Hospital Devotionals

Every morning at 7:30, this "bell" is rung to call people to the hospital devotional. Many of the hospital staff come, as well as the families of patients.

People began to gather under the pavilion.

The devo starts each day with singing. There are a few songbooks, so if we got one, we could try to sing along in Swahili! Notice that the women are all wrapped up----the mornings were mostly cool (about 50 degrees Farenheit). Even on cool mornings, flipflops were the normal shoes.

Hospital staff wears uniforms of various colors, depending on their job.

Whenever the speaker was speaking in Swahili, there was an interpreter in English just for us.

Ron and Eddie were both asked to speak at the hospital devos. The next photo shows Ron speaking one morning.



Bernard was interpreting in Swahili for Ron.

The following photos are of some of the people. The hospital maintenance men were always in blue. Moussa, the man on the right of this photo, worked at keeping the outside walks and gardens cleaned. His daughter had wanted to read with us, but her English was not good enough for her to converse. When we told her she would not be allowed to practice this year, she cried. We had to explain through an interpreter to her father the next day. Almost every day, Moussa greeted us with a big smile and handshake.

The following three young ladies are medical students from Ireland. We recall their names as Sarah, Naomi and Rachel. They were telling us that in Ireland, they do not have to get an undergraduate degree---they just go straight into medical school. That is why they look so young when they only have a year left before they are full -fledged doctors at 21 years old! One of the requirements for their school is that they spend some time at a hospital in a third world country. When they searched the internet while looking for a place to volunteer, they came across the Chimala website, and they applied to come there! It was good for the hospital to have extra hands and good for the girls to have such an interesting experience!

The Harding nursing students stand with their teacher/supervisor, Janice; they attended the devos every morning. One of the young men said he knew he would be back after he graduated.

Debbie E., Muriel, and Jan

After the devo each day, we would all go around the crowd and shake hands. Some hands felt normal, and some were quite warm with fever! The people were all friendly and seemed to enjoy any attention paid to their children. Almost none of the hospital visitors spoke English. A few of them would say, "Hello. How are you?" We tried saying "good morning" in Swahili !

The following is a video of the singing. Toward the end of it you will see a large woman wearing pink and standing next to Debbie D. That is Bernard's wife. She sings very well, and the strongest female voice you hear is hers.