Wow!

The Paediatric Ward wall this morning

The Scene at 6.30pm

Those boys can work! When I went over to the Ward this morning to watch the commencement of the demolition, things were starting fairly slowly. The top layer of the wall is poured, reinforced concrete rather than block work and it was looking real hard work to break it away from the rods. To be honest it is probably only this reinforcement that has stopped the wall from collapsing. By lunchtime a smallish hole had appeared through the top and I was thinking we were going to be looking at about 3 to 4 days work to bring down each of the 4 sections. Anyway I went about the rest of the tasks I had set for the day and left them to get on with it; and Oh Boy! did they! By 6.30 this evening I wandered over as the hammering had seemed to stop and thought I'd take some pictures... and this is what I found! What's more on chatting to a couple of the guys who had just finished, they reckon in will all be down by 10am. Hell, those boys are tough with a capital T!

The fumigation team for the theaters have now arrived and tonight are starting the process which apparently will run for 3 days. So by Wednesday morning the nice new theatres will be ready to receive their first patients.

So what else is new I hear you cry! Well this is me playing at being a Gambia with friend Arabia in the traditional robe that he gave me! And yes, he does make me look like a midget !

I was taken down to see the local scout group that Chris and Jeanette help to support, and was treated to some traditional singing and dancing followed by a wonderful scout band. Now I love African drumming anyway, but these youngsters were really great with two drums accompanied by several recorders, but sounding better than I have ever heard recorders before. It was also good to see the tents which we had left at the hospital in 2011 being put to good use, with them all over the school grounds. Interestingly the school too has a couple of vegetable plots producing onions, carrots, peppers, cucumbers tomatoes and  ochra amongst other things. Being right by the river, naturally a few of the boys just had to show off their diving prowess.... and very inviting it looked too!

Oh and one from earlier in the week, the second irrigation tank purchased with a kind donation from Meg and John was spotted being rolled up the hospital grounds to it's new home at the top vegetable garden.