The hospital continues on much as usual. Our fortunate budgets for the past few months have ended, so we had to make some hard choices this month at the finance meeting and still budgeted over 5,000,000 Kwacha (about 1,250 USD) more than what we expect to receive. Our usual budget is around 17,000 USD/month, from which we pay the salaries of around 150 employees, buy drugs, lab reagents, postage and paper, IV fluids, gloves, tape, plaster of paris, etc. We're trusting that the additional funds will come from somewhere. It's a bit of a step for me to do that sort of thing, being the son of two accountants, but it's been a good experience for me. I've personally settled in a bit better to my role as the manager of clinical services, with the educational responsibilities and meetings that that entails. I've still been covering the pediatrics and TB wards, with a little help out in the radiology and anesthesia realms. It keeps me interested, and I even had a few cases that were vaguely ER related this past month -- heart block, a man who cut through his windpipe with a sickle, insecticide poisoning -- which helped me feel somewhat competent, as opposed to all those malnutrition cases that I see on pediatrics.
I had a much more traditional 'missionary' month, with preaching in the local church two Sundays ago, various Easter responsibilities, and leading worship for the SIM retreat. All were somewhat stretching experiences for me but went on reasonably well. Our missionary staff has grown closer here on the station, and we thank you for your prayers. We still will likely need some docs starting in February 2008, so you can starting asking your friends and neighbors if they want to come out! At the same time that I was a more traditional missionary, I also enjoyed my first taste of tourist Zambia, with a 2 day stop-over at a nice hotel coming back from retreat, and a few purchases at the local curio shop. We've also resurrected the local tennis court here at the station, and although it could use a little work, the only points I win are when the ball takes a funny hop off the cracks, so I'm not pushing too hard to get it fixed.
I've enjoyed hearing from each of you. Communication has improved immensely since I bought a cell-phone modem which uses cellular technology to get on the internet. You should check out the blog if you haven't recently -- it's a veritable multimedia experience (www.mattcotham.blogspot.com). It's been good to be in better touch, although it still routinely takes me around an hour a day to download my messages, so don't expect 24/7 responses. Next step: satellite internet, supposedly coming for the second stage of set-up in 2 weeks.
A few pieces of news which may be of interest to you donors back home: thanks to the hard work of one of my college friends, Leslie Park, we are in the process of creating a non-profit organization in the states which will forward all funds directly to the hospital, with a small fee taken out to support the local church (2.5%). Hopefully for anyone who's not donated through the usual SIM channels because of high administration fees, this will be a vehicle to ensure that your funds get straight to the hospital where they can help the most. We expect to have this up and running by the next month or two.
Also, after some discussion with the management of the hospital, we are also contemplating converting one of the wards into a more intensive-care area, where sicker patients could get closer nursing care. This will involve remodelling part of a ward, installing an oxygen system, buying some equipment, and so forth. I'm therefore going to send all my donations made to my account at WMM to this purpose, unless you specifically ask me to send it somewhere else. We're hoping to raise around 30,000 USD to get this done. We're already making good progress towards the goal, thank you for all your contributions!
Miss all of you. Would love to hear about your travels (especially those who have made it to Africa since I've been out here!) life events (lots of new babies out there) and other things going on. I am relaxing the email restriction on photos sent to me since I've got a better connection these days, so a few cute pictures of babies or other things wouldn't be amiss.
Talk to you all soon,
Matt
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