It's Tuesday evening and we are settled into house 4 - our half of a duplex that has a small kitchen, sitting area, bedroom, and bath. Our luggage finally arrived this morning and we are unpacked.
Our journey began Thursday morning in Grand Rapids-our son Ted dropped us off at the airport - we left our
winter coats in the car !! The connections through Detroit and then to Paris were uneventful. In the Paris airport, we met Mark Couture, a surgeon from North Carolina coming here for about the same period of time - we recognized each other by our World Medical Mission caps. Then, on to Niamey, the capital of the Republic of Niger !! When we stepped off the plane, we expected it to feel like a furnace but were surprised that, while warm, there was a gentle breeze to greet us. There were multiple stops at the Niamey airport.........immigration, health (to be sure we had our card showing yellow fever vaccination), then luggage (all of it came !!), and then customs. We had been warned that customs can sometimes be a hassle, with demands for payments, but we sailed through - it was a crowded mass of humanity. A driver met us and we went to the SIM (Serving in Mission is the organization we are working with at Galmi) guesthouse. We were met there by the Galmi teamleader, James Borody and his wife Cindy - we walked to a humble but good middle eastern restaurant - who would have guessed that you could get falafel and taboulleh in Africa??!
Bright and early the next AM, the SIMAIR pilot picked us up and we drove to the airport for a very pleasant smooth 1 1/2 hour flight to Galmi - there were 5 passengers, a full load, so all we could take was a carry on with a change of clothes - the rest of the baggage was sent the 330 miles by "bushtaxi". A greeting party met us at the Galmi airstrip and we were taken to our guesthouse. The guesthouse supervisor, Deb Waters, is a nurse (maiden name Mast) who is from Grand Rapids and met her husband, Alan Waters, another nurse from England, while serving here at Galmi !!! Deb is due to deliver her 3rd child later this year (in GR) and we carried a few maternity outfits to her from her parents. Anyways, she gave us an orientation and took us to the "co-op" where basic foodstuffs are available - things like pasta, rice, canned tomatoes, canned fruit, powdered milk, soap, toilet paper - no selections, just take what you get!!
For the first few days, we were invited into homes for dinners which was a great way to get to know the folks here - we'll tell you more about them in future blogs.
It has been a great blessing to have internet access through a cabled high speed connection - we have used Skype to call Ma and Pa Radecky twice as well as both of our sons !! It takes a while to initially get on which should help us avoid any tendency to spend too much time on the internet.
We sent an email out shortly after arrival and have received a number of replies, reassuring us that things get through ok.
We started "work" Monday with rounds on inpatients and then outpatient clinic. Matt Megill is a post-residency internal medicine doc serving here for two years under World Medical Mission sponsorship who has helped get us up to speed along with Kendrick Lau, a family doc from Oregon who is of Chinese ancestry and who is the medical director here. (amazingly, he looks, talks, and acts like a friend of ours who is on our email list - you know who you are!!!)
Most of the patients here speak Hausa - many of the nurses speak French and a fewer speak English - our basic French has come in handy.
Niger is a very poor country with poor nutritional standards and people tend to come in later and sicker than many other places. The hospital is very old and humble - a new one is planned but is a ways off due to the difficulties constructing here and the need for a construction supervisor (there was one here a couple years ago but he had a stroke so had to leave). The patients are in large wards with mosquito nets over the beds - there are about 100 beds. Basic lab and X ray are available and there is an adequate list of medications - as was the case in Togo, "fancy" new antibiotics are used rarely if at all and a commonly used drug is Chloramphenicol - a potent antibiotic hardly ever used in the states due to concerns about the side effect of aplastic anemia (bone marrow shutdown).
The outpatient clinic is extremely busy - in just two days, we have seen a number of illnesses including malaria (lots), HIV, TB, typhoid, severe anemia, meningitis, and Madura foot (we have a picture but it is too gross to put on a general blog !). One of the other docs showed us a case of cutaneous (skin) anthrax!! Among other things today, David did a spinal tap on a 2 month old child who had fever and was extremely malnourished. We admitted another 2 month child sent from the MSF (Medicin sans Frontieres - Doctors without Borders) clinic for ongoing treatment of malaria and sepsis (severe infection) and transfusion (MSF has antibiotics and antimalarial drugs but does not transfuse). When this child arrived, she was in status epilepticus (constant seizure activity) and deathly ill - we have done all that we can and pray that God will spare this child!
So, we're off and running !!!! We're new to this blogging thing so be patient - future posts will likely be shorter - we just wanted to catch everyone up to date.
