some photos!

this is my current house










this is the view of the river from my veranda.









this is the view on a sunny day!










this is the MAF plane parked outside my house
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I've had another busy couple of days at the hospital. Update on the fish situation is that the governor came (in the middle of a staff training vasectomy role-play) to look at the dead fish in the fridge. I personally found the whole situation very funny, and had to try hard to keep a straight face! It actually turns out though that he is also a paediatrician (not sure what the relevance is of that and fish, but anyway) so we got him to see a little boy on the ward who has been very sick and we're not sure why. He has some kind of haemolytic process going on (for medics: he had a HB of 2, then a blood transfusion got it up to 10 and 3 days later it was 5 again) and has gotten weird soft swellings on his skull and his eyes have become very prominent, suggesting a tumour in his head is pushing them out. Anyway, mr governor suggested a differential diagnosis of a particular tumour related to osteomyelitis (Pott's Puffy tumour if anyone is interested). He also took a blood sample for doing a blood film which we can't do here as he was going to the capital later in the day. Anyway, little kiddie is basically very sick and was essentially only for palliative care, which is some comfort with the following situation development...The parents have been saying for a few days that they want to take the boy away and 'do customs' which is basically traditional spiritual and magic rituals. However, as a Christian hospital, the hospital has a rule that patients cannot receive treatment and also go do customs. They have to choose to either put their trust in God (through the hospital care) or in customs. So if patients choose to go do customs, they are not then allowed to come back to continue their treatment. The family left the day before yesterday, which is sad.
Yesterday (Thursday) I was on the maternity ward ward-round and saw a little girl be born, then learnt a bit about snakebite management, which included looking at some preserved snakes in jars! I then learnt some more about Buruli ulcers. I was feeling a bit low in the evening - just a bit tired and emotional for no particular reason. I got some nice messages from friends and family though, and made some caramelised vanilla bananas (new combo. verdict: YES) and got an early night. Have felt better today, so thank you everyone for your prayers and support.

Today I spent some time with one of the teachers at the CHW (community health worker) school attached to the hospital. So I learnt about what they do etc. I also examined a lady with a huuuuuge spleen! She is the very anaemic lady after a ruptured uterus, who now appears to have malaria, with tropical splenomegaly. She also gave me a new record BP reading, of 60/20. My other record here is 200/140 in a lady with renal failure who was in clinic earlier in the week, having run out of her medication a month ago! This afternoon an adorable little boy came in with a fractured/dislocated/both shoulder. This happened 3 days ago, but today he came to us by a 3hour canoe trip! As our xray machine is broken, we sent him off to another hospital for xray before returning to us later to fix it. We heard that he was on his way to us by radio from one of the outstations earlier.
This weekend I will be moving from my current house into accomodation with one of the missionary doctors, (my house's family are returning on Tuesday), and hopefully next week our MAF pilot will be returning from a conference, so that will be good.
Much love xx