This past week seemed to just fly by for some reason and I
guess its that speed with which things seem to be going that makes it really
hard to believe that this is the beginning of my 13th week here in
the field! So much to do, so (apparently) little time…
I spent the vast majority of last week battling with the
video footage we took of Dr. Imani in order to get it ready to upload for the
International Day of the Young Doctor (June 20th). It was a
nightmare because the translation took forever and my computer chose this week
to express its personal vendetta against me by crashing every single time I
tried to open the movie editing software. Talk about “Rise of the
Machines”…Thankfully, our good friend Sarah Fluck came to my rescue at just the
right moment. On Wednesday she spent her evening with me editing the video
footage on her Mac and we were able to upload after two further days of
attempts on the internet! You can see the finished product here:
This week Dr. Mukwege came back from London where he had
been attending Angelina Jolie’s Conference to end sexual violence. The hospital
is definitely a different place when he's not around! But when he came back he
convened a meeting of all staff out in the nursing building behind the
hospital. So this is us heading out there on Wednesday morning:
It was a really interesting meeting as Dr. Mukwege took time
to really get all the staff thinking about their respective roles in the
overall vision and mission of the hospital. He wanted them to think of
themselves as indispensible and as a vital part of what is going on around them
at the hospital, no matter what their individual tasks were. And he just has a
way of putting things that really draws one into his way of thinking about
things. It was very interesting to be there for the meeting.
This week we are focussed on grant proposals and I am also
trying to solidify donations of medical supplies that I hope to take back with
me from Canada to Congo when I return next week. It'll be a whirlwind trip
7-day roundtrip so I'm hoping to make the most of it.
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