Better Late Than Never

Let me apologize for those of you trying to follow my blog posts from Togo.  The intermittent and slow internet here has made it much more difficult to post blog posts than to post on Facebook.  I will be making more blog posts after I return to the states, but in the meantime, please friend me on Facebook if you have not done so already.  I have been able to post a lot on Facebook.

Also, Jana Cunningham, an NICU nurse from Banner Good Samaritan is on our team, and she has been writing wonderful blog posts.  You can find her blog at nicunursegoestoafrica.blogspot.com.

Several months ago a doctor arrived at the Hospital of Hope for a short term assignment.  The first weekend she was here, Dr. Kelly Farber said to the short term volunteer doctor, "Go get your bathing suit and let's go for a swim in the pool."  The visiting doctor replied that she hadn't brought a bathing suit.  Dr. Farber said, "Didn't you know we have a swimming pool here?" to which the doctor replied, "I thought you were joking!"

I must admit I could just not grasp a swimming pool in northern Togo, but sure enough, there is a beautiful L-shaped swimming pool behind a 10 foot wall.  A pool company from Texas had donated all of the equipment and manpower.  Alain Niles, one of the long term missionaries here, had dug the hole in the ground with the tractor.  The only difficult task with this is that unfortunately they built the wall before he dug the hole, which made the task far more difficult.

The result, however, is this beautiful pool for the families here to gather and enjoy a chance to cool off.  It was designed so it just gradaually starts off shallow and then gets deeper and deeper and deeper.  I have especially enjoyed going out late at night and cooling off before going to bed, as the pool is just across from the guest house.

Most of my surgeries have been gynecologic surgery dealing with horrible prolapse problems.  Unfortunately the photographs and descriptions are not amenable to publishing on a blog or on Facebook, but these women are so incredibly grateful to be restored to normal anatomy.  One woman who didn't speak French or English went out of her way to learn how to tell me "thank you" in English when I discharged her home from the hospital following a successful surgery.