June 20^th (Wednesday)

           Another clinic day today. We were so busy (the three of us anyways), there is always a long line to be seen by the doctors at clinic. We went to Dorothy’s again for lunch. She had been planning to have just the men that are here to help with maintenance/construction of a roof and installation of a water pump. However, they ended up going to another area for a few days, then Dorothy decided to have us three girls, Phil Granger, Tiffany, Dr. Lipsi, Mwansa, Allison and Mel.

It was a good lunch and it began with Dorothy showing us what her worker, Sarah, had almost swept up what was underneath the chair at the dining table. It was a black and white banded snake. It was quite small and had been put in an empty jam jar. We looked at it and set it to the side after determining by looking in the snake book that it was a kind of garter snake–poisonous but not known to be fatal.

When Allison came we passed the jar saying we thought you might want to see it. She took it and wrinkled up her nose at the sight of it–she really doesn’t like snakes, so she quickly try to get rid of it. Mwansa also didn’t love having it on the table and it became the centrepiece.

A little later while we were discussing snake and crocodile stories Mwansa yelled and jerked in her chair and Nicole yelled “what is it?”, Mel and I flinched. All this happened at once. As we have been talking about snakes, Mwansa had felt something touch her leg (which we discovered it was just the cat’s tail), Mwansa apologized. Tiffany then scared Allison when we were putting things away in the kitchen.

After lunch, us girls came back to the Annex and rested/read, we went for a walk by the river, then had supper, and went to the last English gospel meeting of the series. Allison and Tiffany had to leave the meeting early as there was an emergency at the hospital. Mel and us girls walked over as we were curious and Mel needed Allison’s house keys.

There was a little girl who had come in earlier that had been seizing and was positive for malaria after being tested. She came in as she was vomiting blood. It became emergent when she was unable to breathe on her own anymore and became paralyzed. We then were suspecting that perhaps she was bitten by a snake, but we couldn’t find a definitive bite mark. After she was stable we returned home for the night.//