Visitors

I have a bit of company with me here in Sierra Leone at the moment - Jan and Nancy, who both sponsor students under the Transform Salone sponsorship scheme are spending three weeks helping me on our projects.

We have been really busy since we all arrived in Freetown together just over a week ago. We have been to the SDA hospital in Waterloo three times once to visit the doctor and the other two times to visit a baby we have admitted there for treatment for malnutrition and malaria. Today we also admitted a girl who had been bitten by a dog.

Most afternoons we are at the school I work out of and while I’m catching up on office or sponsorship work Jan and Nancy are helping the sponsored students with their reading or the times table.

This past Sunday we attended church at the Murray Town Army Barracks where my friend Colonel Kargbo, the Chief Chaplain of the Armed Services was preaching. In the evening we treated ourselves and went to The Hub restaurant.

It is lovely to have some company and both Nancy and Jan are a great encouragement and support to me. I so appreciate them and the help they are giving me and I hope this will be the first trip of many!

I'm About To Get Busy!!

As usual I quickly settled back into life here, not much has changed during the two months I was away.

One noticeable change is the week after I left a new rule was bought in that all trading would cease at 6pm daily......I can't speak for other areas, but in my part of town that means al street traders, all shops, all restaurants and all bars have to be closed or stop selling by 6pm. This is bad news for the new restaurant that had opened just down the road from me, in November it was doing really good business and was attracting a lot of customers, particularly in the evenings.....I drove past at 6.30pm yesterday and it was all locked up, I hope they are getting enough trade during the daytime to keep them going.

Compared to when I left in December there are hardly any Ebola ambulances around, I've seen one or two teams but nowhere near the number we were seeing in November an December when there were 100+ new cases confirmed some days. The official statistics indicate that Ebola is reducing and that does seem to be the case.

I got a call from the BMI office about my missing luggage and they say it will arrive on the flight tomorrow (Sunday) and I can pick it up from their office in town on Monday - it will be a huge relief to get my hands on that bag!!

While I was away an electric pump was fitted to the water well in my compound (HUGE, HUGE thanks to those who helped with this!!), it allows us to fill the water tanks that feed the house and the compound with water from the well - this is just great as previously the tanks only filled with rain water, so no rain = empty tanks. The only other way to get water was to lower a bucket into the well and pull it up manually - I tried it once and it was really hard work! It's a real weight off my mind knowing we can now fill the tanks so easily.

I am enjoying living in the new compound and while I'm here I'm going to get the spare rooms ready so that friends can come to stay later in the year. I'm going to get a local carpenter to make one bed and one clothes rail and if they turn out ok I'll get the same made for each room.

I need to find a new office as I've decided that it's better to work away from home, so my hunt for office space starts tomorrow....I have a couple of ideas of places that might be suitable.

The schools are due to reopen here towards the end of March, so there is a lot of work to do to get the students enrolled and ready for school. It is such a relief that they will be able to begin attending school again after all this time - I am hoping to arrange a meeting with the Ministry of Education next week so I can find out if we will have to pay fees for just the last term or for the full year........or if the rumour that fees will be subsidised by the government are true - if this is the case we will use the funds reserved for fees on extra lessons for our students.

I need to find out if public meetings are still banned as I would like to hold a parents meeting to let the parents and guardians of our students know how we are going to be dealing with the reintegration of our students into the schools - if we are not allowed to hold a parents meeting I will have to go over it with each parent or guardian individually.

Now that most quarantines have been lifted I will be able to visit out sponsored students in the provinces, I will be planning a trip in the next couple of weeks and will probably be away for 3 or 4 days. I'm looking forward to my trip to the provinces!

We are continuing to distribute rice to those who need it most. Thank you so much to everyone who had donated to our rice fund. It's not too late - if you would like to provide rice for a family in need then you can either make a donation using the button at the top of this page or contact me and I'll let you know other ways you can donate......any amount is welcome and will make a huge difference to the families we are working with.

I'd very much appreciate your prayers that I may stay healthy. I can't take anti-malaria tablets, this isn't usually a problem because I take precautions and I'm tested monthly for malaria - I haven't had malaria for over a year now. When I do get malaria I usually go for treatment at the Adventist Hospital at Waterloo. The problem at the moment is that the symptoms of malaria can be similar to the early symptoms of Ebola.......any high fever is being treated as suspected Ebola, so I can't afford to get malaria now. On my first night back I noticed there were a lot of mosquitos around, since then I've been putting on my 'mosquito lamp' at night and I didn't see or hear any at all last night (it's a lamp with a purple light that somehow deters the mosquitos).

