March 23
We got up early and had coffee and toast before Nick headed off to early rounds. Archer and I went to the hostel and laid down until he was back to eat breakfast. I still wasn’t feeling well so I had a quiet day of model making and reading, bur I’m sure Archer didn’t mind the company! Nick had long rounds and then a big day in the OR. He did a tibia ex-fix, S.I.G.N. nail for a subtrochanteric femur fracture, sequestrectomy of a tibia, revision amputation of a thumb, drilling for osteomyelitis. He also saw patients on and off all day in clinic. When he was done we headed back to our house and did some laundry outside and then showered before we walked back for dinner. After dinner we had another marathon of “Heroes” and almost lost the dog we are supposed to be watching. While he was outside after dark we noticed something on the corner of the house and apparently he did too, because he took off like a rocket and seemed to vanish, no barking and no visual of him. We decided he would probably come back on his own rather than us venturing off in the dark to search. One hour later he was at the doorstep, thankfully!! That was enough excitement for the night so we headed off to bed early.

March 21 & 22
The Sparks left for Yaoundé at 5 am. We got up at 6 to meet our Eco-tour guide at the hospital gates at 7 am. So this so-called eco-tour turned out to be, … uhh well, a treacherous walk through the forest/farm/jungle, up and down steep slopes, through muddy streams, … We saw one bird, a guava tree and ‘maybe’ heard some monkeys. Thank goodness for the bamboo walking sticks they chopped down for us, we thought nothing of ‘em at first but we would NOT have made it through the bush without them.
Once it was over, we were brought back to the home base you could call it. After wondering what the heck was going to happen to us for a half hour, we finally convinced them to bring us home. We walked back to our “house” for the weekend and relaxed for the day. On the way back there was this cool rainbow like halo around the sun (see pic).
I gave Nick a haircut on the porch and he got stung by a bee. We started watching season one of “Heroes” and Nick watched X-Men III while I collected some food from the pantry and put together a spaghetti casserole for dinner and made jell-o with fruit for dessert, it was nice to have a kitchen again! We watched quite a few episodes and then ate dinner. We had power outages all night on and off. Real diet coke, yay! Coke Light actually, but we’ll take it.
Sunday was much more relaxed, some laundry and playing with Archer the beagle. In the afternoon, we entertained some deaf kids for a few hours playing basketball and foosball (this happens every Sunday at the Sparks, so we just kept up the deal). Later, we watched a bunch of Heroes episodes (at least as addictive as Lost and 24), made brownies and had the med students over for ‘Groundhog Day’ after dinner.
Unfortunately, this is also the day Laura got traveler’s, booo. After the third trip to the head we decided she should kick off the Cipro we brought. Stay tuned.