The Good and The Bad and the Ugly

Dear Folks:

This is the Kwesi Gnome (the guy on the right) and a great pic fom the forest.

Sorry about the long delay. Our internet that we have been tapping into at the top of the stairs is no longer working, and so I am doing this from the hospital.

We had a wonderful weekend in Nyungwe National Forest-getting picked up at 500 am and taking a long drive (the distance is not far) through winding roads and beautiful country side. We stopped to see the Royal Palace-which has tradtional woven houses as well as a modern villa, and then arrived at the lodge in time to make our first visit to the monkeys. The next morning we were up again at 4:00 am to drive on the worst road ever. The Rwanda's have a name for this kind of driving-African Massage-as this is the kind of body pummeling you get on the ruts.We were so lucky to get a very close up view of the chimpanzees-a real thrill to see them in the wild, then back for lunch and the long drive home.

No comes the bad part-(hold on for the ugly). When we got home the power was gone again, all the food in the fidge was bad, and so no supper and also no internet. Then in the morning off to the hospital sans petit dejeuner, and an absolutely hectic day in the OR. In fact we had to do awake trachesostomies for huge intraoral lesions-but both times the surgeons wanted the patients to be intubated prior to doing the tracheostomy. I won't go into details but it wasn't pretty.

At 5:00 pm Kwesi and I were both famished, and decided to head downtown to go to the bank to get extra cash, and out to dinner. Kwesi's Visa was declined, and at that point the cell phone died. So now we are a bit down cast-so out for a good meal and then home-only to find out that someone had attempted to break into the safe by using a simple bicycle type key, which fortunately did not work, but at the same time broke off in the safe rendering it impossible to open. So now we have no access to out money, passports, medical insurance etc. We had stored everything in the safe, and since our apartment was not getting cleaned had left the door unlocked as there is a house guard on duty-bad idea!! Needless to say I spent hours awake last night wondering how the hell we were going to get in to the safe, get out papers, etc. This morning we informed the Esperance, KHI and we went to work and fortunately through the help of Bosco, Bona and Kwesi as well as many others got the thing open, but the saf now is totally dependant on knowing the code as the key is still stuck in it and so we will let Peter Slinger know the safe code when he comes.

Meanwhile I am still trying to concentrate and teach so we have been somewhat stressed. People have been really nice, and comforting so in fact again it has brought us closer to them. We are starting to chat with people in the OR and sometimes they are pouring out their personal stories to us which you cn imagine can be very moving. Anyway we have recovered and we are starting to feel a bit better.

I am going to try to attach som pictures-

All the best.

Love

Jennifer