Today is the day we set off for Impfondo.....finally. I guess the original plan was to fly up there on Wednesday, but after the craziness with that German flight, a lot of flights with Air France were cancelled. If you didn't hear, I guess a German operated flight crashed the other day killing over 130 people. I guess the co-pilot had just been fired and so when the captain went to use the bathroom, the co-pilot locked him out and crashed the plane. Something like that. Anyway, airlines in this part of the world are a little more cautious now. I guess you're only as safe as your craziest copilot.
Anyway, Reol made breakfast for us at 6am and we headed off shortly after. Adolphe, the travel agent, met us again at the airport and magically walked us through a line of people and got us right up to security. Not sure how we would have done it without him, so our $5 fee seemed no big deal. We made it through baggage check and security with no problems and soon were setting off on a small plane to Impfondo. And when I say small, I mean small and......old, like really old plane. Flight was only an hour though so not so bad. It reminded me a bit of the plane from Jurassic park, the one that crashes in the third one....and flying over the jungle made it seem more like that. And Kara (PA student) was reading a book from the 90s that talked about finding dinosaurs in the Congo....so it really felt like we might be flying into Jurassic Park. Sadly though, no dinosaurs yet.
I have to take a moment now to tell you about the baggage claim in Impfondo, as it is quite the experience. The airport is pretty much just a room to begin with, and you exit the plane onto the runway and walk into the room, but not before handing your passport to an armed guard (and you're hoping you get it back). Then, we watched as one guy took a handcart back and forth unloading the luggage. It was a good trek for each trip, so at first we thought this was going to take forever. Then another guy dragged a bigger cart and that increased the luggage amounts. They have a carousel, but it doesn't work, they just unload it from the outside to the first part of the carousel and then EVERYONE mad rushes it looking for their bag. Now, everyone who shipped luggage to Impfondo doesn't actually have "luggage," they have cardboard boxes, TV boxes, plastic bags, and coolers that are all packed with stuff.....and they all look the same. So it's chaotic to say the least. We had the only real luggage so everyone knew to pass the bags to the white people, so that helped, but our stuff was close to last. It took quite a while, at least an hour and a half, for the two guys to unload everything. I wanted to recommend that we just all get off the plane and grab our bag....but I don't speak French and they've been doing it this way for a while I hear, so unlikely to change on my opinion.
Sarah picked us up from the airport and drove us to the hospital. She's an older, gray-haired nurse who has been here for quite a long time from what I hear. They call her "mama Sarah." She works a lot with the leprosy population (home visits) and the pygmy groups. She's really quite awesome. Kara and Stephanie are staying at the compound with the Harvey's and Jason and I are staying on the hospital grounds in a guest house. Both places are quite nice. Ours has two rooms, one that I'm using and one that Dr. Keong is using, and Jason has a makeshift area with a cot (he's here for a shorter time so I got the room). There is a shared common area and kitchen and another similar set up on the other side of the house. We have our own bathroom and there is running water with a shower. They have a well and the water is technically safe to drink, but we filter it all for taste so it's not well water tasting (and I'd be nervous still anyway). The electricity is fairly reliable, and if we lose it during the day the generator kicks on around 6pm. The internet is only in one location, at the admin building, so I just have to walk over there and plop on the steps to upload all this to you all back home. It's slow, but hey it's WiFi in the Congo.
I'll be posting more and more about the hospital as we go, and today I don't have as much time to write because we ended up going into a surgery late in the evening. The patient had an intussusception (I advise google for an image, look for the target sign on ultrasound), which is basically when the intestines roll over onto themselves (think of a telescope closing, one part inside the other). Usually happens in young kids, but it's pretty rare in adults. There has to be something that the intestine catches on to cause it, and adults that usually means tumor. So this guy they identified it with ultrasound and we decided to do an ex lap, or exploratory laparotomy, to confirm and see how we could fix it. Basically means we cut his belly open and took a look. We found it and Dr. Wegner (ER-peds doctor who is the primary surgeon now.....you'll hear more from me about him in the coming days I'm sure) and did a resection of the large intestine at the level of the cecum and an end to side anastomosis, or basically cut out the bad stuff and reconnected the gut together so he can still poop. It's pretty cool, we pray before surgery in French with the patient, and prayed afterwards that God would bless the work. Similar to the DR, spinals are used for anesthesia. The case was a success as far as we could tell, and that about wraps up the day. Not sure what tomorrow holds yet, but I'm gonna hit the sack.
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