Kudjip Nazarene Hospital: A Mission in Transition

 To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

 

Great to be back

It was great to be back to Kudjip. I’d forgotten just how beautiful the mountains were.   The marketplace down the road was just as loud and congested as ever.  The men still gambled and played darts off the side wall of the store. Then there was that same fellow with his microphone, loudspeaker and amplifier,  lecturing to the crowd and whoever would listen.  I walked slowly over the uneven, muddy road, through the crowds of people.  I had to watch my step as walked in between the parked line of small buses and vans.  One never knows when one of them is suddenly going to start moving!  I always wave friendly waves and greetings to the sellers of carrots, candy, mangos, and beetle nuts along the road. Kudjip’s market is a friendly place.  

 

Changes and transitions

Kudjip’s medical staff is much younger now.  

Over the last 18 months, several strong veteran missionaries have left and retired from the mission field. The hospital administrator and his wife finished their 2-year commitment and went back home to Montana.  They missed being with her grandchildren over the Christmas holidays.  Erin, our medical director, had also moved on.  And one of my favorites, a skilled veteran Family Physician of over 25 years’ service retired back to Ohio with her husband.  She left a large void.

Newly minted physicians, from Alabama to Minnesota, straight out of training, had stepped in.  All were young couples with at least 4 small children each.   Kudjip now has more missionary children than I’ve seen anywhere.  It’s my new mission-kid capital!

Education

Getting enough schoolteachers for all these mission children is a struggle.  The importance of a good education cannot be understated.   All the parents lend a hand.  Even Dr. Ben, the Chief of Surgery, and the new Medical Chief of Staff, teaches the children how to play basketball.  He can add “Physical Education Instructor” to his list of titles.   

 

The world is not what I think it is.  

I keep getting surprised.   

I was finishing an operation with Dr. Alex, an excellent surgeon and native of Papua New Guinea.  As we closed the skin incision with what we called a “Baseball stitch”,  I innocently asked Alex, “Do you know what a baseball is?”  I figured Dr. Alex, as someone who grew up in a former British colony, knew more about rugby or cricket than he did about baseball.  But I was wrong.  Dr. Alex put down his suture and addressed me sternly: “Doctor, we aren’t savages out here.  I watch ESPN!”

My Brad Pitt Moment

My taste of being a Hollywood star took place one Sunday, when I went to Catholic Mass.

St. Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church is within walking distance of the mission.  It’s just down the way on a path through the green tea fields.  When I got there, I sat in the back and off to the side, not wanting to attract attention.  But the Pastor and the parishioners wouldn’t have it.  To my surprise, the church members really liked that one of the white doctors from the hospital had come to their church!  I mean, they REALLY LIKED IT.

At the end of the service, I was surrounded by smiling faces and people wanting to speak to me excitedly in Pidgin, the local language.  I didn’t understand a thing, but I didn’t need to.  Everyone wanted to shake my hand and wish me well.  I think that I shook hands with nearly everyone in the church!  I also felt like an NBA player too because I was at least a head taller than everyone!  

In the aftermath, walking home through the tea fields, a thought occurred to me.  

“Is that what it’s like to arrive in heaven after we die?”   

I don’t know.  But stay tuned.  

 

The PNG Independence Day celebration

September 16 is PNG Independence Day.  And Kudjip’s Mission Station celebrated.

Holiday at the mission compound.  I blew up a few balloons and enjoyed the dancing and celebrating by the basketball court.  They love their country, and they are proud of it.  It’s good to see.

A Substitute Surgeon in the missions

That’s my role for now, until I’m called to do something else.  Coming in to cover missionary surgeons, who need relief and time off.  Filling in where there’s a need.  And it’s all good.  Trusting God and leaving things to Him.

Coming Back to Bere Adventist - A Promise kept.

 “A deal is a promise.  And a promise is unbreakable.”

                                                                                                                                  - Wonder Woman

 

Why did I promise to come back to Bere Adventist?

 

Here’s why.

Bere is a front-line hospital, far from any large city, and exactly where it needs to be.

The people are poor.  Many are nomadic.  They carry their mats rolled up under their arms with them into the hospital grounds.  They roll them out on the dirt, and that’s “home”.  That’s all they’ve got.

 

It’s hot and dusty.  The night-time darkness can be as black as ink.

The 50-year-old hospital infrastructure is breaking down.

There’s just one power generator on the hospital compound and that’s it.

Sometimes my house had no water.  I carried water buckets home so I could flush and take bucket showers. It’s not exactly where I would send someone on their first mission.   

It’s the challenge of being at Bere that draws me.  Getting some dust on my shoes.

Getting the satisfaction of doing something that is hard.

When I get a tiny taste of what my patients go through every day, I am more respectful.  

I can’t do enough for them.  I help them work through their problems , shoulder to shoulder.

I want to be here and fight their battles with them.  Am I tough enough?  Ok.  Let’s see.

 

What also draws me here is the need.  I am transparently needed.  It’s real. I’m not lost in the crowd.  

It’s a small place so I can immediately see the results of what I am doing.  If I don’t do it, it’s not done.  I can see that I am making a difference.  And that is compelling.

