The hospital is very poor compared to North American hospitals, but it is incredibly self sufficient. They do not supply food to the patients in most Tanzanian rural hospitals and that is because the family usually stays in the same room with the patient, mainly because they have often have walked miles and miles to get here, or been flown in by a medical flight, and they would have no way to get back home, and even if they did, they'd have no way of knowing when to return for their family member. So the hospital has a large garden that they family can use to plant and grow food, and of course to purchase it from the already grown plots as well.

There are some renovations going on to an older building, to turn in into a canteen for the local staff and they are wasting productivity and time by going home for lunch. The staff that live on site (Europeans and North Americans, long term volunteers and so forth) eat in the common room, or in their own rooms if they prefer.

The hospital is always fundraising and looking for ways to make money, and also ways to save money. They make teir own IV solutions, glucose and saline, and they sell the excess to other hospitals in Northern Tanzania.

The latex gloves are reused after surguries, they are washed, turned inside out and powdered, then sterilized in an autoclave and packaged for other surguries.

Sheets and linens are donated (mostly from Norway) and they are cut into strips of various sizes for bandages and dressings, sometimes very colourfu! They have a small room where women do the cutting, and then another room where men are hemming the strips with ancient looking old Singer sewing machines (remember those old black and gold ones?) Then, like the gloves, they are packaged and sterilized.

There is a workshop where all the furniture, cupboards, shelves and other items are made, there is a mechanics shop and even an area outside where cinder blocks are made by hand by local men. We saw al these blocks lying in the sun and we thought some new project was about to start, imagine our surprise to see 3 men actually making the bricks.

I have pictures of all this, which I'll post as soon as I can.

The childrens ward is a building on it's own, called The Lena Ward, named after a child who was murdered in Norway. It's like any ward, a long hallway with rooms on either side, but each room has a sign above the doorway, indicating what type of illmess the kids inside have, and it's odd to see illnesses that have been eradicated so long ago in at home. "Children with Tuberculosis" "Children with Malaria" "Children with Cerebral Malaria" "Children with Meningitis" "Children with Burns" The kids that are able are running about in the hallway and they are so incredibly beautiful, with huge eys and shy smiles. Once the see a camera though, they all want their picture taken and they crowd around with huge smiles and lots of laughter as they see themselves. They all want to be touched and they hold their hands out to shake your hand, other than the odd shy one who will hang back, just watching.

The preemie room is pretty inovative. They hospital can't afford to buy and maitain incubators, so they just keep the whole room warm and the mother can stay in there with her baby to nurse and care for it.

Then there was The Orphans Room, a small, maybe 10 x 12 room, with a small bed, and some very tiny cribs, and this is where little ones whose mothers died in childbirth "live" and of course I use that term lightly as they do not get a lot of contact, the nurses are so busy. They stay there until they are 2, the hospital tries to find a home for them, but it's hard, no one can afford to feed another mouth, especially one that isn't theirs. If there is no home found by the time the baby is 2, then Social Services steps in. There were 3 newborns there when we were there, and a little guy about 8 months old just standing in his crib and staring at me with these giant solomn eyes. I almost had an Anglina Jolie moment and asked to bring him home, the most beautiful baby have ever seen.

It's really heartbreaking, but at least all these kids have a chance, if this hospital wasn't here who knows how they would end up? It's just really hard to see, and it makes us feel so wasteful and so guilty about what we have and how we always want "more stuff"

There is also an HIV/Aids clinic, with councillors, an eye clinic, a diabetes clinic, and of course it is clinic in word only, medications and equiptment are in short supply. Each clinic is in a little building of it's own. Most equiptment is second or even third hand, the they just received a "new" X-ray machine, but it wasn't working and when we saw it, they had a techncian who had screw drivers and duct tape, although it was working by the time we left!

They also just got a 2nd hand Cat Scan machine, which they are thrilled with. Up until now, unconscious patients were treated as if they had cerebral malaria (the most common cause of unconsciouness) but now they hae the CT so they can check for bleeding, strokes and other head traumas.

It's really strange to see the contrasts, to see an old African man stitching up bandages on a treadle machine and then round a corner and see a CT machine and computers. They do have computers in all the rooms, even their library has a small Internet Cafe with 6 computers to use, 500 shillings a half hour (.50, which is too expensive for most of the local staff to use) The server has the most modern room, air conditioned and well loaded with security.

The Outpatient building is a large circular (to help with patien flow) builing. Outpatients have to pay, there is a small user fee for everyone, but patients who are admitted are treated and do not have to pay until they leave. If they cannot pay, then a letter is sent to their village and a village elder will decide if they can indeed pay, and how much, or he will decide if the patient is too poor. But no one is ever turned away.

66 million shillings, or about 60 thousand Candadian dollars are overwritten each year by this process.

There are 437 staff, that includes everyone on the compound (kitchen staff for the common room, gardeners, security staff, cleaners and even the staff that work on the farm, a few miles away where they grow wheat and vegetables/) Excess is sold to loals to make money.

Lena's Ward (the children) has 100 beds, a quarter of the capacity of the hospital.

Laundry: They process 1.2 TONNES of dirty clothes/linens/bandages a day. It's all washed by hand, then sent through a steam boiler to sterilize and then dried.

They just installed a stabilizer (installed while we were there) so there is now, for the first time, 240V, 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. Prior to this they had constant surges between 90-300 and spikes of up to 100,000, which caused a lot of damage to vulnerable equiptment.

It is just an amazing place and everyone is so friendly, I guess because they are all there because they want to be, and they are all so proud of the work they are doing, and how they are changing the lives of so many people. Nicole and I were just in awe of everything we saw the whole time we were there.

After the hospital tour, we had lunch and Nicole had some interviews that she wanted to conduct, so Dr Olson had arranged a car and driver for a few of us to go to a small village in the Rift Valley about 2 and a half hours away. The Missionaries have been recently going to visit these people, and they still speak the Click language! There were 2 women from the Norweigan Embassy, a Congolese lady who I think was with the United Nations, a man who had something to do with hospital administration, a translator and me.

We drove a little while until we reached the escarpment at the top of the Rift Valley and the beginnings of a road that was built in 2000. It took 6000 people 6 months to build this road of 130km. It was all done by hand, using picks, shovels and spades, no modern earthmovers at all. When they came across a rock too huge to move, they would light fires around it and heat it until it exploded. And this was only 5 years ago. Now the villages and locals who live far away have an easier time getting to town and to the hospital, and of course the Missionaries can get out to see them, which I suppose is the main purpose. The village was amazing, but I am out of time for now.