Daily Life

Though our daily schedule changes every day, here is what our days generally look like right now. There are devotions at 7:30am at the hospital that we attend every morning. It’s about ½ a mile away, but it’s a nice early morning walk.. We don’t have to go but it’s a good way to get me out of bed at a reasonable hour. Everything is in Swahili so we have no idea what they are talking about. Thankfully one of the doctors sits next to us and he translates for us. Thanks Dr. Mike!

Emily and I play with the kids at the hospital for a couple of hours each day. In Africa the hospital does not provide food so the family must come with the patient in order to feed them. Consequently, there are lots of people milling around the hospital. There are absolutely no toys whatsoever in the hospital so we have to be creative. Right now we have been teaching them some clapping games. They don’t seem to have done them before and they love them. We get a large crowd watching us do it when we come.

I have also shadowed another missionary here who is a physical therapist. Emily and I also went to a craft group where they were knitting baby outfits for the new babies born at the hospital. I learned to sew on an old sewing machine with the foot pedal you have to beat up and down. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

This morning I went down to the OR to watch an operation. It’s quite different than in America. They don’t even have an anesthesia machine here. Since it is a small hospital there are only cases going on till about 1pm.  Lunch is around 1pm and our cook will have made us something to eat. In the afternoon Dad gives a lecture at the hospital.

Each afternoon a couple of girls come over to the house and help us with our French and in return we teach them English. None of us speak the other’s language very well, so our conversations require a lot of hand motions and looking up words in the dictionary. Since hardly anyone speaks English here, it’s very hard to communicate without speaking French. We can now speak a little tiny bit and every bit helps.

In the evenings we just hang out and read and relax. As the days go on we will probably do some different things but for right now that is what we do.