Dry Season has arrived

November 13, 2008
Time is sure flying by. Tomorrow, me Mama and me Papa will by arriving into Freetown, and we are pumped to show our first official Kabala visitors around (of course, they have far more Africa experience than we do). The weeks are just starting to blend into each other a little too quickly. Nevertheless, we are excited to have visitors, and our friends here are looking forward to meeting our parents.
Last weekend we had a relaxing and fun couple of days in Freetown. We stayed with some friends at the Cause Canada guest house which was quite fun. The first day we went shopping downtown to the "PZ" market. I have been to large outdoor markets in big cities before, but this was like nothing I had ever seen. Street vendor after street vendor for as far as you can see. Busy, packed, loud, general sensory overload, and roasting hot. We were able to find some items in the market for the hand washing facilities at the school. A big highlight of the weekend was the food. Some excellent bakeries and restaurants that we ate at….Adrienne was in her glory…the pinnacle of which coming while enjoying a cheese croissant, fruit salad, and fruit smoothy with her morning coffee. In true Loewen fashion, she couldn’t stop talking about how good the food was.
The second day we drove about 1 hour south of Freetown to a beautiful beach called River #2. We grabbed a couple of umbrellas and tables, drank coconut milk, and soaked in some rays to pass the day before heading back to Kabala the next day on the public bus.
Prayer request: Ibraham Turreh, a class 3 student at CRC, is very sick. We had heard he was very sick with what had started as Malaria and was now severely constipated, so we decided to go visit him last Friday after school. When we found him, his abdomen was grossly distended with severe pain, he was anemic, and had peripheral edema (fluid in his hands and feet). He had also been vomiting, and running a high fever. Adrienne thought he possibly had a bowel obstruction with underlying complications which could be fatal, and wanted to get more information regarding an official diagnosis and treatment plan from Dr. Conteh, who is the hospital’s doctor. However, he had been out of town for a week, which meant there was no doctor at the hospital at all. So Dr. Samura (an awesome guy and very good doctor who we just met who has been running a private in and out-patient clinic in Kabala since April) had been seeing him. We visited Dr. Samura at his clinic, and decided over the weekend that Ibrahim needed an x-ray and blood work asap. Since Adrienne was quite invested in Ibrahim by this point, her and Dr. Samura thought it best that she accompany them to a private hospital in Makeni to have the tests and then return to Kabala afterwards for treatment. So, Monday morning the mother, Ibrahim, a nurse aid, and Adrienne journeyed via public taxi to Makeni. Long story short, the XRay and blood work showed that he had an "acute abdomen" and possibly a perforated bowel and internal bleeding. They decided to treat Ibrahim with aggressive antibiotics instead of performing surgery because he was too unstable to have surgery. He is admitted in Makeni (Adrienne came back to Kabala on Monday night), and needs a miracle if he is going to survive. The family was extremely grateful for all the ways that Adrienne helped out, like initiating a plan for him, finding out what is wrong and acting as a trustworthy middleman, and helping out financially for an extremely costly trip for the family.We are hoping to visit him in Makeni on our way down to Freetown tomorrow.
On a positive note, Sobie Shaw (the class 1 girl who suffered large burns to her chest and arm), came back to school on Monday! Other than some significant scaring, she is healthy and in good spirits – and has regained full use of her hand. She healed remarkably fast – I couldn’t believe it was the same girl that I saw at her home 3 weeks prior.
This week marked the grand opening of the new latrine facilities at CRC Primary. Adrienne was at school all week teaching kids about Jerry the Germ Bug, and why we don’t like him. After this, she took small groups of kids out the new latrines for a lesson on how to use the buckets, and also the new latrines. Because the holes are smaller than what they are used to, Adrienne got the kids to demonstrate how they would squat over the hole to do their business. One grade 1 boy took this request to a little too literally, so he ended up being the first to poop in the new latrine, with everyone watching.
Thanks for reading – will update soon.
Joe and Adrienne