First days in Chad

We are pleased to let everyone know that we are safely in Chad.   Praise the Lord!

The flights went well, with no major complications.  It was somewhat of an adventure finding our flight in the Ethiopian Airport.  It is slightly more chaotic than an American airport.  When we arrived at the Chadian airport they were doing temperature checks as you walked in, to keep Ebola from entering.  It is good to see that they are taking those precautions.

The part I was most nervous about was going through customs and the arrival of our checked bags.  If our stuff didn’t arrive it was no big deal, but we had three 50 lb totes full of supplies for the Gardner’s, and our suitcase included another 20 pounds of their supplies (A special thank you to St. Joe’s for medical supplies, Allison Hays for the French books, and many others).  The medical supplies are quite valuable and much needed in Chad.  After some broken English with the customs official and a little confusion over my address in Chad I went through without a problem.  As I walked through I was praying for the arrival of our totes.  The Lord abundantly answered that prayer!  Not only had they arrived, but one of the baggage men had already gotten all 3 of them loaded on a cart.  He walked right up to me when I arrived and asked me if they were mine.  I guess because the bags were marked from Seattle and I was white it was a pretty safe guess.  I then gave him my fourth baggage tag, and he proceeded to get that for me as I waited by the totes and looked for Jolene to get through customs.

Now we were in N’djamena, not Moundou yet.  2 days of travel thus far and we wouldn’t actually arrive in Moundou for another day.  A local Chadian, Abraham, met us outside the airport.  He was already there and had a sign with Jolene’s name.  He is a godsend.  He had the taxi for us, took us to the TEAM Mission to unload our bags, got us registered with the police, and changed another $100 into Chadian Francs.  The TEAM Mission was wonderful.  It even had a TV.  We watched “Gifted Hands” and “The Andy Griffith Show,” as Jolene fought falling asleep in the chair (It was still early evening in Chad and we wanted to force ourselves to adjust for jet-lag quickly).

The next morning we took a 7 hour bus ride to Moundou.  Everything went smoothly.  The bus driver tried to tell us something during the halfway stop, but we don’t speak French and he didn’t speak English.  We just stayed on the bus and eventually got to Moundou.  Bekki was already there waiting for us with their ambulance.  Two other volunteers, Nick and Kelsey, were also there.  They both just graduated from nursing school and are doing a year of volunteer work with the Gardner’s.

Now that we arrived, actually being helpful here is a whole other challenge.  It’s easy to feel inadequate here.  It takes a few weeks to get oriented to a new job in the States, and here everything is quite different.  The Gardner’s seemed very happy with the medical supplies, so if we do nothing else at least we did that I guess.

Bekki mostly wanted me here to help her with her physiotherapy.  For those of you who don’t already know, much of what they do is orthopedic surgeries (mostly fractures from motorcycle accidents).  I am hopeful that with God’s grace I will be able to provide her some help.  The difficult part is that what they do it more like acute PT and I specialize mostly in outpatient PT, and then the situation here is much different than any PT setting in the States.  They can have patients here for months.  But often that is due to persistent infections and repeated surgeries, so from a PT standpoint they are kind of stuck in the acute stage.  And of course PT school doesn’t place any focus on how to treat in Africa.  One blessing in disguise with the difficulty here is that it makes me acutely aware of the necessity of prayer.

The first day in Moundou Bekki took me around and showed me her PT patients, but we didn’t do much treatment.  We got the supplies somewhat organized for Gardner’s, ate dinner, and had worship.  The Gardner’s have been trying to get a shipping crate for months and they had, and still have, a lot to deal with in regards to that.

Yesterday was our first full day here.  You may make a plan for the day, but here you never really know what a day is going to be like.  Scott said that another missionary described their work schedule as something like: 7:00 worship, 7:30 breakfast, 8:00 start rounds, 8:01 all hell breaks loose.  We did rounds in the morning, ate breakfast, brought a boy to the handicap center, and then I got a moto (motorcycle taxi) to the market to get credit for our phone.  The boy’s name is Franklin.  He has been at the hospital for months.  He had multiple surgeries done on his leg, and then a week ago finally had to have it amputated.   We went to the handicap center to have them assess him.  They said that they should be able to make a prosthetic limb after he is healed.  The center was quite nice.  $50/month for therapy, with free housing!  They have parallel bars, bikes, practice stairs, and more!  They even had a poster up for the McKenzie Method (PT’s will understand that).

In the afternoon Bekki and I were able to do our physiotherapy treatments.    Jolene helped out.  We also had another volunteer, Patricia, arrive and help with PT.  She is starting medical school in March, and will be here for 7 weeks.  That will include the time that the Gardner’s will be gone on vacation.   I think the PT went ok.  Bekki is already doing great work here.  She is getting people up and moving, and that is really 90% of what you can do.  We added exercises for some patients and started or progressed mobility training on a few.  I still need to pray that my trip will be worth it for Bekki.

We had 2 other guests here on Thursday and Friday.  They are working for an aid organization.  Right now they are doing stuff (I’m not exactly sure what) in 3 refugee camps in Southern Chad.  They have already gathered medical information on many of the refugees and need to figure out the next step.  Many of them may eventually end up either at the Centre Adventiste here or the handicap center in Moundou.  They have asked me to come down with them to help with that.  It would mean that I’d be gone from Monday-Wednesday.  I’m excited about the opportunity and unless something changes in the next 2 days I plan on going with them.  It will allow me to personally help a lot of people in a short time, and I don’t think it will interfere much with how much I can help Bekki.  Most of what I can do for Bekki will probably be within the first few days of doing PT with her, and as I said she already seems to be doing good work.  It would be great if eventually she got a PT here for a few months (enough time to really get settled in and figure out what works best).  I will get into more detail about the PT here in a future post.  

Thank you everyone for your prayers, and thank you to everyone who provided supplies and money for the trip!

                                                      On the way to Moundou (Bus)

                                            Our Room in Moundou (For the first few days)

                                                               1st day of PT treatments

                                                        TEAM Mission & Taxi (N'Djamena)