pictures of Galmi

i've had some difficulties posting pictures due to a missing link, literally. so the pictures i've been taking on my camera are still on my camera/memory card, stuck there it seems, until i'm home. however, one of the staff here loaned me a camera to take some photos this afternoon... so at least you can see where i am, and a little of the environment i'm in.

enjoy...

this is the back of the hospital, where i enter every day, several times a day. it's a 3 minute walk from my little apartment. there are typically people milling around here most of the time.

this is "A Ward" - 8 beds, all children, with their mothers. One has congenital syphillis, another pneumonia, some with malnutrition, others malaria on top of malnutrition.

this chest x-ray is of a 4 year old girl with Tuberculosis. Bad TB. she came into the clinic leaning forward, breathing 60 times a minute (try it- that's fast, once a second). Her whole RIGHT chest is full of TB effusion (pus into the space between the lungs and the chest wall/ribs that usually has only thin slippery fluid in it) and who knows what underneath. no CT scans here. if you look closely you can see her trachea very deviated. so we decided to drain it using an angiocatheter (small needle with a tube around it) - and got 1 Liter of greenish, thick pea-soup consistency fluid out. i held the basin. Her breathing dramatically improved. We admitted her for intensive TB treatment. i've never seen anything like what i saw and held today.

This is me and Tassala, one of my 2 amazing interpreters. She is a Christian, has several grown children, knows English very well, and Hausa (her native language). She is gifted in being very forward with patients, teaching them good hygiene, how to breastfeed properly, to abandon traditional medicines that harm them, etc. She's funny and a delight to work with. we have played several games of UNO when our patient load slows down. She's been translating for a while, and i keep telling her she's becoming very smart, and will soon be mostly a doctor.

This is the "warmer" (which is not reliably warm, especially when left unattended) and one of the 3 oxygen machines in Galmi hospital. they dwell in OB, and i found myself there again today because another baby was born, early by an unknown # of weeks, and no one told any physician. the OB doc from the US happened upon this little girl, struggling to breathe. i hate to say i'm getting used to this, because watching children die should never be something one becomes accustomed to. she may survive. but i am doubtful, due to the nursing care and the lack of resources. we presumed the mother had some sort of infection and thus delivered early. i gave her a Hausa name that means "Grace".

So, that's a little taste of the scene here. i'll try to do this again - it worked pretty well, and i'll save my great photos from earlier this month for posting once i'm home.

I return to the US Oct 30th. please pray for my last days here to be full, that i might be a vessel of Jesus' love and compassion.