Our journey began Thursday morning in Grand Rapids-our son Ted dropped us off at the airport - we left our
winter coats in the car !! The connections through Detroit and then to Paris were uneventful. In the Paris airport, we met Mark Couture, a surgeon from North Carolina coming here for about the same period of time - we recognized each other by our World Medical Mission caps. Then, on to Niamey, the capital of the Republic of Niger !! When we stepped off the plane, we expected it to feel like a furnace but were surprised that, while warm, there was a gentle breeze to greet us. There were multiple stops at the Niamey airport.........immigration, health (to be sure we had our card showing yellow fever vaccination), then luggage (all of it came !!), and then customs. We had been warned that customs can sometimes be a hassle, with demands for payments, but we sailed through - it was a crowded mass of humanity. A driver met us and we went to the SIM (Serving in Mission is the organization we are working with at Galmi) guesthouse. We were met there by the Galmi teamleader, James Borody and his wife Cindy - we walked to a humble but good middle eastern restaurant - who would have guessed that you could get falafel and taboulleh in Africa??!Bright and early the next AM, the SIMAIR pilot picked us up and we drove to the airport for a very pleasant smooth 1 1/2 hour flight to Galmi - there were 5 passengers, a full load, so all we could take was a carry on with a change of clothes - the rest of the baggage was sent the 330 miles by "bushtaxi". A greeting party met us at the Galmi airstrip and we were taken to our guesthouse. The guesthouse supervisor, Deb Waters, is a nurse (maiden name Mast) who is from Grand Rapids and met her husband, Alan Waters, another nurse from England, while serving here at Galmi !!! Deb is due to deliver her 3rd child later this year (in GR) and we carried a few maternity outfits to her from her parents. Anyways, she gave us an orientation and took us to the "co-op" where basic foodstuffs are available - things like pasta, rice, canned tomatoes, canned fruit, powdered milk, soap, toilet paper - no selections, just take what you get!!
For the first few days, we were invited into homes for dinners which was a great way to get to know the folks here - we'll tell you more about them in future blogs.
It has been a great blessing to have internet access through a cabled high speed connection - we have used Skype to call Ma and Pa Radecky twice as well as both of our sons !! It takes a while to initially get on which should help us avoid any tendency to spend too much time on the internet.
We sent an email out shortly after arrival and have received a number of replies, reassuring us that things get through ok.
We started "work" Monday with rounds on inpatients and then outpatient clinic. Matt Megill is a post-residency internal medicine doc serving here for two years under World Medical Mission sponsorship who has helped get us up to speed along with Kendrick Lau, a family doc from Oregon who is of Chinese ancestry and who is the medical director here. (amazingly, he looks, talks, and acts like a friend of ours who is on our email list - you know who you are!!!)
Most of the patients here speak Hausa - many of the nurses speak French and a fewer speak English - our basic French has come in handy.
Niger is a very poor country with poor nutritional standards and people tend to come in later and sicker than many other places. The hospital is very old and humble - a new one is planned but is a ways off due to the difficulties constructing here and the need for a construction supervisor (there was one here a couple years ago but he had a stroke so had to leave). The patients are in large wards with mosquito nets over the beds - there are about 100 beds. Basic lab and X ray are available and there is an adequate list of medications - as was the case in Togo, "fancy" new antibiotics are used rarely if at all and a commonly used drug is Chloramphenicol - a potent antibiotic hardly ever used in the states due to concerns about the side effect of aplastic anemia (bone marrow shutdown).
The outpatient clinic is extremely busy - in just two days, we have seen a number of illnesses including malaria (lots), HIV, TB, typhoid, severe anemia, meningitis, and Madura foot (we have a picture but it is too gross to put on a general blog !). One of the other docs showed us a case of cutaneous (skin) anthrax!! Among other things today, David did a spinal tap on a 2 month old child who had fever and was extremely malnourished. We admitted another 2 month child sent from the MSF (Medicin sans Frontieres - Doctors without Borders) clinic for ongoing treatment of malaria and sepsis (severe infection) and transfusion (MSF has antibiotics and antimalarial drugs but does not transfuse). When this child arrived, she was in status epilepticus (constant seizure activity) and deathly ill - we have done all that we can and pray that God will spare this child!
So, we're off and running !!!! We're new to this blogging thing so be patient - future posts will likely be shorter - we just wanted to catch everyone up to date.
2 comments:
Susie and Dave,
Glad you made it, and the shingle is out !
Janet and I will be following your blog adventures.
-Richie Gayes
i really enjoy reading your blog! i pray some day thr Lord will use dick and i in the same way!dick and cheryl laninga[ perspective class]
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