Moral Corruption

Christian and Claude at Khana Khazana

Gaston with his guitar

Well, it's our last day in Kigali today and it's quite hard to believe that we're leaving since are time here has gone so fast. Our flight has already been delayed so maybe that's a sign that we should be staying longer! Patty is here for one more week without us and is awaiting the arrival of Karim who will replace us (big shoes to fill though!).
This week was filled to the brim with teaching activities, days in the operating room, work on our projects and lots of goodbyes.  We made time for a memorable dinner with Christian and his lovely wife Grace who hosted us for a traditional African meal of maize pate, sombe, fish, chicken and plantains, one of our best meals yet!

Our simulation teaching of Anesthesia Non-Technical Skills

Thursday we did our last paediatric case, a 2 month old with pyloric stenosis.  Everything went really well and you can see the enormous benefit monitors like the Lifebox are making especially with the lack of paediatric sized equipment.  It was also great to see yet again what an influential leader Bona is in the operating room, making these difficult cases run so smoothly.

The Lifebox paediatric pulse oximeter

Friday afternoon Lauren and I went to the genocide memorial at Nyamata. We were hosted by our friend Steven who Patty met four years ago at the same memorial. It will take us a long time before we can fully process what we have seen and heard but we are very grateful to Steven for sharing his experiences with us.
Friday evening we had one last dinner out at Heaven restaurant with Bona and his wonderful wife Adelene as well as fellow surgery residents and even an epidemiologist, it was a dinner of great minds!!! (and great wine!).  We had a memorable taxi ride home with our first female cab driver and it wasn't long before Patty was dancing with the rest of us, we even taught her to "fist pump", she will forever be changed.
This is mine and Lauren's last blog, but not Patty's we'll see how her week goes without us and we're off to battle the snowstorms that are keeping us from our families back home.
Terri