If you think that I am more poetic than usual, you are right! I didn’t come up with this myself, it is the first sentence of the Bangladeshi national anthem. It came to mind as my housemate and I walked around the fields surrounding LAMB Hospital. It is harvest time and the fields shine with their golden color!

Harvest time means that people are too busy to come to the hospital. And then there is money only after the rice is sold…

The last few weeks we have clearly seen that the winter season is coming. In the picture you can see that I am wearing my fleece jacket. Especially in the early morning and during the night It is rather cool, below 20°C. During the day it gets warmer and then is the fleece jacket not necessary, but apparently I am not that flexible

During the last several weeks I have had help with surgery. a Dutch surgeon who has been here before while I was away. The first 2 weeks that he was here, there was also a British anaesthetist. Thus I planned high risk patients. We told the patients beforehand that we would call them when we knew the anaesthetist would be here.
One of the patients was a 2 year old boy with a congenital defect of the intestine (Hirschsprung’s disease). In the last few years I had done the necessary operation a few times but a few of the children had serious complications after the operation and some also died. Thus last year I decided not to perform the operation any longer unless I could operate with another surgeon. It was a joy to do this operation together. The child healed quickly and was able to go home in a few days. He does have a stoma that we will remove in a month or so.

Most of the other patients on the list never came. It was very interesting that several patients promised over the telephone that they would come but didn’t. When we tried to call the telephone was not answered. It is interesting to note in this culture that it is not so bad not to come than it is to say on the telephone that you would not come…

Our midwive training program had an open day. The day was opened with speeches of local officials and several people from the project (the picture shows my speech). Afterwards there were stands showing what the students were learning. Of course these stands also had to be visited by the officials!

Here you see several students doing a dance demonstrating the 6 steps to washing your hands

The chairman from one of the local authorities is photographed ‘I love being a midwife’

And now I have 2 weeks of vacation! I will go with a friend to a guest house from a hospital in the south of Bangladesh. There it is very quiet and on a large piece of land. We can’t hear any traffic! Birds and sun are there! I need a vacation and hope to get rested up. Tomorrow we will go to the beach. It takes an hour with the bus to get there…