 

The tough part is that Bere is resource poor.  While there are things that I can do, there are many things that I cannot do.  People arrive with cancers that are so advanced that I can’t treat them.  And people who need operations that I am not skilled enough or know how to do.  I just want to learn more so I can help more.  But I stay in my lane.  I refuse to try to do things that I’m not qualified to do.

So, because of all this, and a chance to serve the poorest of God’s poor, I came back to Bere.

When old friends see you, greet you, and smile it’s truly a wonderful feeling.

 

Mission Aviation Fellowship: A new way to get to Bere

I’ll confess that I am not that tough.

On this trip, instead of taking the 11-hour bus ride from the capital N’djamena to Kelo; 

and instead of coming in by motorcycle and pontoon boat from Kelo to Bere for another 3 hours,

I splurged and hired a plane from the Mission Aviation Fellowship: MAF.  It was great.  I rationalized by saying to myself that I’d be better rested when I got to the mission.

When a plane lands on the local airstrip, many of the town’s children come to watch the spectacle.

They call me “Papa”.

Gosh, I hate being called “Papa”.  But that’s my new nickname.

Why?   Well, it’s not because I have any children. It’s because I’m older and my hair is all white.  It’s a gesture of respect for age and experience.  But I don’t really like the name.   I don’t like being reminded that I’m older,  even though it’s completely true.  Sigh.  As usual, I just have to get over myself and go with it.

 

The Mango “bombings”

BAM! It’s mango season!  The entire Bere mission compound has metal roofs and many mango trees.  BAM! So when the mangos fall, and they hit the roofs with a BAM!

These unexpected “bombings” occur at all hours of the day and night.  BAM!

 

Cherise: “I am 16 going on 17”.

What happens to children brought up in the missions?  Are they ‘normal’?  Can they function in the real world?  MY answer is an emphatic “YES”.

Cherise is the daughter of veteran missionaries who have served all over the world.

She has spent her entire life in the missions.  When I asked her how old she was, she laughed and sang those first few lines of that tune from “The Sound of Music”: “I am 16 going on 17”.

Has Cherise suffered from being a “mission kid”?  I would say emphatically “NO!”.

Cherise has lived in South America, Asia and Africa.  She can speak 3 languages.  She rides a motorcycle around the mission compound, and she can fly an airplane.  No, I don’t think that she’s suffered at all!

 

I was so lucky to have Cherise.  One morning, she randomly arrived on the surgical ward while I was doing morning rounds.  She immediately blended in.  I used her as my French translator.  She enthusiastically embraced the job and “took over”.  I also gave her a lot of little jobs to do around the hospital and she rose to the occasion.  I would playfully remind her that St Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France, was also “16 going 17” when she led the French army against the English in the 1600’s.  I think she would have got along with St. Joan very well.

Bats in the trees!

One morning I was amazed at the huge number of “birds” high in the tall trees above the mission. “Wow!  Look at all those birds!” I said.   To this, I received a playful elbow bump to my side from Cherise.    “I hate to tell you, but those aren’t birds!  They’re bats!”  What!?  Really?  And sure enough, when I looked more closely upward, I was shocked.  Cherise was right! “Oh my!  Fruit bats!  Lots of them!  They’re munching on mangos, right?  They’re harmless, right?  I hope so.   

 

Honey Dressings

One of our young children suffered burns to his arms and legs from sitting too close to a campfire.

Our honey bandages really helped.  Cherise and I covered his burns every day for 2 weeks with gauze dipped in honey.  And voila!  Most of his wounds healed.  The high sugar content kills bacteria.

  

Prayer Lessons 

I am the victim of good example.

My Christian Evangelical missionary friends pray aloud verbally and frequently for just about everything.  If I playfully exaggerated and told you that they prayed even when they crossed the street, I wouldn’t be that far off.  My style has been to pray silently.   Their style is to pray out loud.  It’s a good idea and I am beginning to imitate them. We always pray together before starting every surgical operation.

 

Come with me

Imagine that you and I are on the mission compound.

The night is dark, and the power is out.  It’s very hot and humid.  

You and I are walking towards the hospital in the darkness to check on patients.

We can’t see exactly where we are going, but we’ve got our cell phone lights on and pointed to the ground so we can see where our feet are.

And we look up.  The stars above are so bright that we feel like we can touch them.

We can see Alpha Centuri on the horizon.  We can never see that back home.  These are more reminders of God’s power.  

Finally, we get to the hospital to do whatever we can with whatever we’ve got.

I am glad that we’re there, trying to do something.  I may not be hitting home runs every day, but I console myself by knowing that anything I do, no matter how small, would not have happened if I wasn’t here.  The harder it is and the less we have, the more aware we are about how 

dependent we are on God.  

When I’m armed with prayer, a  strong and worthy purpose, good people to work with, and maybe a fan, and a cool glass of water, I find that I don’t need much else.

And yes.  I’ll be going back to Bere again.

 

Mbingo Baptist Hospital: One of Cameroon’s Finest

"Act, and God will act."  

                            St. Joan of Arc

 

At first glance, it’s easy to underestimate Mbingo.

