Medical Training and Green Mambas

President and Sister Holmes invited us and the other senior missionaries to an overnight stay at the mission home in Kumasi for a workshop on health training.  The women senior missionaries are primarily responsible for overseeing the medical needs of all of the missionaries.  It's a huge responsibility and can mean life or death in such a primitive part of the country.  Dr. Fife and his wife Michelle drove in from Accra to conduct the seminar and train us on how to handle some of the health issues, some of which can be fatal.

We had a very informative  session and then enjoyed a wonderful dinner together before retiring.  The new mission home is lovely, but like Nkwabeng, it is much like a prison compound with barbed wire atop huge walls surrounded by very poor shabby huts.

We left the next morning and just a few miles out of Kumasi our little truck  started to sputter and jerk.  We decided not to turn back but to try to get home.  It was somewhat frightening, because you really don't want to have car trouble out on the jungle roads.  We limped it along and finally got home.  Owusu (bless that man) met us and took us to the "Magazine".  We could never figure out what they were talking about and thought it was a magazine they ordered automobile parts from.  We found out that the Magazine is an area of town where hundreds of little shops are clumped together selling all kinds of automotive items (mostly used) and with handymen and mechanics who work on cars.  It looks like something out of Mad Max! There's everything:  mufflers stacked in piles as high as buildings, old rusted out engines, tires and wheels, wrecked vehicles, welding, grease pots,  and everything else related to cars and trucks.  The entire area is filthy, grimy and covered with grease.  It only took about an hour and Owusu's mechanic friend had solved the problem--fuel filter was clogged. (Not surprising since we had been driving in Kumasi on all of their construction dirt roads.)

We then got a call from the Elders at Fiapre.  Dr. Fife had showed us pictures and had told us in our health seminar that the beautiful florescent green snake Gary and I had seen and admired on our morning walk, was indeed a green mamba.  If you are bitten by a green mamba, you basically have 20 minutes until you die.  I guess we'll be watching where we are walking in the jungle a little more closely from now on.  The Elders at Fiapre have killed two snakes since we have been here, and while we were gone, they had discovered another snake INSIDE their building under a towel.  The African Elders are literally terrified of snakes and now we know why--they can kill you!  One good note, the black mamba isn't quite as lethal as the green mamba.  Their bite isn't as fatal and if you can get to a hospital immediately and if the hospital has anti-venom, you might only lose a limb.  However, Sunyani Hospital doesn't carry anti-venom so it doesn't really much matter.

Even though we don't think the snake they found was a mamba, we will be fumigating their building next week and the missionaries will have to have a "sleepover" with the other Elders in the District Office for a couple of nights until the air clears.

Oh, the joys of living in a jungle!