Turning it up to 11.

A scale of 1-10 on the volume control for either a home sound system or for that matter the amplifier for an electric guitar would be normal, from 1 the quietest to full volume at 10. So what would happen if the scale was changed from 1-11?

Its' simple according to Nigel the guitarist in  Spinal Tap "It's one louder"  he  explained to a journalist  'These  (amps) go to eleven'  Is  this  just a bit of stupidity from the 1980's mockumentary of a heavy rock band? It may be but as a phrase It has entered the English language 'Turning it up to 11' has now come to mean taking something to an extreme, perhaps ridiculously so .

In a blog last month we wrote of 10 ways to know its' hot, the last , actually no 11, read 

 11) The cacti in the garden wilt ( I made that one up)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our rains have yet to begin properly, the hot and dry weather has returned but I haven't had time to water the garden and so look what happened to our young green spiky plant last week, perhaps it isn't a cactus after all. It is supposed to like the heat, but couldn't cope with the temperature cranked up to 11. It has now been restored with a single long watering. Life giving water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the hospital we have been busy of late, in March 101 babies were delivered, a new record; and over the first 5 months we have an extra 15%  deliveries on last year. In May we set a new record for the number of cases operated in a month ,70, and again there is an overall increase  so far this year of 8%. In reality the increase in workload for us is much more as last year we had an experienced nurse surgeon from Cameroon who did his own lists and shared operating out of hours. This  year Andrea and I have been covering extra on calls and also doing more surgery by day.

As we sit in the transit area at Addis Ababa airport on our way home to the UK, we can relax, reflect on the year,  and look forward to a break.


However we leave the hospital behind, Dr Isaac will be joined by Dr Mike from the US for the first month and they will have to work hard. There will be no surgery but still plenty to do, and with Malc (administrator) and Sue (nurse) still in the UK for health reasons there will be extra burdens that fall on them and our other BMS colleague Rebecca. In August Dr Isaac will be the only doctor and the hospital will have to offer a reduced service. Please pray for them and for all the staff of the hospital, that they feel that they are not being forced to work at intensity no 11.  

 

 

 

 

 

Heat of the moment

DUST,    'is it also linked to global warming and heat trapping ?'

This question appeared in the last blog, along with an off the cuff retort.

 Actually I didn't know the answer  and hadn't looked it up, hence the question mark . A friend wrote to me and in fact, although it is an atmospheric pollutant that definitely  does cause human disease,  that appears to be is the limit of its problem. It is more linked with global cooling than warming. The relative balance of  effects  reflection of sunlight  back into space and absorption of sunlight and warming comes down in balance of a small global cooling. Not a dramatic effect but certainly not a villain. The problem lies elsewhere  with greenhouse gasses CO2 etc. and not with atmospheric particles. Sorry for any confusion.

An interesting lesson to me, I'll be more careful not to make less than fully researched remarks, and won't use  question marks  to cover myself any more.

Mark

Dust in the wind

Is it dusty in Kansas, I always supposed it would be because of the words of this song title, a 1970's classic. But I don't know much about the geography ,of the  USA perhaps it is isn't dusty at all.  However I do know that Chad is probably the dustiest country on the planet, or at least the Bodélé depression to the North of us is,. It is in the  southern Sahara and is the lowest point in Chad and represents part of the old Mega lake Chad  ( 20 times bigger than today) that dried up thousands of years ago. It experiences  dust storms 100 days every year, and in season produces  an average 700 000 tonnes of dust a day.

We get dust storms  less often, but each year  before the rains the wind blows down from the north  we have dust storms the like of which you have never seen. You can see it coming as in the picture above, (Guinebor II 2009) a wall of dust hundreds of metre high rolling across the flat earth. A strange  silent vision of the calm before the storm and then the wind arrives blows, gusting snapping hard grown trees, twisting street lights, ripping of roofs making walls fall . We get people injured by flying sheet metal etc and there are sometimes deaths.  After  the strong winds pass  the dust rests in the air, the sky is an eerie orange and a fine silt gets into the houses and coats every surface. 

Occasionally you get Sahara dust in the UK with spectacular sunsets and a faint dusting on your car, other places get it harder, it made BBC news when a dust storm disrupted the Dubai air show it  and another  unusual storm  killed 4 people in Tehran earlier this month. Here  it doesn't  make the news its part of life.

