September 16

Today is Papua New Guinea Independence Day so the hospital is quiet. The newly elected Gulf Province governor visited the hospital this morning. This is the first time any governor took an interest in the hospital. I wish I had my camera with me. The governor and his right hand man dressed really nice, they had digital cameras and even mobile phones (there is no signal here). The ‘sound’ man that recorded all the speeches with a small battery operated recorder. He was barefoot. A lot of PNG likes to go barefoot. So you see all these kids without shoes running around and all of them have multiple inguinal lymph nodes. Talking about PNG politicians, I have already heard about how corrupted they are, and this person running off with this money and that. The country is really rich with their natural resources (gold, oil, logging etc….) but somehow the people don’t actually see it. Makes you wonder where the money is all going. The newly elected government has to clean up the mess of previous governments leaving lots of debt which makes it difficult apparently.

Today is also my birthday. I share the same birthday as PNG’s Independence Day. I didn’t tell anyone so I quietly celebrated on my own. I’m not big on birthday celebrations anyways so it doesn’t bother me. Tomorrow is a public holiday and they are having sports day to celebrate and I am told some traditional dancing.

Please pray for another doctor here at Kikori. Last week they put in an advertisement in their paper for a doctor to come work at Kikori. Please pray that the right person comes here and ideally before I leave. Preferably soon as it would be nice to have another locally trained doctor here to share experiences and workload.