( mid November to December) This is no doubt going to be a
boring blog, few pictures just graphs, and the subject matter will move between statistics and pure maths, (or math for our American readers). Words, incidentally, are
not the only things that change between cultures, how you count with your
fingers and thumbs also does. How do you do it? (Guardian Weekly 6/7/12)
Starting with the fist closed or open? Little finger first or thumb? Most Western
Europeans usually use closed fist and thumb as starting points. A local builder
started palm open and counted from his little finger . Mostly my Chadian colleagues prefer to use the
calculators in their mobile phones, so perhaps the world is changing and these
little cultural differences will disappear.
The title, all
fingers and thumbs, is a bit strange for
a letter written by a couple of doctors who spend much of their lives doing
surgery. Andreas dexterity was much in evidence as I assisted her at one o clock
one morning as she rapidly did a caesarean section, her 3rd in 3 days after a
fifteen day period when none were required. No fingers and thumbs but plenty of
counting needed, checking the swabs before closing the operation and again the
baby who was the 56th so far in November.
I risk being accused of repeating
myself, but here is an update of a graph from our September blog, the green
line is a computer generated estimate for the future. In reality it looks like
an underestimate with over 3 babies born each day so far, we may even reach a
hundred. We can be thankful for all the
women and babies helped but it makes the unit very crowded busy place.
What are we supposed to be doing? This question has to be asked before we can decide whether we
are doing it well. Planning is important and therefore 'I think therefore I am'
may be practically useful as well as being a profound piece of philosophy. We have been
planning, budgets especially for the pharmacy, malnutrition programs, an X-ray
dept ,a possible safe motherhood project and the recurrent problem of how to
keep the hospital clean, with only one relative sleeping with each patient
overnight.
Plenty of planning but surely what we do is more important in the
real world, 'I do therefore I am' is an apt paradigm for modern mission where we want to measure outcomes. We
are seeing record numbers of patients, and having record receipts(but still
remain financially dependent on outside aid for 20% of expenditure) But despite this good news as the letters hit
the page an alarm is ringing we follow a God whose name is ' I am what I am'
not ' I am what I do'.
Back to the counting, we are in Advent waiting to celebrate the
beginning of His greatest expression of this,
Jesus ,God with us. A highlight in our count down to the festivities
will be a hospital nativity play and songs followed by the Jesus film on the
20th December. Pastor Djibrine is organising it we hope it will go well and
that more people will come to understand the true importance of the baby in the
manger. Jesus didn't set out to change
the world by building institutions , but he came as the servant of all, taking
the way of love.(I Corinthians 13) This
should surely be our ultimate plan and
outcome measure, to become loving servants like Him. I sometimes feel that I am
only just beginning.
Mark and Andrea
PS: Since the first part of this blog was written November has ended, we
counted exactly 100 women in childbirth, so much for predictive graphs! There
were 103 babies born, the first one pictured below is the first for Charlot and
Sarah both of whom work as nurses here at GII, there was one set of triplets, also pictured and the hundredth mother had premature twins. They sadly died shortly after birth which
made for muted celebrations of the milestone. Individuals mean so much more
than statistics both in their joy and their sadness.
