It’s been a while...
What’s changed here recently? We still have no running water apart from the evening ration when we fill the buckets. But this evening after filling the buckets I managed to have my first brief running-water shower in just over six weeks. Never have I been quite so appreciative of running water! I also had cheese today, proper hard cheese, after being donated a rather large quantity from someone – not likely to happen again in a very long time, hadn’t realised just how much I missed cheese!
I have run out of instant coffee and am now on the locally-available granules which purport to be coffee but which in fact taste like bits of scraped up street (not that I’m entirely sure what scraped-up-street tastes like, but I can imagine...) Laure-Anne, my French midwife housemate, last night brought out a large sachet of Carte Noir which we are rationing as much as we can and keeping ‘en cas d’urgence’ – in case of emergency – but at least the local fare is helping to decrease my caffeine consumption... The alternative is to buy fresh beans from the market, roast them over a charcoal fire ourselves and then grind them by hand with a mortar and pestle – tedium in extremis, so not something we do too often! Anyone want to post me some decent instant coffee??? The bigger refill pouches that are made to refill a jar. I will exchange for vanilla pods...
Mango season is now in full swing, just under a penny each. Lychees have also just started to begin, saw the first lot at the market this week which was very exciting.
Two weeks ago I spent Sunday in one of the smaller villages 10km away, called Ambodimadiro. We went on foot, setting off just before 7am, which was a little painful, but meant that we avoided the heat of the day. The walk through the countryside was beautiful, albeit very very dusty. We went to the small village cell church where there are about 20 members, and I was encouraged that I understood some of the Tsimihety language sermon. We then spent a wonderful afternoon in the village eating local fare, including locally grown and roasted coffee – mmmm.... It puts a whole new perspective on ‘carbon footprint’ / ‘food miles’ when you can see most of the fields and trees where your lunch was grown! I was very encouraged by the faith of the small group of Christians who meet and witness out in their small village.
Last weekend we were meant to be going to Ile Sainte Marie, a small island off the east coast of Madagascar, for a long weekend retreat. We were all looking forward to it (perhaps as much for the running water and supermarket as the tropical island...) when we heard just a few days in advance that the single MAF plane which serves the whole of Madagascar had been grounded by the aviation authority due to a technical issue. So to cut a long story short, we ended up staying right here at the hospital, but still spent the time as a team together, which was really good. It was a challenge in being ‘joyful in all things’ (1 Thes 5:16) particularly given the rather significant change in location, but we had a really good time nonetheless, and learnt a lot about God and about each other.
I have one more week of full time language learning, and then start work the following week. For a whole host of reasons, my language learning time has been cut shorter than expected, which has made it even more challenging to learn what I need to in the time available, but I’ve been encouraged by what I’ve been able to learn so far. I’m now trying to get to grips with the medical vocabulary and conducting a consultation in both ‘Official Malagasy’ and the Tsimihety local dialect – similar structures, but totally different vocabulary! Thankfully I’ll have someone with me at the start to translate from Malagasy into French though. I’m looking forward to starting work – it’s been 3 months since I’ve done much medical work. At the same time though I’m very aware of the differences with working here, and how I’ll have to get used to a very different way of working – one of the biggest changes being having no-one else more senior / no consultant to call upon. But I’ve been fast learning already that there is someone even better I can call upon who is so often the doctor here when we don’t know what to do or can’t do what needs to be done – Jesus.
This week was a good example no two days being the same and not being sure what to do. We’re often met with the unexpected, or the rather bizarre, here. One evening a lady had been referred to the midwives here by a village birth attendant because ‘something wasn’t right’. The ultrasound suggested that it was possibly an ‘abdominal pregnancy’ – a pregnancy where the infant develops outside of the uterus in the abdomen - with a term baby. So we did a Caesarean section – my first proper taster of life back in clinical medicine here. And sure enough, as we opened the abdominal muscles, there was an arm just underneath! Once we’d untangled her from the abdominal contents, the resultant baby girl was in surprisingly good shape, and 2.9kg which is a pretty good weight for here. Removing the placenta was more challenging, stuck within the abdominal contents. But amazingly, a few days later, mother and baby are both doing well. My rapid internet searching that I’m able to do here tells me that getting an abdominal pregnancy to term followed by the delivery of a healthy baby is exceptionally rare – but we seem to be fairly good at ‘exceptionally rare’ here...
I think that’s it for now. Hopefully usual blog-writing frequency will be resumed shortly. Meanwhile, it’s hard to believe that we’re on the run up to Christmas and that Advent starts tomorrow. We’re still pretty high on the thermometer settings with no sign of any relief on that front until partway into next year – but eagerly awaiting the rainy season (and maybe the return of our running water???) which could start any time within the next couple of weeks. Hoping to go out and plant rice and peanuts in the villages soon once the rains come. Happy Saturday, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.
Vic x
