Shedding some blood

Written on Sunday:

It figures that the first time that I give blood is in Kinshasa. I’m not able to give blood in the US because of their fright that I might still have mad cow disease from the time I lived in a western European country—here they have more important things to worry about.

I was able to go to the HIV/AIDs clinic that Monkole hospital also has. They call it Monkole 3, it’s only a day clinic and it gives free HIV tests and free medicine to those that they find are HIV positive.

They screened me before I gave blood—making sure that I wasn’t positive and that my hemoglobin was high enough for me to give blood—making sure that I didn’t have malaria. J I was able to give a quart of blood and found out that I’m O+, didn’t know until then that I had my mom’s recessive O.

That same day I made my first official live translation, there is a nurse here who leaves tomorrow and has been working on sickle cell disease. She’s from London, Kim, and works at the Royal London Hospital as a specialized nurse on SS—sickle cell. I had to translate her presentation—which she luckily had already tried to work into French—and overall I think the students understood me. It was quite nerve wracking but since they are all so friendly it was a great first experience!

I was also invited to my first birthday party this weekend. Maggie—one of the teachers at ISSI—had a daughter who turned one and I was able to go with two of the students that live in my residence, which accompanied me. While we were making our way through the crowds at rond-point (got to buy a little doll for the cute b-girl!) to find a transport, I randomly ran into Joelle and Serge with a couple of other people that were also going to go to the same party. The world is soooo small. As many of you know—I have a very very weird custom of running into people I know almost everywhere I go! This wasn’t the first time it had happened in Kinshasa—on our way back from the concert of Joelle’s choir I saw the guard that works at our residence on the street—as we were driving by!

Well, apart from the world being small—the party was very nice. I was able to talk to some of the “grown-ups” while still having fun with the little children that kept running around. I was able to actually participate in an intellectual conversation with some of the guests as they discussed what this country needed in order to develop—the subject that was most discussed was the conditions of the roads—figures. J