Well, by the time I got home at New Years for a brief visit the amount of books was astounding and there was no way I was going to fit them all in a suitcase. Start phase two of the book project... Begging for money to ship the books. Again, I took to social media and email and friends and slowly but surely my family and friends and friends of friends and parents of friends and friends of friends of friends came through and donated just over $4,200 to help me ship the books from Maryland to East Africa. Then it got even better. A neighborhood acquaintance of my parents and good friend of our family friends happens to have a shipping company. He assessed the damage, which was over 40 boxes of nursing, medical, paramedic, and occupational therapy textbooks sprawled down the front hallway and surrounding the edges of the first floor rooms. My mother had started to worry about the foundation of her 130-135 year old home and rightly so. The total weight of the books was just shy of 1 ton coming in at 880 kilos.
The journey was long. The books were picked up February 19th from my parents home in Monkton. From there they went to downtown Baltimore, to New York, to France, to Tanzania, to Kigali and finally they arrived in Butare late in the evening of July 14th. When Julie and I walked into our office the next morning it was like Christmas! So many boxes and what fun we had opening them all and organizing them. After that (and the many questioning looks we received by patients, their families, and staff as empty box after empty box came out of our office and into the hallway, we divided over 500 books between the departments. The idea was to create a library for each department so that the staff would actually utilize the books during their everyday practice. Over fifteen departments received books. They are, the ICU, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, Neonatology, Accident and Emergency, Theatre, Nutrition, Physiotherapy, Social Work, the Physicians Center of Excellence, the Pediatric Farm Feeding Project, Orthopedic Surgery, Clinical Training and Research, and the Director of Nursing. Furthermore, we gifted 20-30 books to the In-Charges of the nursing departments as well as some BLS and Research texts to our promising instructors and twins. It was pretty amazing work.
The donated money was used to build extremely nice bookshelves to house all of the books as well as customs and transport fees from Kigali to Butare. With the remaining money I purchased materials for the BLS Program that I have worked on here that has been such a success. With still leftover money I made a donation to the Pediatric Farm Feesing Project, which has been a huge undertaking by both Medie and Dr. Emily. Part of the project is to teach mothers better ways to cook (for instance please stop cooking your vegetables for eight hours) and nutritional value of foods. They have hired a cook to prepare food properly and to train mothers who are down in the hospital kitchen. They have also hired nutrition students to teach parents proper nutrition. The $800 donated to the project will go specifically to the students and cooks salaries. I asked that the money be used for educational purposes since that is what the money was originally intended. The remaining $500 donated was left in the capable hands of Dr. Jeff Dixson who will be staying for a second year in the internal medicine wards. Jeff plans on using the money again, for strictly educational purposes like buying white boards and markers for the departments as well as bulletin boards. He has promised to run things by me first, though I completely trust his judgment. I am so thankful to everyone who donated their money, time, books or company. Whether it was $5 or $500, every little bit counted, every book has found a new home and CHUB will continue to grow and improve because of you. I especially want to thank again, Robert Pace and Mainfreight USA for shipping the books. Especially his beyond wonderful manager, Jackie Long, who tirelessly and effortlessly answered my 5 million questions over a five month period. They are both saints. In addition, I'd also like to thank the friends who used their own money to mail their books to me in Rwanda themselves and those who mailed or drove books from all over the country to my parents. Finally, I'd like to say thank you for all the funny things I found tucked in the books... From my babysitters price slip from her lower school, to a photo of my friend Sonya whom I worked with in Haiti, which marked the page of how to deal with unruly patients, to a motivational notecard to my longest friend in the world from her big sister about passing the boards, to $5 for a study break while studying for the boards, and finally my mothers Christmas present from my sister-in-law that somehow got mixed in (don't worry mom, I'll bring it home), they provided me with some great laughs and smiles.
I cannot say thank you enough and neither can the hospital. I am thrilled. They are thrilled.
Thank you.
Lessons Learned:
1) There is so much good in this world.
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