All this dust can't be good for health, last year the BMJ informed me that arrival of Saharan dust has been linked to hospital admissions  in Italy due to respiratory disease, heart attacks and strokes, the first makes a lot of sense  to me, and you do see people riding motorbikes with surgical masks in Ndjamena, the other two  I don't fully understand the mechanism  but it is clear dust can't be good  for you. Is it also linked to global warming and heat trapping ?  Really something needs to be done!

 

 

NASA: Bodélé depression dust storm from space

Ndjamena is  just below Lake Chad

 

                            

 

But life is never that simple, the dust from the Bodélé depression is swept up into the atmosphere and it travels extraordinary distances. Each year 50 million tonnes of mineral rich dried diatoms  from the old lake bed are deposited on the Amazon  acting  as  fertiliser . This meets half of the Amazons annual requirement. The world's biggest rain forest is supported by the world's biggest dust bowl. Dust from the depression also fertilises the Atlantic ocean causing blooms of phytoplankton at the bottom of the food chain. An amazing interdependence and  something that at first seems to only  be a problem is actually  a vital part of the world ecosystem.

Back to the hauntingly sad song,

I closed my eyes,

Only for a moment ,and the moments gone,

All my dreams, pass before my eyes a curiosity,

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

Same old song

 

Just a drop of water in an endless sea,

 

All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

 

Don't hang on,

Nothing lasts forever but  the earth and sky

It slips away,

All your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind

 Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind

 ( lyrics  from  Dust in the wind, Kansas)

 

Life can be hard, at times we could all give up in despair.  'It's all meaningless', says the writer of Ecclesiastes,  'a chasing after the wind' . In human terms we are all insignificant on the world stage of 7 billion people , but perhaps with God's help our grain of dust can be of  some significance and benefit to someone , somewhere on this planet.

                                                                                 

                                               A nearly perfect dust print of a paper cut

                                                    Valentines card in Chadian dust

Come and hear about our grains of dust making a difference at Guinebor II as we return to the UK this summer on the following dates 

              Wakefield Baptist, (6 July 10:30 and 6:30)      

                St Leonards East Sussex(13 July 10:30)

          Hull, Cottingham Road (20 July 10:30)

          Louth, Eastgate Union (20 July pm)

          Macclesfield, All Saints  C of E  (27 July 9:30)

          Forest Gate, Woodgrange London(10 August 11:00)

Possibly Penzance Chapel Street Methodist(17 August) TBC 

              and Kettering Fuller  (24 August)  (TBC)

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 ways to know it's hot

So right now it's the hot season in Chad , temperatures reach a peak at about 2pm, 45C  in the shade is common,  50 C happen on exceptional days each year. Our human bodies are normally at 37C, if you are very unwell with a fever you may reach 40C and we cope relatively easily with such temperatures. Once it gets hotter than this things get more difficult and strange things happen.

What's like living at these temperatures ?

Here are 10 ways to tell should it ever happen in England! An exceptional  heat wave with you peaks at about 32C so you have some way to go.

1)Your candles start to become spontaneous  works of art.

2).Your clothes from the drawers have that freshly ironed warmth. Plates from the cupboard are heated ready  for soup .   

3) The kittens stop moving and lie flat on the floor making you wish you could slow down too.

4) Whilst helping with homework Ruth and Rebecca object to the sweat running of my forearms and making their school books wet. The rest of the school has air conditioning! Operating gloves are wet inside when you take them off.

5)You drink at least 3 litres of water at work and more when you get in. You even want to add salt to your drinks and tea tastes better than coffee.

6) Proper evening ward rounds become impossible, everyone's sleeping outside, including us on the  veranda.

7) Your house walls radiate heat at night  and the fridge needs wet towels draped over it  to evaporate heat and keep it at 15 degrees.

8) Chocolate fondue arrives in the post.

       

9) It's hard to know which patients have a fever at 2pm is it the patient temperature or the air temperature that has been measured. The babies especially take on the temperature of their surroundings, which ones are really sick?

10) Plastic and rubber things crack up spontaneously  or become very bendy.

11) The cacti in the garden wilt ( I made that one up)

Hope this guide helps!!  When we wrote this we were  just back from enjoying a break from these delights in the swamp cooled guest rooms of a mission in  town and were excited by some unusual cooling rain fall .Its hot and sticky again now so we are counting the days just another few  weeks  we hope   before temperatures drop to more manageable levels and we stop counting every breath of wind. What's needed is a nice day at the swimming pool, like we had to celebrate Ruth's 18th birthday last month, ( the flowers are very beautiful but guess what they wilt quickly, I wonder why?)