The Beach!

Josh went to Central African Republic in May and all of the other expats in our area were either home in the States or on Yaounde (12 hours away) for a meeting. So as not to be the only missionaries left in Banyo, Charlie and I headed down to Yaounde as well to hang out with friends. We thought Josh would be in CAR for a month, but he was able to get the work done earlier than expected. He returned to Yaounde and we had a week to wait before our ride back to Banyo would be finished with his meetings, so we decided to drive a few hours to the coast of Cameroon. You may remember that last year when we evacuated, we went to Kribi to “wait out the situation” in hopes of a quick return. Well, a year later we returned to Kribi with a lot less stress and worry. All we had to worry about was this:

Ah, the beautiful ocean was just steps from our hotel door! (So close in fact that one night our room flooded- water, sand, seaweed, crabs, and all!) We lounged and played and ate so much fish and shrimp! It was a great break and we are thankful for the time to rest and play as a family!

 

 

Danforth Days in Banyo!

I have always wanted to be one of the cool bloggers that have guest bloggers on their blog! Well, I don't know if this counts or not- but I stole a blog from the Danforths about their visit to Banyo. Why rewrite a blog that was done so well already?! Enjoy!



Oh, what fun!  We had a super 2 days with the Shinars, and I can tell you honestly that though we miss them at Gamboula, it was wondrous to see them shine in this new place of ministry.   Josh was a delight with his enthusiasm over the great new system of internet he had installed for the whole station. They have had some disappointments lately with believers, and Josh has taken some major responsibilities on just for the They have had some disappointments lately with believers, and Josh has taken some major responsibilities on just for the interim.

 

Charlie was fun, not just because she is the cutest little curly top, but she is a trip to have a conversation with.   She sure latched on to Grandpa Roy – they were coloring partners.

 



We had a tour of the very nicely kept hospital, and Lori has many new friends there, including Dr. Smith, one of the most humble and gentle men I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.  Lori does home visits to Fulani, and we were privileged to go with her to the home of one of the cutest little old men you’d ever hope to see.  He was hit by a motorcycle 8 months ago, resulting in 2 broken legs and a broken arm.  When we asked if he’d mind us taking pictures, he turned to me and asked me if I had any teeth for him!  Oh my goodness what a kick!  His 4 front top teeth are missing, and he’s always asking Lori if she has teeth for him!  Well, when he found out I didn’t just happen to have dentures in my pocket, he proceeded to pull out a mirror to make sure his hat was sitting exactly right on his head.   After 3 or maybe 4 adjustments, he was satisfied and let John take his photo (which for some reason disappeared from the camera).  He was SO serious, no smiles for the camera – partially because of his missing teeth, I suppose.

 

He sure was smiley as we talked to him.  He was at the point in his rehab that it was time for him to stand up for the first time in 8 months, so Lori and I helped him up.  He did have to be convinced beforehand that his legs wouldn’t just break again under his weight.  (What weight?!?!—he probably weighs 90 lbs dripping wet!)  Though Lori was chatting with him in fulfulde the whole time, at one point he turned to me and said over and over again as if she wouldn’t understand, “you tell Charlie’s mama thank you, thank you”.   Lori’s eyes teared up, mine too, and she quickly changed the subject, but that was AWESOME.  What love and friendship has grown there!  Lori always takes along one of the Fulani guy believers, so that the door she opens by showering love and care can be followed up on with deep talk, heart sharing, and prayer.

We were thrilled to worship with Fulani Jesus followers and to meet the Shinars’ friends, including some orphan boys who are lovingly being cared for believers on the station.

Our travels on the long road north were punctuated by beautiful scenery, very unlike what we are used to in CAR.  God is good, all the time!

A Zack attack in Banyo!

In May, we had a most excellent visitor- Josh's brother Zack also known as “bro,” “Uncle Zack” or “Dr. Zack.” The day after he arrived in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, he jumped full on into African life- he took public transport! Many, many hours were spent cramped in a smelly, bumpy bus. There were even “salesmen” on the bus trying to sell medical supplies like blood pressure cuffs. True to Zack Shinar fashion, he was an enthusiastic participant in the new experience.

Fast forward to his last day, the Baptist Hospital of Banyo had a special service to thank Zack for his work at the hospital.

At the ceremony, one of the men prayed that Zack would have more energy to do more good works. More energy?! I don't think anyone that knows Zack would think that he lacks energy! True to form, Zack saw and did everything that Banyo had to offer:

• He worked daily with Dr. Smith at the hospital seeing patients and participating in surgeries.

