Latest Update from Andrew and Dean in Doro

Sunday night, the Commissioner of this county (equivalent to the Governor) invited us (the ST and the LT missionaries) to dinner. We had the VIP treatment as he sent 2 land cruisers (one of which his personal) to pick us up at the compound and took us to town. We had dinner at a place run by a Ugandan woman. We (9 of us) sat outside on dirt, the place was fenced around with grass. Right out are animals, what looks like garbage dump and kids and adults staring at us eating. We were given cold soft drinks (cokes!), served a large meal with 2 different kinds of potatoes, sweet potato, chicken and goat stew. Despite the unreal atmosphere, the food was quite good. We chatted with the commission about all sorts of things (his wife and daughter lives in America and he actually is an American citizen). We chatted about politics in Sudan, what problems he faces as he tries to improve the lives of the people here. It was quite an educational and fun experience. Monday Andrew started working at the clinic. It was an extremely busy day but we saw all sorts of stuff. We saw stuff like Malaria, various GI diseases, and even a case of Oncho! I certainly can appreciate the difficulties of working through a translator, working through various cultural issues and the lack of diagnostic tests. We had to treat based on symptoms alone. Andrew went along on a "house call" to treat a patient in a nearby village. We had no clue where the patient was but it was by God's help we found people along the way who spoke just enough English to point the way for us to find her. When we found her, she was lying on a cot outside. She clearly was ill but I think she is improving from urosepsis. The conditions are just as what you'd imagine is a very primitive 3rd world country. I biked back from the village, even though it was around 6 pm, it was 105+ but I had a lot of fun. Dean worked in 100+ heat to put up the rebar (support for partitioning) in the clinic. He is dirty, hot but is loving every minutes of it!!