Month: June 2016

4^th June 2016

           Food for the Poor arrives

I woke this morning to the sound of heavy vehicles manoeuvring in the yard downstairs at about 5.30 a.m. I knew what was happening; the truck we were expecting since Thursday had arrived with food for the poor. The driver was trying every which way to back it up as close as possible to the storage depot. I looked out and thought, ‘No, there’s no way it’s going to fit!’

Eventually the engine stopped and it was going to be opened where it was. There were quite a few men standing around and I thought, ‘News travels fast.’ They were certainly on the ball, ready to get the food on arrival.

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Local Hospital in Jean Rabel

Primitive!

That’s how I had heard the local hospital here in Jean Rabel being described and having lived here now for a whole month I wasn’t expecting anything plush when it came to visit the hospital.

However, I was not prepared for what I experienced. We walked through the waiting area of what seemed to be the outpatients department to get to where inpatients were staying, as we were visiting a specific patient who had been admitted 2 days ago with malnutrition.

Our patient was a 4 year old boy from another area about a half-hour’s drive away who had attended our outreach mobile clinic. He didn’t look too bad, having been in hospital a couple of days now. He was out of bed and happy to chat with us. His mother was staying at the hospital with him and she had her youngest child with her, a 5 month old baby who she was breast-feeding.

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