Time goes by so slow....

Time can pass a little slowly at sometimes out here; indeed  just occasionally one could be forgiven for thinking that the Gods, whoever she may be are conspiring against you… The last few days has seen the usually reliable power supply cutting in and out all over the place, whilst the usually erratic water supply has been… well  reasonably good. Although I must confess that nothing flowed when I turned on the tap this morning, so our back-up bucket came to the rescue once more.

It’s amazing just how much we all rely on electricity for just about any job you think of, and even in Africa lack of power causes many headaches, not least, no air-con! Whilst you may think that is inconsequential, try to imagine an operating theatre, with the surgeon, already under some stress with a very difficult Caesarean Op to perform,  working with 5 or 6 other people in a fairly small room with no natural ventilation, in temperatures of over 40c ! It would be enough to put most of us mere mortals into CCU in no time flat, but our young obstetric surgeon Tanya takes all this in her stride on a daily (and nightly) basis with good humour, compassion and a hell of a lot of skill.

So this morning I have spent with Bunja  the hospitals head electrician trying to make her life and that of the other surgeons just a little more comfortable. It is something that I have mentioned before but without any result, so this time I took the bull by the horn, got hold of Bunja and together we headed off to do battle. It started with a good cleaning of the filters with the nice new vacuum cleaner  Morro had brought up from the coast for me (between power outages). Then I had Bunja re-gas the units. I won’t know until Tanya next operates (which won’t be far away) whether we have completely successful or whether it needs to have another unit installed, but it certainly felt better whilst I was there. The other job for today was to have welding of the broken bed stacked up by the maintenance unit, but once again you need electricity for the welder (we don’t have gas).

Fortunately, Morros  men have no need for any such modern inventions relying purely on muscle power, so the building works continues unhindered with the two block walls separating the
bays now complete and ready for rendering; the holes for all the electrical sockets cut into the blockwork and the floor sub base nearly ready for the start of the tiling, with all tiles and tile bed removed. My best bet is that Morro will appear later having worked out the pricing for the Male Ward Refurb which will give me a couple of hours work producing yet another spread sheet…

But the two block walls are now complete.

Tomorrow I may well take half a day off to go for a little ride, but please don’t tell the boss!

And if your reading this Freddie, I hope that you are soon back to the rudest of rude health. You know that the thoughts and prayers of all your many, many friends from all over the world are with you . I still think it was just your way of throwing a sicky though!  LOL