Before coming back to Kalongo

Hi everyone,

before coming back to Kalongo (I spent five days in Italy) I upload for you some pictures....

See you from Thursday for the second period of my adventure....

You can find all the pictured of the last month on my facebook profile.

Ciao

Fede

Trip on the Kaolongo Mountain

Ciao friends,

as usual I'm sorry for the delay but I think that now you expect it from me....Today I upload for you the picture of the trip to the Kalongo mountain that me and Valerian climbed last week end.
I would like to thank to all people that answered to the post of the last week. It would be very important to go ahead with the great job that the missionaries did in the past and that they do today.
For this reason, I decided to show you each different ward of the hospital in the next posts. You will realize how much is important the job of the missionary around the developing country.

Enjoy with the pictures.

Ciao!

Fede

Children Ward and Nutrition unit picture

4th week in Kalongo

Ciao a tutti,
I know, also this week I missed my daily appointment with blog but I couldn’t miss my weekly appointment for describing my 4th week in Kalongo.
I would like to welcome to Cristina from Fondazione4Africa. I do not know you, but I appreciate a lot that other people join the blog. It is an opportunity to understand how the life in Kalongo and the particular conditions of the environment is.
This was a particular week for me. For the first time I approached to the children and nutrition ward with perspective of a doctor. The Ambrosoli Foundation asked to us some information about the children and nutrition ward. I already knew that the condition was not so good in that part of the hospital. But sometimes, when you look at the things with the eyes of an accountant, you are too much concentrate on numbers.
Therefore, with this message I would like to make aware your attention on the situation of children here in Kalongo. It is not common for me doing something like these, but every night and every day I hear children crying and if you think to an Italian child crying and multiple the emotions for 10 times, it is not enough to describe how children feel here. While I write to you there is a child in the surgical world that cannot stop to cry. They are doing to clean his arm injured but the disinfectant cause a lot of burning and there are no sedative for pain.
Children ward needs absolutely to be restructured. When you approach to the ward there are a lot of mother, father and children outside the ward because there is not enough places inside. Most of them lay down under the trees in order to avoid the sun. During the hour in which doctors used to examine children, there is a long line of people because there is only a clinic office inside the ward. The space is very very limited.
The mosquito nets are broken for the most part. It is a big issue because here the malaria is one of the most common illnesses.
In the nutrition part of the children ward, the situation is almost worst. Children are placed in two inside room where they used to sleep only on mattresses because there are no beds. The same situation happens in the outside room built under an awning.
This is an overview of the situation of the ward. Surely people here need to develop some rules of how to live in a healthy way, particularly with reference to the personal hygiene. It is not possible seeing children without any clothes and shoes moving around the hospital, sitting down in the ground and eating with hands. However, every one of us could do something in order to improve the situation that I described and to contribute to save the life of children.
I will upload some picture (they will arrive later because of the lower download) to clarify better what I look at here every day. In addition, if someone is interested to do something for Kalongo can contact me and I will give all the information needed.

Ciao Ciao
Fede

Third week in Kalongo.....

Ciao a tutti,
Yesterday someone of you complaint to me because I didn’t update the blog yet. I’m very sorry but the last week was very busy. However, from tomorrow I will try to describe my experience day by day. Taking into consideration that I stay in the office the most part of my week, someone of you will be interested to my work project I’m going to report while someone of you will be more interested to my “soccer weekend”.
As I already said my week was very busy. After a first assessment of the administration department of the Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital, I started to develop my job. I stated three main priorities:
• Building the budget for the next year;
• Assessing the current cash flow situation;
• Developing a new accounting system using a SW called Pastel.
In order to build the budget for the next Financial Year (starting from July 1,2010) I decided to organize a visit to every wards of the hospital and to the 4 stores. The aim was to understand how the IT department registered the attendance of patients in each departments (for revenues side) and how the inflows and outflows of stocks are managed in the stores (for the cost of sold side).
This kind of job was very cool. Me and Valerian went through the wards and the stores of the hospital every day asking to employees how they used to register the patients attending the wards, how the procedures of inflow and outflow of drugs and medical sundries work and how the hospital collect money from patients. It was very funny because in each ward we supposed to be patients coming to the ward and we asked to nurses and doctors to show us what they used to do. I have also the opportunity to meet some doctors that explained to me their experience in Kalongo. One of those is Dr. Patient. He has the perfect name for a doctor!
In addition, outside of the hospital, there is a technical department. It is in charge of the maintenance of the hospital but there are some problems within it. The main issue is the lack of trust between the technical department and the hospital. We are going to develop a plan to sole this kind of a problem trying to rebuild a good relationship between the management of the hospital and the manager of the technical department.
During the free time I try to increase every day my friend relationship with people living here. Next Saturday I went to visit a high school not far from here where they performed some athletic competitions.
I was impressed by the performances of some guys in the high jump. They are able to jump 1.70 meters using an old technique that in Italy we called “sforbiciata”. In addition, I went the town with Didier, a young Congolese priest who is in Kalongo in order to learn the local language. We went to a bar to see a soccer match and to drink a beer. I also learnt few expressions in the local language. “Atchumabee” is good morning, “Irimabee” is good evening.
If I finished to work not too late and during the week end, I go to the football field for jogging. A lot of child, around 10-12 years old, used ask to run with me. I usually tell them to run before me. The problem is that after 10 minutes I’m not able to follow them. Here I realized why the athletic competitions are dominated by black people!!!
Finally, I think that someone of you want to know about soccer. Yesterday I played again 3 hours and today I cannot move my neck. What can I say? Only that I’m almost 30…;)… So I decided to organize a world cup. Until now there are 6 team willing to participate. I hope to add more team…
And today….. Forza Italia!!!!!

p.s. I’m sorry if I didn’t upload more pictures but the speed of internet connection is quite low.

Here I am!!!

Ciao a tutti!!!

First of all I saw that supporters of my blog are going to increase. For this reason I would like to thanks everybody.
Second, I'm sorry with you if I update the blog only now, but I was quite busy during the last few days.
After a first period of knowledge of the hospital and of the people, we have been starting to plan our job project. It will be very tough and for this reason the last days was very busy for me.

After two weeks alone, yesterday Valerian landed here. I appreciate a lot to have someone with sharing this experience. He was very active from the beginning in trying to help me to develop the project. I think we are a great team!
Here everything go ahead very well. I usually wake up at 6, go to run a bit, shower, if time mass, breakfast and at 8 I am in my office starting to work.

I finish around 18, and at 7 we have the dinner. I appreciate a lot this kind of schedule.
After that, I used to go to visit the students of midwifery school. They are always very kind with me and sometimes they entertain me with African Music...It is amazing...

But I used to stop everthing at 21.30, when I'm ready for the WORLD CUP. However, yesterday night was not so good....

FORZA AZZURRI!!!!

Ciao Ciao

Fede

Some pictures