Of course, the day after I post that there wasn't much happening, we had an
EVERYthing's happening day!
Sharlene Craig (Director of Human Resources from the CBM office) and Jane McPhee have been here this past week, leading meetings & workshops with various people. (They're also going to be part of the conference that we're going to in Nairobi). On Wednesday, the CBM Global Field Staff and National Field Staff along with the Development Team from the AEBR office all went to Ruhengari (or Musanze) for a workshop led by Sharlene & Jane. The Soucy's car was coming from Gisenyi, and Gato's car and our car were transporting everyone else from Kigali.
Caleb woke up at 2:30 on Wednesday morning with a fever and chills, so he had to stay home from school again. He spent most of the day laying on my bed listening to Adventures in Odyssey and sleeping while I did school. As he was laying there in the afternoon again (I could tell he was really sick because he was just laying there or sleeping, not watching TV, etc), I began to wonder if it might be malaria, because over the past 2 weeks his symptoms had been starting to form a cycle.
The crew from Musanze left around 4:00 to try to make it back to the city before dark. Just after they left, Dad changed gears and suddenly there was a loud noise and the engine/car started shaking, and Dad immediately pulled over. The sound, etc, was so loud that the truck driving in front of them pulled over too, thinking it was a problem with their truck, not our car! Thankfully, Gato's brother lives in Musanze and was able to come out with a mechanic. When they lifted up the hood, there was liquid stuff splattered all over the inside of the hood. The mechanic thought that it was something serious (not just hooking up a couple of hoses, or something like that), but the tow truck was already out helping somebody else.
Mom and a couple of others who were dealing with a time crunch left with the Soucy's to make it back to Kigali more quickly. Kathleen, Sharlene, and Mom came by at 7:15 to pick up Caleb and take him to King Faisal Hospital (at the end of our street). He had his BP, temperature, etc, taken and was then hooked up to an IV. They gave him Tylenol, which drained quite quickly, but then also a saline solution, which took over 3 hours to empty.
Back to the rest of the crew back in Musanze.... It became apparent that the car wouldn't be able to come back to Kigali that night and only Gato's car would be coming back to the city. Three members of the development team headed back to Musanze to get a bus back to Kigali; the rest of them piled into Gato's car. Dad said that the last thing they saw was Gato's brother tying up our car to pull it back to Musanze for the night.
Dad got home around 8:20, unloaded his bag, grabbed a "Cliff bar" for "supper", and walked up to the hospital (~5 min walk). Once he got there, Sharlene & Kathleen left and Mom, Dad & C hung our for 3 more hours! We thought that we'd get the blood results before they left the hospital, but the Dr. came in shortly before his saline drip finished and, because his fever had come down and his headache was minimal, gave him the green light to come home; they would call us with the results the next day (and the nurse said that if we didn't hear anything by 6 pm he probably didn't have anything). So, they got home around 11:30, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed to bed.
Thursday morning Caleb woke up with a fever/headache again. I attended a youth workshop by Sharlene & Jane all morning and when I got home, we still hadn't heard from the hospital. Mom & Dad went out for lunch with Sharlene, and I worked hard to get some school done. When we still hadn't heard anything by late afternoon/evening, Mom & Dad walked to the hospital to find out what the verdict was.
All of his tests came back basically clear -- he probably had a localised infection in his gastrointestinal tract, but no amoeba, parasites, bacteria, etc, so no malaria, etc! Unfortunately, he's developed a head cold over the past couple of days. :-(
On Thursday morning, our car got towed to Toyota here in Kigali and on Friday, the engine was taken out. We're supposed to get an email on Tuesday about what's wrong & with some estimates. We're hoping that it might be fixed by the time we get back from Nairobi.
Speaking of Nairobi, in 24 hours we'll be touching down! We leave tomorrow afternoon and are gone for a week--2 days of vacation and the rest of it is at the CBM conference. We're looking forward to exploring the malls, seeing what you can buy there that we can't buy here, hopefully seeing the Hobbit in the theatre (we're really hoping it's still there!), and visiting with our CBM colleagues!
Just to finish off, we are very grateful to be part of such a great team here! They've taken very good care of us with everything that's happened this week and we are very thankful!
