The Degree's I'm Missing

Sometimes, when I feel that I have to be a Jack-of-all-trades, I wish that I had more education to back me up. I think by now I should have earned honorary doctorates in flexibility and creativity.

Yesterday I was wishing that I had formal training in accounting. I have always HATED math and dealing with numbers. Just ask my dad who persevered through my tears in teaching me my times tables. As the clinic administrator I handle clinic finances. I've been keeping these beautiful spreadsheets updated. (I just learned how to use Excel last year!) But it's about to get a lot more complicated as I'm learning the Kenyan way of managing a checkbook and bookkeeping. They prefer paper to electronic. Say a prayer that I maintain my sanity!

Today we had another one of those complicated cases that makes me wish I had a strong background in social work. I'm telling you, being a medical provider in a village definitely has different dynamics than being one in Southern CA! Two of our community members got in a fight early on in the afternoon. We could hear the emergency village alert screams coming from across the river but didn't know what was going on until the wounded started showing up at the clinic.

The first patient had his head cut and needed suturing. The other man didn't show up for a few hours. But when he arrived we could see the situation was critical. He was intoxicated and had been stabbed in the flank. The wound was extremely deep. He needed to get to the hospital. The challenge was that he didn't have the funds to pay for the fuel to be transported. What is really frustrating about this situation is that one of my colleagues had hired him for a short-term labor job. She paid him a decent sized sum of money for the work just last night. So we knew that less than 24 hrs ago he had more than enough money to handle the situation.

We had to call the family to get them to pool resources to buy fuel for the transport trip to town. It's times like this when I really wish I could pick up a phone and activate the social services system. However it never ceases to surprise me how families and community members do come together at times like this. Hopefully the man's internal organs weren't horribly damaged. After all he does have a family to take care of (and an alcoholic habit to break!).

As I was in the process of writing this post I was reminded of a third skill I've had to acquire, grant writing. We just received word that our clinic has been chosen to receive a grant for a medical referencing program. I had applied for it last year and actually forgot that we were waiting for an answer. I recently applied for another grant which would fund us for a women's health education program. Please pray that our proposal is looked at with favor during the review process. We won't find out about that one until sometime in May.

Well I need to finish up a brochure I'm designing for the clinic and then I'm going to call it a day! Tomorrow we are doing an outreach project at one of our staff member's church. Have a blessed day!