home sweet home-choma

Hello!

We are at our new home in Choma, Zambia! Currently the students are playing a game at a surprise "birthday party" we had today for all the students who have bdays on the trip. We burnt the cookies, but the cake turned out great! Andrea and Amelia did a great job shopping for and cooking with zambian ingrediants! On Thursday we split up into two groups; one group went to the hospital and the other group went with judy and pam to do  mother/baby clinic. Thursday was surgery day in Chikinkta and some of the girls actually got to scrub in during a hysterectomy. This would never happen in the US so it was an awesome experience for the students! While some of the students were in the OR other students were in a sort of emergency room. I was the only nurse with IWU nursing students and zambin nursing students, it was quite an experience. We dressed alot of wounds and gave some injections. I will post pictures of those later. The students in the ER were frustrated because of the lack of resources. For instance, a 1 year old littler girl had her fingers rn over by a wheelbarrow and basically they were cut off and bleeding. we didnt have any antibiotic cream or pain meds. So we cleaned her tiny fingers with saline, wrapped them with gauze then reluctantly sent her off crying with no pain meds. This was eye opening for the students. The other group went into  rural community and weighed babies to check for malnutrition. They also gave immunizations and other post-natal check ups. Tomorrow we will go to church and have some activities  in the afternoon. Our history professor comes in tomorrow, so history class starts Monday. That's it for now! Thanks for reading nd plese keep us in your prayers. The students want me to tell you they are hving a great time, and we had an amazing time in chickinkta and made great friends! goodnight!

Bethany