KALENE

This weekend I finally went up to Kalene for a short visit. I stayed at a lady's house who is also from Kapuskasing. It was so nice to go visit, it was long over-due. She took such good care of me. I had amazing pizza when I got there a delicious full home-cooked meal for supper. And the next day for lunch we had bacon, sausage, omelet, home-fries and toast. It was so good to have foods that i haven't had since I left Canada. I also got to have a hot shower which was a treat itself. At our place here at Sakeji we only have a bath and the water is heated by solar panels so when it's raining and cloudy, it's much colder outside and then there is no hot water. (This week we've had to boil pots of water to pour into our baths.)

So in Kalene, I got the grand tour of the hospital there. It was much bigger than I thought. And the lab: much smaller. I took a few pictures, so here they are:

For my nerdy lab friends:

The lab is very small because the money is just not there to operate as a full lab. What I understand is they do CBCs, ESRs and cross-matches. I tried to ask what they do if someone has an antibody but I'm not even certain that they do an antibody screen. I could be wrong, the lab tech was difficult to understand, but I didn't see anything that would indicate that they do. They also do ZN stains and Gram stains, but that is it for micro. There is zero chemistry department. I know they do screening tests for HIV. Maybe urinalysis. But I think that's it. Here is a few pictures of the lab.

The road to Kalene was very bumpy and full of pot holes and puddles. It a terrible road, but probably still not the worst it the area. I think we went about 40km/hr on the smooth parts. So a 15km drive took almost an hour. Luckily the weather was good. On the way there there was a puddle no the side of the road and as we got closer, two little pigs crawled out of it. They were so cute! My camera was packed away in the back though.

At the hospital, we went into the children's ward and as soon as a little girl (maybe about 1-2 years old) saw us she started screaming her head off. I thought it was quite hilarious. Kind of made me feel like a huge monster to her or something. But apparently people will sort of threaten their kids when they are being bad that they will take them to the hospital and the white people will give them a needle. So they think we are bad and scary people. It probably worked better before because the staff was all missionaries, but now they are getting more and more Zambian staff, so that will change around a little little.

Sunday we went to church in the morning, which was really neat. I think it's the biggest church I been to around here so far. And everything was translated into English so I could understand what was going on which was nice. After we went back to the house and had our delicious bacon and egg lunch and then relaxed and watched a very sad movie about a dog. Then we went for a short walk to the Orchard Get-a-way. It's a lively place to stay for a weekend with fruit trees, a nice pool and a house-type place which reminds me of a cottage. Maybe one day we will go there. We'll see. I took some pictures of the fruit trees but I will post those another time because it takes so long to upload pictures.

So I guess that will be all for now. Mylon didn't come with me, he stayed in at Sakeji and read his book and went to a friend's to play video games lol. So I don't think he even missed me at all!

Talk to you later. Bye.