• He ran up Mount Banyo every chance he got.
• He walked to places I have never even been in Banyo.
• He went to the cow market and ate “questionable meat.”
• He hosted “Africa Gospel Radio” twice.
• He thoroughly entertained Charlie

 

• He helped the pastor's wife pull weeds in her garden.
• He went to the local Labor Day parade.
• He helped teach masculine and feminine nouns to people learning English.
• He rode a rickety bike here, there, and everywhere.
• He navigated the market by himself.
• He taught the hospital staff about EKGs, medications, emergency diagnostics, etc.
• He set up an “emergency corner” where supplies for emergencies could be easily obtained.
• He beat up Josh a bit

• And much more!

We had a great time with Zack and were sad to see him go! You can check out some of his radio appearances and an interview he did with the hospital's Nurse Anesthetist here: http://edecmo.org/edecmo-episode-9-antithesis-ecpr-african-inginuity/

Velveeta hoarders

One of our expat friends is leaving Banyo to return to the United States. Although we will miss her, truth be told whenever a Westerner leaves there is always a silver lining- free stuff they can't or don't want to take home with them.

Today, we scored a box of Velveeta. Yes, that gelatinous, glaringly yellow possessed American “cheese.” It was expired by a month and a ¼ of it had already been eaten, yet we were ecstatic! We sliced a few chunks off immediately and ate it straight. All three of us were oohing and aahing. Then we had nachos! That box of Velveeta is such a treat for us. Cheese is like $9 a pound here and the closest place we can get it is 9 hours away. I am sure we will hoard the rest and eat it for “special occasion” meals. That is what happens with any food item that is rare, expensive, or brought over from the States- it turns us into squirrel like food hoarders! Giddy, squirrel like food hoarders!

Jealousy and perspective!

The other day I commented on two of my friends' Facebook statuses that I was jealous. Jealous of what? One went to a movie alone and the other went to Target alone- as in without children. Every once and a while, I get stir crazy. We do not have a car which means I cannot “up and go somewhere” on a whim, not that there is a lot to do around here (especially after 6pm). Really I only get for the occasional trip to the market or to visit patients in the bush- neither of which would I classify as “relaxing.” And the without kids part, oh how I would love to go somewhere fun without a toddler saying “mommy” 5 million times per minute. Jealous. Jealous. Jealous.

Then today I went to visit a patient in the bush only to learn that he had died yesterday. He was really sick and in pain, so it was not unexpected news. A Fulbe friend and I sat with the family, gave our condolences, and prayed with them. On our hour drive home, we discussed what happens when a Fulbe person dies. There is no “funeral” and the body is buried immediately. If it a man that dies, his wife (or wives) must remain at the place where he died for 4 months and 10 days. As in they cannot leave. They cannot go to the market or a friend's house. They are also not allowed to bathe or even change their clothes for 4 months and 10 days.

So while I may not be able to roam the glorious aisles of Target, at least I am not in mourning and stinky. Perspective. Perspective. Perspective.

Josh's blog about Mbingo

I thought I'd commit briefly on what I did these last 41 days. A few months ago while attending a regional conference of missionaries, I made my nerdiness known (yes I realize that it is impossible for me not to) and was asked to fix an imminent problem at a hospital an hour away. It had been down for over a week and they knew the problem was on their side. I happened to guess what the problem was off the top of my head so just hours later with the help of Chris Jackson, it was working again. I was asked to return as soon as I could and teach their IT guys how to manage their fairly complex network.

 As things do, it began to snowball and the idea turned into: move out there, teach a month long class to all the regional hospital IT guys, fix the hospital's network, write a few databases, and on and on and on... Lori, our sending organization and expat friends all prayed about it and decided that a 1.5 month-long trip would be a great idea. We all moved out to Mbingo on February 4^th, to a beautiful house full of luxuries (washing machine, microwave!) and immediately started work. Fourteen IT guys (and even a girl!!!) came from as far as 9 hrs away.

They spent 2 weeks, 3 hrs a day (including Saturdays) listening to me babel on about subnet masks, parabolic antennas, and structured wiring to name a few. I gave them a quiz everyday and even a final exam. They all tried very hard and did very well. I was impressed that they understood me as well as they did. They each received a certificate of completion. Two of the Mbingo Hospital IT guys and one expat, Jesse Paulsen, took the class and continued to work with me for the next month at Mbingo hospital.

