has greatly helped care for their very sick HIV patients - otherwise last year they would have to row across the lake 7 hrs one way to the stage 2 clinic to try to be seen, many times turned away when they got there is the clinical officer was not there or if it was the wrong day. Here we are meeting at one of the huts with their volunteers. It was a great day, still have not seen any crocodiles though supposedly they are all around this island. We saw a young woman with her arms all chewed up Saturday from a croc near this island. Too bad they don't like to eat the crocodiles!

Sight for Samfya!

We have been extremely busy fitting glasses. Here is Andrea with a client - pretty nice fit! We are getting as close as we can but after passing out
close to 300 glasses we are running out and just
taking orders for next time. We have about one hundred locals lined up to see us every morning. These people are quite grateful - otherwise they would need to travel 2 hrs by car - if they can get a ride - to try to get glasses, which cost up to $50 - about 2 months wages for most - almost impossible. We are still also seeing the everyday medical problems in clinic. The local clinic is still understaffed, though the supplies seem better right now. All and all, things are improving here everytime I come.

Sorry, internet not working well to post often. We have been super busy with eye glasses - 100 a day looking for them and we have handed out at least 300, more on the list for next time and many for first time seeing.
Awesome stuff, have to run, will try more later.