Below is an overhead view of the West Africa regional offices & guest houses where I have been staying this past week. If you zoom out and go north a bit you can see where I’ve flagged the house I lived in back in the 90s.

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During the church service today this man wandered over by the windows and was singing to himself and looking outside.  This photo was taken in color but I like it much better as a black & white image.

Abidjan is on the coast and is in what is considered rain forest. Dry season won’t kick in here for a while and we have had rain every day since I’ve been here.

Below is a photo of the street that the missionary houses and offices are on.  As you can tell there isn’t a very good drainage system. One missionary joked yesterday that they have “lake front property.”

I took this photo of Deron Meilstrup tonight over dinner.  Deron is a counselor who has been in West Africa for 2 years with his wife Mary Beth.  Mary Beth is the media strategist that I have been working with on website stuff for the region.

Jessica Van Bibber is a 4th year medical student from Kansas City, Missouri studying family medicine. She came to Nalerigu’s Baptist Medical Centre to volunteer for 1 month. Jessica came to Ghana with her mother Kathy and she worked along side of Heidi. They enjoyed examining patients together and taking call together so that they could bounce ideas off each other and pool their collective knowledge of medicine.

I interviewed Jessica a week before she left to get her impressions of West Africa and working at a hospital in a 3rd world country. You can download the 9 minute audio interview as an MP3 (3.5MB) using the following link:
Interview with Jessica Van Bibber – October 20, 2007
You may need to right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As…” to download it to your computer

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I’ve been in Abidjan since Wednesday and have spent most of my time at the mission’s regional offices working with the media team. We’re working on rolling out a website for engaging churches by November 1st.

Last night I took a taxi across town to the neighborhood I used to live in (’94-’98). I met up with Chantal who used to work for us and care for my younger brother Philip. We went to her house and were able to meet up with Suzanne and her husband Anthony.

Suzanne worked for us for 4 years before Chantal. In 1999, Suzanne married Anthony (who is Swiss) and they moved to Switzerland. The summer after Heidi and I were married we took a trip to Europe and visited Suzanne and Anthony at their home in Laussane. Since then they have moved back to Abidjan. Read the rest of this entry »

The river is a favorite hang out for the kids from the village. They help their mothers carry the dirty clothes down then they splash and play while their moms wash the clothes and gossip.

This boy was sitting on the bank of the river when we took Trey down for a swim.

Trey and I have been doing well so far while Daddy is away. For the first couple days we were both sick. Trey had a fever and a nasty sounding cough…and I had (of all things to get while in Africa) a nasty cold. I’m not complaining though. With a little extra rest and a little help from Tylenol, I’m feeling much better. For Trey, I finally decided to give him some amoxicillin syrup because the cough and fever kept lingering. After only a dose of the amoxicillin, he sounded better. I think it was just the syrup part and not the antibiotic, but oh well. He’s doing much better.

It seems as though the hospital remains in a constant state of flux when it comes to doctors and volunteers. Dr. Faile returned safely from the States on Wednesday, but on the same day Dr. Hewitt and his family took off for Burkina Faso for a much needed vacation. Another team from Texas arrived this week as well. One doctor who used to be a missionary in Thailand and three family medicine residents. Read the rest of this entry »