Wednesday

Wednesday March 9

Today is Decoration Day, sort of like our Memorial Day, and the day on which families go to the graves of loved ones the clean them up and redecorate them. It is a national holiday, so there isn't much going on, except that we are operating. Moses is back from Lofa County, an 11 hour drive, where he went for the funeral of his mother-in-law or sister-in-law or something. He and Yuk did a hernia on a 3 year old, then Cocola and I did a Halstead repair of a recurrent hernia in a 60 year old, and now Santiago and Jenn are doing Trifecta. It appears to me that she had a strangulated Spigelian hernia, which has to be pretty rare. In any case the surgery went well and was not as difficult as expected, so that was all good.

After the usual HEARTT lunch in the cafeteria at the Maternity Hospital, we were walking back when we met a group including Cynthia Nash, the Liberian Consul in Atlanta; I had met her before on the trip in September. She was leading a group of interested church people and others from Atlanta. A group of us then went sightseeing to Mamba Point and the Hotel Ducor, and then to the Capitol grounds. Following that we came back to the Guest House to wait for everyone else coming for dinner.

Around 7:30 Catherine came into the living room to say that we (Santiago, Jenn, Eric, and me) were wanted next door at the President's house. We went over there to find that all of the other HEARTT people were there, and had just said hello to Madame President, who had just arrived home from the office. Adamah sent the others to the Guest House, while we were escorted to the gazebo to meet the President. She was very gracious and warm, greeting us each individually; we also met the Minister of Labor and the Minister of Health. Santiago noted afterwards that he couldn't remember the last time he was nervous meeting someone, but he was this time.

We then went back to the Guest House for a wonderful dinner and excellent company including the Dean of the UMass Medical school and a group with him including a librarian. We talked about books and Internet and knowledge etc.

At the end of the evening I spent some time chatting with Chris Hughes, who has finished his PGY-2 at Hartford, and is now a Global Surgery fellow at Childrens Hospital in Boston. He is also engaged to Amy, a daughter of Jock Lawrason who is my friend and boss as he is Chief Medical Officer of Alliance. Yes, indeed it is a small world !! they are interested in seeing what sort of program they could set up to help in Liberia, and he is here on a scouting mission.