We finally arrived at Mbingo Hospital yesterday (Friday) evening. After passing through Belgium and Switzerland, we arrived in Douala (Cameroon's economic capital) on Thursday. One highlight of our flight to Zurich, Switzerland was seeing the Swiss Alps from the plane! When we arrived in Douala, we went through several customs checkpoints. All of the customs agents were very friendly to us. When we came around the corner to the baggage claims area, we heard the sounds of the crowds outside waiting on us to come out of the airport. Everyone was yelling and screaming. It sounded like a riot! I admitted to Melissa later that evening that I was terrified. We were warned about the mobs, but nothing could ever prepare you for that sound and what added to the nervousness was that it was completely dark outside. There was even someone blowing some type of trumpet or bull horn. While we were waiting for our luggage to come out onto the baggage claim area, we looked up and there was a balcony full of people looking at the newly arrived passengers. Since there were two baggage claim areas and luggage was shooting out of both of them, Melissa decided to go over to the other one and wait just in case. While we were standing there, the electricity went out. So, there we were in total darkness and separated from each other with the drone of the crowd outside as the background music. After about a minute of this, the lights gradually started coming back on and we were both fine. After declining a couple of aggressive offers from people that wanted to carry our luggage for a tip, we headed out the door to the mob. Our driver, Silas, was supposed to be waiting for us with a sign that would say "CBC" (Cameroon Baptist Convention) on it. There were several signs being held up, and we had to come all the way to the edge of the loud crowd just to read the writing. Just when I thought we were gonna have to think of another plan to find Silas, a kind faced dark man came out of nowhere and said to Melissa in his thick African accent "Aw you Ma-lee-za?". It was then that I realized, that all along, we had nothing to fear. God was with us, and that's all the security we needed. Silas helped us with our luggage to the car. We had to part the crowd down the middle to get to the parking area, along with telling the children "no thank you" when they tried to grab our bags. When we got in the car, a little boy kept knocking on our window, "Madam, Madam" he would say to Melissa, but we were told to not give attention to anyone while at the airport. Our hearts were breaking when we had to keep saying "no thank you, no thank you". We overnighted at the European Guest House overlooking the port of Douala. That evening we met a man by the name of Danny Kennison, who is the Hospital Director at a hospital in the extreme northern province of Cameroon, for our evening meal. We brought an echo machine from World Medical Mission for his hospital. He was very grateful for us to carry it with us on our journey through three security checkpoints and two customs checkpoints.
The next morning, we ate breakfast at the guest house out by the pool. The guest house workers and servers were very kind to us. We hadn't exchanged our USD to African Francs (their "dollar") yet, so I tipped a couple of the compound security guards with Nutter Butters. They were very happy with that! When you are doing cross cultural outreach in Africa, there is no better feeling than when you give a gesture to a native, not knowing how they'll respond, and they give you that big white smile! Silas came and picked us up and we headed down the road to Mbingo.
The scenes on the way to Mbingo were breathtaking as well as eye opening. The landscape as you get further away from Douala starts to become very mountainous, very much like where we live in East Tennessee. The journey from Douala to Mbingo would probably be equivalent to a ride from Cincinnati to Atlanta, and there were people consistently walking on the side of the road the whole time. I kept wondering to myself "Where is everybody going?" I couldn't believe how people could carry their bags, baskets, and bundles on the tops of their heads. We traveled through the city of Bamenda, and stopped in at the Cameroon Baptist Convention headquarters to meet the logistics coordinator and thank him for his hard work in getting us overnight accommodations and travel arrangements to Mbingo from Douala. After a brief visit, we traveled the last 45 minutes of our 5 hour trip to the hospital. When we arrived at our guest house, we were greeted by Bridget, who is the cook for The Palmers, who live in the house attached to ours with a veranda breezeway in between. We said our goodbyes to Silas, and got situated a little before we met with Dr. Nancy Palmer, whose husband is Dr. Dennis Palmer (who Melissa is relieving from the pediatric ward). They are a very nice couple. Nancy has her Ph.D. in anthropology and Dennis is an internal medicine physician. After we chatted for about an hour with Nancy, we went inside to unpack our luggage. At our evening meal, we met one of our cooks whose name is Mercy. She and another lady named Margaret alternate days they cook for the short term guests. Both of them cook very well, and are very sweet to Melissa and me. After supper, we walked over to the children's ward and met three of Melissa's nurses named Precious, Glory, and Patience (all three were natives). Precious was very out going! Her and I joked around, laughed, even high-fived each other at one point. When we got back to our house, Melissa met with Dr. Dennis Palmer about what kind of diseases were present in the ward.
Today, Melissa started in the ward and I went to the market with some new friends, Christoph and Sarah (he is the IT guy and she is a physician). I start my work here on Monday morning. Melissa worked all morning and took the afternoon off to walk around the market and campus with me. I brought a lot of candy with me, so I spent most of the morning handing out candy to people along the roads and hospital just waiting for that big white smile to appear! Tomorrow is church, and we can't wait to worship with these beautiful people! I will try to get Dr. Snyder to enter a blog update on her patients. She has some pretty complicated diseases that she's dealing with! Pray for her daily! Pictures to come soon! We love you all!
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