Looking Back: One Year Ago–Together Again

Saturday Oct. 16, 2010

After my rough night last night, I was very grateful for a good night’s sleep.  Barb called around a little and one of the local missionaries, Tim, agreed to help us out and came to pick up me and David. We arrived at the hospital and you could see that Hubby was relieved to see us.

We started to make the transition again for me to stay the day and Hubby to head back to the guest house.  I got tears in my eyes when I realized that David wasn’t just making sure I got to the hospital safely, but that he planned to stay with me for the day. I had no idea.  I tell you what, these people we are with are just amazing.

Tim was a wonderful advocate, explaining the system to us and being proactive. Blake seemed a little bit better and we decided we were going to push to be discharged. Well, there is no discharging in Congo. If you want to leave, you leave. But still. We needed to be able to treat Blake at home. Fortunately, when we saw a doctor (not the same one Diana and I met with the previous night), he recommended going home on his own. I guess the doctor last night really did just see us as a chance to make some money. 

Just before noon, Hubby (he hadn’t left yet…there had been too much going on that morning), David, and I packed up, paid our $465 bill, and headed out to look for a cab. Praise God, we were going back to the guest house, our home away from home!  But as we walked down the street, 3 white folks with a black baby, we got lots of stares. And we noticed zero cabs. We went out on the road and stood for a moment but became increasingly nervous. Cabs aren’t marked as cabs. How were we to know what was a cab and what was a person trying to get us into their car to drive us to who knows where and take everything we have and leave us for dead? So, we decided to walk back to the hospital and call Tim. He was unavailable then but said he could come get us in 30 minutes if we could wait. Yes, yes! We could wait. 

It was wonderful to arrive back at at the guest house and just settle in to life here again with the four of us. Blake was still sick, and he still fought his medicine, but he was eating and his fever was being managed with Tylenol. Hopefully his amoxicillin would work. I did some laundry in the tub and we gave the babies a bath.  It was great to go about normal routines again. Saturday evening was pizza night – and we each got half of a pizza to ourselves!!! After being used to being rationed, it was heavenly. We all crashed pretty early.  It had been a long couple of days.