It’s surrounded by beautiful mountains, green hills, and distant waterfalls.

And somehow, there’s a 300-bed hospital wedged into it all.  The mission compound is huge.  There are homes for all the members of the nursing and hospital staff.   There are primary and secondary schools for their children.  There’s even an old unused grass-covered airstrip at the perimeter.

It is a referral center and a training center.  There are residency training programs in Internal 

Medicine and General Surgery.  There are specialist surgeons in Orthopedics, ENT and Pediatrics.

There are training programs in Physical Therapy and Laboratory Technology.  

In 2017, they installed a CT scanner.  Presently, they are constructing a linear accelerator for radiation therapy to treat cancer.  It’s quite a place.  Hiking in the local hills at 4500- 5000 feet is the favorite extra-curricular activity.

Inspirational returning physicians

People like coming to Mbingo.  Many physicians keep coming back each year, each selflessly adding their expertise.  There’s the Chief of ENT at Mt. Sinai in New York City; a Head and Neck Surgeon from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; and a Chief of General Surgery at St. Luke’s in Philadelphia.  All of them will bring along their wives and young residents in training.  From Canada, comes an Emergency Medicine physician who has been coming for the last 10 years.  An Ontario Gynecology-Oncologist comes twice a year.  The list goes on, with physicians from Oregon and Minneapolis too.  And I must mention the ‘long-term’ medical volunteers, who really help keep the place running.  They come from the USA, Canada and Australia.  It is quite inspiring to see and to be a part of.  Go to the missions and meet the world!

 

The residency training programs

Mbingo produces good physicians.  More and more of them are taking charge of the hospital care and administration.  It’s exactly what should be happening.  It is wonderful to see the camaraderie and spirit among them.  They are much like the residents that I’ve trained in the USA.  They are the light of Africa’s future.  That’s why it’s so important to help them.

 

The amenities

Even though it looks like one is far from everything, the accommodations are good.  I’ve even had my own washing machine and refrigerator. The Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) is well organized. Mbingo Baptist has come a long way from its beginnings 70 years ago as a Leprosy Hospital.

 

Mbingo’s Weaver Birds

I love them.  The sounds of Mbingo are the songs and trilling of the beautiful yellow breasted weaver birds, who seem to live in most of the trees around campus.  They are everywhere and quite tame.  Walking around, I try to give them space as they hop around the small market area within the hospital grounds, looking for food.

 

The Goats do NOT rule

Agriculture is the main economic activity here.  Farming is always going on somewhere, even on campus.  The maverick out-of-control goats who go into the fields and eat the crops of the local farmers are not appreciated.  Evidence of that is seen in this message went out on the mission community bulletin board:

“Greetings dear colleagues,

We are calling on all of us who have goats or know someone with stray goats to constrain them or the goats shall be caught and auctioned.

By Tuesday March 21, 2023, if your goat is found straying, 

we will catch it and slaughter it for you.

Let the information be spread to the people not in this forum.”

 

The community bulletin board of WhatsApp

WhatsApp is used  for communication in the form of a community bulletin board among the Mbingo missionary volunteers both near and far.  People share and keep up with their daily struggles and worries.  We hear about the health of the missionaries themselves and of their elderly parents back home.  Sometimes, missionaries return home.  I felt their closeness and felt part of this wonderful community of good people.  

 

Singing at Worship Services

Song is very much a part of all African Christian worship.  They say that if you sing, you pray twice.

I’m not very good at it, but the Africans sure are.  Their harmonizing and their side-to-side dance movements during services are something that we all could sure use back home.  I guess I should stop being so self-conscious and just go for it like the Africans do.

 

The Cameroonian Civil War and the “Mbingo Bubble”

What spoils all of this is a chronic smoldering civil conflict in the background.  Its origins can be traced back to the end of World War I when Cameroon was a German colony.  When Germany was defeated, France and England split Cameroon between themselves, creating a French-speaking section and an English-speaking section.  That flawed setup has led to today’s fighting.  The English-speaking section wants independence.  They want to call their new country “Ambazonia”.  Thus, their small, scattered guerilla forces are called the “Amba” or “the boys”.  They are loosely controlled.  They do what they can to disrupt the province, occasionally closing roads, and extorting ‘ransom’ money from road travelers.  Most local people seem tired of the whole business.

 

Still, the hospital, its volunteers, and staff are safe.  It is a protected space because it serves everyone (the Mbingo bubble).  Visiting physicians are safe because they generally rarely leave the hospital compound while on mission.  Life goes on and the common people still make their way to the hospital for help, though in fewer numbers than 10 years ago.

I’m learning to be less envious and jealous of others.  

Instead, I’m learning to marvel at other’s successes.  I’m learning to appreciate how God’s power is working through them.  But I shouldn’t worry or be bothered about what God’s plans are for others.   

It’s none of my business.  It’s all between them and God.  

God has His plan for me.  And that’s enough.  It’s up to me to focus on that.  I need to take a deep breath and just trust Him.  And then run as hard as I can in the direction that He’s laid out.   

Then I will be doing what I was made for.   And it will be good. God knows what He’s doing.