New Shammah Staff!

After two rounds of interviews, we can now introduce you to the new staff at Shammah Health Center!

There were a few frustrations and delays in the process, which means that the clinic still isn’t quite open, as we’d hoped by now. But we believe that the extra time has allowed God to put together an incredible team of people, representing five different nations, all passionate about reaching out to the Burundian community with God’s love and quality healthcare.

We have Joshua and Nadine Guenther, (Executive Director and Medical Director of Shammah Health Center.) Josh and Nadine are both nurses from Canada, and have been in Burundi for just over a year, doing an amazing job to get the centre open. They will be working as nurses whilst managing the centre, and their plan is to slowly hand over responsibility to local staff over the next couple of years.

We are incredibly lucky to have them!

We have Zenon, our physician. A Burundian, he has extensive experience working with NGO health organizations, and Josh and Nadine actually first met him last summer in Uganda at the health workshop they attended there. Zenon has the personal experience working with the Ministry of Health that we desperately need, and he’s got a community health background and has a huge passion for growth and development.

We have Matabishi, our lab-technician. He is Congolese, married to a Burundian, and we were extremely happy to reunite him with his pregnant wife here in Gitega. Matabishi previously had a job working in the south of Burundi, work that separated him from his child and expectant wife. He has a great sense of humour, and is probably one of the most experienced and well-educated medical lab techs in the country! We are incredibly blessed to have him on board.

We have Vumilia, our chief cleaner. She was previously unemployed, trying to get together anything she could to support her three children. She is Tanzanian, married to a Burundian that she met working several years at a Burundian refugee camp across the Tanzanian border. A nursing assistant, she is experienced with healthcare and education, and has an extensive background in maternity. Her primary role will be cleanliness and hygiene supervision, health teaching and assisting with births.

We have Grace, a YFC volunteer from Uganda. Grace was trained in Public Health, but has spent the last year and a half working in different departments within Burundi YFC. Her language skills make her incredibly useful as a translator, and she’ll be helping with patient care and education programmes.

The current plan is to open Shammah Health Center’s doors to the public on Monday 10^th March 2014.

This will be followed by an official opening ceremony on Saturday 5^th April.

A huge thank you to everyone who has travelled with us on this journey to get the centre open. Please keep us in your prayers over the next few weeks:

• Please pray for all the staff as they learn to work together as a team, and get used to how things will be run in this new clinic.
• Please pray with us that there will be no more delays, and we can open as planned.
• Please pray with us as we continue to look for funding to supply the clinic with a sustainable and self-contained solar power system