' In the name of love'

A couple of  years ago the hospital received a gift from the Ministry of Health, an ambulance. As you can see it is suitable for the road but finds mud and water  bit difficult so it has to be laid up for about three months each year. It is the dry season now and so it is back in use and it is getting quite a bit of use taking patients to the hospital in the city for X-rays (as our equipment is broken) non obstetric ultrasounds ( as our doctor is out of the country) and patients in need of emergency surgery on the weekends like this one (1:2) when Andrea and I are not at work.  Dogo, the hospital driver takes our children , Ruth and Rebecca, to and from school and sometimes combining tasks they too get a ride in the ambulance. They are not too keen, travelling sideways in the back can be nauseating and hot.

When it arrived it already had our name painted on the side, Hopital Americano, Amsinene.  I know Noel the CEF Chief executive does come from Seattle, the home of Starbucks, but do we really need to sound like a cup of coffee? Amsinene is the next village, 3 km to the south where there is a big Chadian Amy Base, which we used to use as point of reference if people haven't heard of Guinebor, now after 3 years our area is much more developed. We repainted it with our name and logo, after all branding is important.

We have branded the hospital in many ways, all the paperwork for patients notes and  prescriptions carry the logo, as do the guards uniforms and the cars. It all builds recognition and makes us look serious. It even gets imitated by people around us, Quartier CEF as I have heard it referred to refers to the shops outside our front door, look carefully and you can see our logo at the shop and the hairdressers.

 All this  copying our CEF logo  is quite funny even flattering, should we protect our name?

         Ask for a share of the profits? Perhaps not. More seriously what is the real brand that we are here for? We hope that one day we will be recognised as disciples or imitators of Jesus, and people will choose to  copy that.