Yesterday was another busy day. It is always full on here but we are in the rhythm. Tama is down with a virus, Karen and Scott are fighting sore throats and cough, Nancy fine.
I shared a space yesterday with Karen who is doing such amazing work with massage, soothing injured bodies and calming minds. I continue to do wound care and step into pharmacy when I can. Georgia has made this wonderful medicinal herbal concoction that I have been using on wounds and it is really healing and we can see definite improvement. I assisted Leslie with a pretty huge infection in a man’s butt, it had to be excised and drained – it was difficult and so painful. Another neck abscess had to be sent to the hospital because it was so huge that his airway could be affected. A broken nose was set by our Canadian doctor, Janet. Gen made a nose splint from tongue blades. Sadly, it was our Swiss doctor Marine’s last night. We will miss her as she is such an asset to our team and the doctor you all want at your bedside! We are hoping to see her in Zanskar!
So last night we invited the entire team for dinner. I think there were 24 of us, Gen and Zoe cooked an amazing meal. It was Farrah, the Somali translator’s, birthday. I looked around the room and our international family were all laughing and smiling together. They were from Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, DR Congo, Portugal, Somalia, Switzerland, USA. And, as always, we see the similarities between us. We sang Happy Birthday to Farrah in all the languages! After filling ourselves with food we started dancing, finding music from each country and joining in that dance.
It was such a great time. I felt blessed to have made these friendships. It is the light in this difficult work.
I will try and post some pictures of the party but first need to check with everyone about their faces on social media – it is delicate.
