Sunday March 10

We all slept late this morning... Well, to 8:30 or so ! We had another nice breakfast, but then learned that the water pump which gets water from the well across the street to the cistern on the roof is broken, so there is no water for bathing or flushing toilets or doing dishes. They have put a big tub if water near our bedrooms, and from that we transfer water into smaller tubs to bring into the shower. It's not great, but it works, and hopefully tomorrow the pump will be fixed. John and Nathan joined us around 11, and reported that everyone was doing well including the nightmare sigmoid volvulus from yesterday. Dimple was very pleased to hear that ! Readers with a weak stomach may want to skip to the next paragraph! I forgot to mention that in our late night dinner conversation last evening, we had come up with a new descriptive, based on our experience with abscesses here, and particularly the one Santiago operated on who is known to us as the Fountain of Youth. The term we coined is a "Vesuvial abscess"; in order to be called that, it has to meet the Knight criteria of spurting at least 6 cm in the air for at least 6 seconds and it must contain not less than 600 cc. Around 1pm Moses picked us up to take us to Kendeja, the RLJ resort on the beach. We had a lovely, relaxed afternoon which was well-deserved if I do say so myself. Tomorrow begins another week, which will be shortened by the fact that there are 2 holidays: Wednesday is Decoration Day, where families go out to decorate the graves of family members who have passed, and Friday celebrates the birthday of the first President of Liberia. We will work on Wednesday, but not on Friday as the President has invited us for brunch at 11am.