Decided to write a part 2 for day 5 to give you a bit more about L'Hospital Evangelique a Impfondo or "HELP" - Hospital Evangelique Le Pionier. First off, fun trivia fact for you (according to Jason), the two closest capitals of separate countries are DRC and Congo.....Brazzaville, Congo is just across the river from Kinshasha, DRC. Now that's in the more southern part of the Congo. Impfondo, where I'm working at the hospital, is more north, but right on the border of the DRC and Congo still. The city sits right on the Oubangi river (spelling, sorry, couldn't remember), which eventually runs into the Congo River, which at this point is further East in the DRC.....which then turns into the rivers that I mentioned we walked to see. Pull up a map on google and take a look. To answer the burning question you may have, there are no wild gorillas here. They are in the preserves, which are further west, not close enough for me to walk. We do have big spiders here though! Yay. I just killed one because it was brown and colored striped and looked like the type that would purposefully eat me. There's a big black one on the wall across from me, but he's probably been there for a while, and I see them around. I accidentally left my suitcase open for a bit, so just doused it in 99% deet, and hopefully there's no friends waiting for me when I put on a clean shirt. I guess I will shake well. Now I have to worry about bot flies and spiders in my clothes.....welcome to the Congo. I'm sure in 2-3 weeks I won't even notice them. I sleep under a mosquito net, which is really a generalized bug net considering it is tucked into the side of the mattress. Though I keep thinking I have mosquitos on me, but that's just the beads of sweat rolling down my back as I sit here in my room and type. It's the wonderful weather where it's just muggy, and you're wet, no matter what. I don't have a fan here....maybe I should go sleep on the Samatou's couch, as they have fans.....but then a spider could eat me, so pick your poison I guess. ANYway, back to the hospital.
This complex was built as a communist camp originally, so it's not really a hospital at all. Not sure if the camp was ever used, but its intended use was to indoctrinate children into communism. So, there isn't even like one building, it's a collection of a bunch of small buildings. So there's the admin building, which has internet and the offices and such. There's a chapel. There's a lab with an attached pharmacy, and I believe that's where the ER sits as well. The OR is what actually was the cafeteria. It is air conditioned (thank God) and has 220 and 110 electricity if I remember seeing that right. Just the one OR that I saw, with one bed, though I think there's a separate OR area for OB/Gyne stuff. There's two buildings for baby birthing stuff, one for before and one for after the baby arrives. There's a men's ward, women's ward, and pediatric ward. There's the eye clinic that Henri runs (mentioned previously). There's a small library, a radio station (not sure where it goes or what it plays), a nursing and public health school that I'm not sure if are in use, and there's the well. There's a big tent set up too that I hear is for EBOLA should one arise. I might be forgetting a building or two, but you get the idea. Then there's the houses that we all live in. There's a big field where they play soccer, and a playground that I believe Mercy Ships built at some point.....though that's all metal....."Hey, let's slide down the big metal slide of death in 90 Congo weather!" "Hey, let's not." I guess it's the rainy season, so maybe in a cloudy downpour.....but then if there's lightning you're gonna be sitting in a perfect conductor....so just sounds like a death trap, but hey the kids say they use it. So anyway, the complex was built for the communists, but when Dr. Harvey came to the Congo I think 20 something years ago, it was being unused and they go permission to convert it over to a hospital. The place we stayed in Brazzaville, Hotel Bravo, used to be owned and operated by MSF/Doctors without borders. But when they pulled out (as they do when disasters "end"), the government took over their hospital in the west and the Harvey's team took over Hotel Bravo.
So yeah, I think I talked about this earlier, but how it works is that all the services here are paid for by the patient, and nothing is free. If you cannot pay up front, they have the right to hold you at the hospital until you can come up with the money (say there was an emergency procedure performed). I guess the government gave them the okay to do that, and like I believe I mentioned before, they do something similar at the university hospital. I haven't seen a normal week of the hospital in action yet, so I'll know more about that side of things pretty soon, and until then I can only tell you what I know.
I need to go walk around the area more, which we will either do tomorrow or wait till Monday when I think the market might be open again. There's a lot of little shops and stuff that sell snacks/drinks and such, but I think to get good meat or fruit you have to go to the market. Need to find that out. Did I mention the pineapple yet? Holy cow. The papaya too. Oh, and the honey? And the yogurt....this is pretty sweet. The family next to us is leaving us some of the yogurt culture. So we just add some water and powdered milk, put it in a pot and leave it outside in the sun all day, put it in fridge overnight to get cold, and you have amazing amazing yogurt. Sun-made yogurt....can't beat it. Add some of that honey to it and you might as well stop reading and fly over here and try it, it's that good.
I don't really know much about Impfondo as a city, other than I think it's around 50,000 people. There's a Catholic church and an Evangelical church, and I'm not quite sure which way the population lies as far as more of which one. The group here is evangelical, non-denominational, and like I said they have their own services on Sunday. Jason and I plan to attend them tomorrow and see what they're like. I think both of them, even though the first is completely in French and Lingala. I'm just hoping this cough goes away, otherwise I might wait till next week so I'm not coughing a fit the whole service. I'll post more about the town as I find it out, but this gives you kind of an intro to everything about this area that I know so far anyway. Hope you found all this helpful. Enjoy the cold back in Chicago....Until tomorrow.
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