Out of order

Apologies to you all as you've not received much information from us over the last few weeks, but as our normal internet provider, an NGO in town has moved to another building, it's taking them a while to get settled in. In the meantime, we're using a dongle which is no way near as fast. We are able to send text but uploading photos is more time/money-consuming.

Please bear with us during this time!

Working lives (Part 1)

Chers amis,

Since starting our blog, we’ve not spoken much about what we actually do here, apart from amusing ourselves! We are with BMS World Mission (formerly the Baptist Missionary Society), seconded to the Swiss Alliance Mission of Switzerland, which has established itself well in various stations across Guinea. Today, we focus on Eric. He’s the Director of the CM or Medical Centre. When one thinks of a medical centre in the UK, one imagines your average clinic in any town or city, where doctors prescribe medicine or refer people to hospital for more serious ailments, injuries or complications. Here, the Medical Centre is more like a hospital, with wards containing about 100 beds, with a pharmacy, laboratory, orthopaedic workshop and operating block. The majority of patients have leprosy complications and tuberculosis. Eric’s responsible for motivating and encouraging staff, day-to-day management and administration, resolving conflicts as a member of the leadership committee, stimulating research opportunities, maintaining the relationship between the CM and its donors and other actors, hosting external medical personnel such as surgeons who visit to treat people with leprosy complications, and of course, consulting patients, as well as many other chapeaux (hats).

The founding of the centre goes like this: the wife of the President Sekou Touré invited the Mission Philafricaine (MPA), a Swiss non-governmental organisation and Christian mission to come and establish a colony for people living with leprosy.  The CM has become a national referral centre for people with leprosy complications and tuberculosis (ordinary stage and multi-drug resistant TB). Drugs for these two diseases are free of charge for patients but we have donors that subsidise these and many other things. The CM also provide counselling and testing for people who want to know their HIV/AIDS status, and have strong collaboration with Médécins Sans Frontiers who provide the MPA with anti-retroviral drugs.

As you can imagine, donor funding in our fragile world economic climate has become very stretched, with our biggest donor planning to pull out of Guinea in 2013 because of its own financial problems. As you can imagine, this is a huge concern for us. It also comes at a time where the mission is considering handing more aspects of responsibility over to Guinean colleagues. This is a difficult step for some expatriates to consider and in a society when accountability is either a dirty word or not well understood and corruption and nepotism thrive, questions such as “Can we trust people to handle the finances and medicines?” or “Will people be able to continue with what has been started at the same level?” are asked. The CM has already made a good start towards ‘Guineanisation’– the majority of its employers are Guinean. We are hopeful that this process can be carried out and that one day, someone qualified and a Christian can step into Eric's shoes, leading this important medical resource. Please pray for the right candidate to be found and that in the meantime Eric receives the strength for this rewarding and yet stressful role!

 

Cat mysteries

A couple of weeks ago, Eric spent a nuit blanche (sleepless night) because he heard a kitten crying round the back of our house. The next morning, when went over to the car workshop where the cars are parked, a small black kitten welcomed him, crying at him and darting back and forth. Sarah fed him with some fish and slowly gained his trust. Had Rowan given birth to yet another or had the other little black cat we’d already sent packing escaped? We’re not sure! Our house help told us that her neighbour’s black kitten (one of Rowan’s) had escaped when the door to the house opened and their dog was let in! How could he have found his way back to the mission? It’s a long way for this little mite.

Black cats are sought after for witchcraft in the Toma-Maniya tradition and sorcerers use them to make themselves and objects disappear. In any case, we’re becoming attached to him and vice versa and are still considering if we should keep him. He seems happy enough but his mom (if Rowan is his mom!) will not let him try to suckle, landing a few punches on him if he does, so he knows his place! It’s probably also linked with the fact she’s pregnant...again!!!

Meanwhile, Miss Horror who we happily dispatched a few weeks ago is stuck in the grenier (loft space) at my friend Susanne’s house, too afraid to come down to go to the toilet, so her place doesn’t  smell too good at the moment...however, she has now has a tray with sand to use and is apparently doing an excellent job with the mice.

Finding love in nature

Potato love...



Palm nut tree love (commonly used to make red palm oil)...from our very own garden...