Obama in the Freezer Section

I have been out of the loop this election year. But when I ran across this at an ice cream shop in Bamako I was quite surprised. Either it is one of the craziest publicity stunts ever, (probably not) or the people that live in West Africa are just so enamored with Obama that they would name an ice cream flavor after him....

Worlds Apart

I love the women in our town. I have so much fun being with them, watching them and trying to talk to them. But it is also very very frustrating to not be able to communicate well with them. On this day the Church ladies came by to visit. I was honored by their time, but sometimes I feel so lonely in the midst of them... please pray for me to learn Bambara and to learn it well...

Medical Practice on our Daughter

Jeff bought Katy's four month vaccinations when he was in Bamako recently. So we had them in our fridge for when she turned four months old.

The people at the clinic don't use alcohol swabs before they give injections. So we thought about doing it ourselves. But our pediatrician (several hours away) wrote us an e-mail encouraging us to do it as part of a pediatric check-up.

So on Katy's four month birthday I gave her her oral vaccine, tied her on my back, and took her and her shots to the clinic.

I brought my own alcohol and asked them to clean the site of the injection before giving her her shots, and I told them that they would need an extra syringe because one of the medicines didn't come with a syringe. I turned my back to get my camera, and when I turned back, I realized they had only given her two shots. Instead of getting a new syringe they mixed two medicines in one syringe and gave her one shot.

She seems to be fine, but we feel so helpless in those moments. It is very much outside of our culture to think that you know more about health than the medical professionals you trust.

A friend of ours has a call in to the CDC, and we should hear from her soon what we need to do.

These moments can be very hard. I had just shared with Jeff about how overwhelmed I am sometimes to be the one holding the responsibility to make sure our kids get all their shots at the right ages. No one is calling us to remind us to do it. Then we prayed together and put it in God's hands once again, and I went off to the clinic. Pray for me to handle these types of situations well, and for God to protect our children.