Prayer would also be much appreciated for the following:

• That I find a suitable office space for a reasonable rentage
• That the people I will be dealing with in the schools will be honest and open
• The people helping me here will stay healthy
• Our students will reintegrate into school ready to learn all teachers have to teach
• The parents and guardians will be supportive of their children going back to school

Thank you xx

Martha's Matthew

A few times over the last few years I've had cause to say 'this is the worst thing I've ever seen' or 'this is the worst thing I've ever experienced'.......and yet, each time there always seems to be something worse. This is one of my worst experiences:

 

This happened a while back, but it's not until now that I've felt able to share it, but I feel that people need to know about the sadness and waste of life in situations like this........

 

Martha was my security and housekeeper when at the previous compound I lived at. She's a hard working lady, her husband had drowned and she was bringing up her son with her mother's help.

 

She worked everyday apart from Sundays when she went to Church. Matthew was around 8 or 9 years old. He was doing well in school, his last school report showed that he was top of his class.

 

Matthew had been feeling poorly for a couple of days and he had a fever so Martha kept him off school and bought him to work with her. He felt hot to touch, but seemed quite perky so I said we'd see how he was the next day and if he was no better I'd send him to the hospital. He spent the day snoozing on my veranda.

 

The next morning I was woken by shouting, I went out in my pyjamas to see what was going on and Martha was there crying and Matthew was lying on the floor on a mat. Martha had carried Matthew from her home to mine, around 4 miles.........he had got worse during the night, but she waited until morning because she didn't want to disturb me.

 

Matthew was hot, very very hot, I checked for a pulse but there wasn't one. When I did my first aid course I was told that if I were ever in a situation when CPR was needed it would kick in automatically, but it didn't......it didn't even dawn on my until later that I should have tried CPR.

Sullay, our driver, and I locked eyes across Matthews body and somehow came to a silent agreement that we would take Matthew to the children's hospital - even though we were both pretty sure that he was dead.

 

We quickly got Matthew and Martha into the Landrover and they set off for the Children's Hospital a couple of miles away. Within half an hour they were back, with Matthew and the confirmation that he had died, presumably from malaria and typhoid.

 

What do you say to a mother whose child has just died so unnecessarily?

What do you do with the small dead body of a little boy?

How do you deal with the guilt that if you'd sent him to the hospital the day before there's a good chance that he'd be alive and kicking rather than lying dead in the back of my car?

 

The practical things were easily sorted - we sent Martha with Matthew's body home and arranged his burial and later a memorial service.

The emotional things take a lot longer.

 

Martha didn't want to go back to live with her mother where she had been living with Matthew - she couldn't face sleeping alone in the room they used to share together so she came to live in my compound.

 

Whenever Martha would get upset I would hear the other security telling her to stop crying because it would upset me! They allowed her to cry the day Matthew died, but after that expected her to just get on with things.

 

As for me, I doubt I will ever fully forgive myself for not taking Matthew to hospital that first day - would it have made any difference? I will never know now, and we will never know the young man he would have grown into.

 

I now keep a stock of malaria tests, so I can quickly know if someone with a fever has malaria and get them treatment quickly. When a child is sick I no longer say we'll wait and see how they are the next day.

 

There are so many 'what ifs' with this story.........



Matthew at his last sports day

Matthew

 

Urgent Request

I spent some time with Dr Koroma from the Adventist Hospital at Waterloo this week. He has been very busy as Waterloo has been quite badly affected by the cholera epidemic. His biggest problem at the moment is lack of drugs due to the increased demand.

 

Cholera is easily treated, but only if the necessary drugs are available, and of course as always malaria and typhoid are a big problem

 

They had completely run out of drips, I was able to give enough for them to puchase around 100, but they won't last long.

 

The items most urgenty needed are:

Chloramphenicol, Dolycyline, Metronidazole, Albendazole, ORS, IV fluids (R/L & N/S) and Ciprofloxacin. (apologies for any spelling mistakes!).

 

All of the drugs needed can be purchased here.

 

If anyone feels they are able to make a financial contribution towards these much needed drugs please contact me and I can give details on how to proceed.

(This is the hospital I was admitted to when I had malaraia)
 

Malaria

In less than two weeks 8 of the children who visit me have tested positive for Malaria (the p-falciparum type), luckily they have all been able to receive treatment and are on the mend now.

There are a lot of mosquitos around at the moment, so I'm being extra careful to ensure there are none inside my net at night. I was tested for malaria a few days ago and I'm happy to say that the result was negative!

I'm lucky that I have a mosquito net to sleep under, most of the people I know here don't have one and can't afford to get one. I need to investigate on the internet to see if I can find any charities who will provide mosquito nets free of charge to people who can't afford them