We completely rebuilt the network. Mbingo Hospital is a massive hospital with over 300 beds, digital X-rays, Electronic Medical Records, case logs, and electronic billing. It has 24 routers/APs (even after it was greatly simplified), 12 switches, 12,000 ft of Cat5 cable, 5 servers and spans over ¾ of a square mile. There are over 275 devices on the network including each doctor's tablet. Needless to say, I worked continuously alongside the three other guys the entire time. We greatly simplified the network, removing stuff that had built up for the last decade without anyone redoing it. We removed 2,000 ft of cable that was causing loops and reorganized the rest so that future folks could more rapidly understand and make adjustments to it. The problem was that so many people had come and worked on it for short periods, but no one had spent the necessary time to completely reevaluate it. We trekked around the premises removing bad APs, realigned them, changed the frequencies, relocated them, optimized them, removed them, simplified them... Overall the wireless network was running considerable better. We added a Linux firewall to filter inappropriate content, block bandwidth hogs, and block facebook and other social media sites during work hours (extremely popular amongst some and not so much for others). We added an internal portal website which allowed the staff to more rapidly look up phone extensions, connect to internal servers, and test their connections.

 We also created a program which would monitor all the devices on the network and alert when something went down. I presented my findings to the heads of the hospital and made some future recommendations which they seemed to take seriously. Overall I had a wonderful time, lost some weight, and felt some significant improvements to the hospital's network were made. Hopefully the training I did will allow these 14 Cameroonian IT guys to further God's love and mercy through improvements in the Cameroonian hospital systems.

Of mice and chemo!

Asha (hello)! We just returned from Mbingo, Cameroon! Mbingo Baptist Hospital is an amazing place that does things most other African hospitals couldn't even dream of like a surgical education program, physical therapy, and cancer treatments!

When I was preparing to come to Africa, people would ask what are you going to do there? Will you be working with chemotherapy? I would laugh. Ha, yeah right! Well, you never know how God will use your skills! The real reason for our trip to Mbingo was for Josh to work on the hospital's internet network. He worked long, exhausting hours on that thing (maybe when he recovers I can get him to blog about it). So even though I was the “plus one” of the invitation, I helped out in the oncology clinic where they treat breast cancer, cancers related to HIV, head/neck cancers, lymphomas, and more. They give chemotherapy to about 30 patients a week. For my heme/onc friends, they give Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin, Etoposide, Methotrexate, Bleomycin and more. They give the real deal chemotherapies!

 

The outside of the oncology clinic

Now let's just take a moment and realize how amazing that is. Medical care in Africa is difficult. There is limited money and supplies and can we just talk about the mice?! I ranted the other day on Facebook that I saw a mouse in the maternity ward. Yep right there with the brand spanking new babies. A doctor friend told me that she was getting a piece of equipment out of a bag and found two mice in there! They had torn up the instruction manual and made a nest in the bag! But that is not all, after the mice made their exit- there was also roach in the bag! Two mice and a roach on a piece of equipment that was then used on a child- that is medicine in Africa. And this is at the “Mayo Clinic of Cameroon” - the nicest hospital I have ever seen in Africa.

All that to say, giving chemotherapy in Mbingo is awesome. It is so needed. Cancer is the number one killer world wide and Africa is not exempt. Three lovely nurses manage the oncology clinic.

 

Nurses Judith and Helemina

They have never had any formal education about the medications they are giving. Chemotherapy while life saving is also dangerous. It is known to cause cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, chromosomal changes, and more to those repeatedly exposed to it. Several studies of oncology nurses have found traces of chemotherapy in the nurses' urine! When I first arrived at the clinic, I was shocked to see the nurses mix the chemo at the patients' bedsides. There were small, red kool-aid colored pools all over the room- Doxorubicin (and who knows how many other small spills of chemo that are colorless). The safety of the nurses became one of my top priorities. I am happy to say that they are now mixing the chemotherapy under a homemade hood (well most of the time- baby steps). We also worked on the importance of checking blood flow and preventing extravasation. They had never checked blood flow! They also never double checked the dose ordered. Now, they get out the calculator to check BSA and the dose. Can I get an amen?! For patient safety and employee sanity, I converted the chemotherapy protocols into pre-printed orders. Doctors have to write less and it is easier for the nurses to calculate doses. Hopefully these little changes will make a big difference for the staff and the patients.

 Me, a patient, and nurse Helemina

Also, we got to take a helicopter home to Banyo because it was already at the hospital to bring a critically ill patient. The helicopter was a lot of fun!