New house-mates

June 15, 2008

Florence pulled a rack of pork ribs out of a plastic shopping bag and laid the ribs and another hunk of meat on the kitchen counter. “Oh isn’t that nice”, she commented, “she took the skin off and only left this little bit.” (This little bit was about a two inch square of flesh still adhered to a butchered segment of the newly deceased pig. “What do I do with it?” was her next question.

Florence Judd is my new house mate. She kindly offered her best room to me for the last couple months of my time in Shell. Her little home is just around the block from the hospital and has a nice outdoor patio with jungle plants and flowers growing around the border and in two dugout canoes framing the tiled sitting area. It is a much better location and close to town, so I can get about easier and spend less time in the rain. I met Florence my first day at the hospital back in January and she accompanied me on my trip to the jungle town of Makuma as well.

Now I not only have Florence as a housemate, but a very flat spider by the doorway to the bathroom, a dried out slug by the closet door, and a cockroach that walks across the ceiling over my bed. I couldn’t get rid of the spider after Florence told me he had been living in the door frame for several years. Now I greet him every morning and just make sure he doesn’t stray too far from the recesses of his hidey hole.

Florence had received the pork as payment for a bill and was trying to decide how to cook it up. I suggested sweet and sour pork. I pulled out a 30 year old “Jungle camp cookbook’ for missionaries, and 30 minutes later we had an entrée.

This has been a week of change. On Monday we interviewed two applicants for the new Physical Therapy position. The clinic roof was finally completed. On Tuesday we chose our new therapist. On Thursday the hospital administrator finished his five year term of service in Ecuador. On Friday the Hardin’s, the second of two missionary doctor families moved out to return to new jobs in the United States. We had interviews for a new radiology tech and the purchasing department too. Five offices were changed to better position the staff. The hospital heli-pad was repainted and our new PT began her orientation into the hospital.