The hospitals have closed down except for extreme emergencies, and I arrived at 1:00 a.m. this morning to find a very sick lady with AIDS and pneumonia, and difficulty breathing, and a 2 week old, severely malnourished baby that I’m guessing is about 3#, but don’t know for sure. The mother only had one diaper, and one outfit for the baby. I gave them a washcloth for a second nappy (diaper) and it is too big! The baby isn’t eating very well and I’ve dug around and found a size 6 t-shirt, and you can imagine how big it is on a baby less than 3 lbs.!
They are staying in the annex, and neither the mother or the relative with her speak English. Fortunately I got in touch with Dr. Maphosa and he is giving her 4 of these pills I brought (thanks Dick) 3 times a day, and I’ve hunted out some pillows so she can be partially upright to make it easier to breathe. I’m having the yard boy check with them every hour and try to get the baby eating, with the medicine dropper, but he keeps falling asleep, so we aren’t making a lot of progress! Managed to give them soap, towel, washcloth and vaseline, none of which they had. I know with AIDS there is 5 stages, and I think mother must be in stage 4 or 5!
All the news I’m reading is not good, and I haven’t been able to get on line though I’ve tried intermittently since 1:20 this morning, and it is now 5:00 p.m. This may not go out for a long time.
Dr. M reported that we had to discontinue feeding the malnourished in the hospital even though we had permission from the doctors and the provincial medical officer- the hospital admin wanted us just to give them the food, and there was a big to do about it, and in the end we are giving the food at a few clinics where there are a lot of malnourished. Some from donors is not being allowed to be given I’m hearing, but insisting on giving it to officials to do so. We all know how that would go.
This may not go out for days, but I’ll try. The Green Venture is again in serious trouble and it sounds like a cracked block. The mechanic had checked before and it wasn’t so I’m assuming that someone has been driving it and gotten it too hot again. Whatever caused the water and overheating problem has come back to haunt us. The good news is that Big Blue is running much better since the fuel tank was take off and the filter inside of it cleaned out. We didn’t even know there was one. I’m glad I asked the guy that I bought it from and he advised checking that.
I’m hearing that the communications have gotten much more difficult so if you don’t hear for a while don’t worry. We’ll contact you when we can.
Love,
Paula
