PHOTOS

 Photo is of laundry including the surgical linen hanging on the lines to dry as no dryers to keep up with all the linens and it does actually decrease infection rate IF dries completely before it rains. (We are in middle of rainy season wih rain most afternoons)

This is one of the 2 hospitals in the city we are at port in...Pointe Noire, Congo with one Mercy Ships nurses out front.

 

This is the neonatal intensive care area. The babies are kept in a very small area together and many under bili lights or on IV fluids, a few have actual IV pumps but we count drops to regulate IVs here..(think back to when ?I graduated nursing school!) The area was clean and they are certainly trying. However, all the equipment needed for the baby must be bought by the parents before the baby receives the care...ie feeding tubes, formula, catheters, etc. Sometimes the equipment can not be found locally even if one can afford to pay.

 

 The entrance to the neonatal ward.

 

There were little openings in the forage along the river where if you looked closely  you could see huts behind and where the river people "docked" their boats.

 

 
the Congo has very few roads as people travel here in canoes up and down the river that goes all the way up into the rain forest and the pygmy people.

 

There were 21 of us packed into a van that "normally" holds 15! on the way to the river.

 

 

 They had dug out canoes with a man with motor on back and little chairs for us to sit on as we climbed in for an hour ride up and down the Congo River.

 

Psalm 19:1-4

1The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.