"Hospital lures rural doctors with unusual offer" by Roxana Hegeman, Associated Press / Dec 31, 2011
I thought the wait in the office was long.
An unorthodox approach to bring doctors back.
All employees, from maintenance people to physicians, get eight paid weeks off each year that they can use to do missionary work in other countries. The idea: people willing to care for the sick and suffering in developing nations might be content to do the same in a town of 855 people, more than two hours away from the nearest Starbucks.
The public hospital began advertising that benefit — which employees can use for other volunteer work or any purpose they choose, not just mission work — in Christian publications and at Catholic-run medical schools. Today, the hospital has a chief medical officer, a medical technologist, a nursing director, a nurse practitioner and other staff drawn by its so-called mission-minded recruiting. It’s now looking for nurses, a dentist and a physical therapist.
“I was not surprised by the differences between rural Kansas and rural Zimbabwe. What surprised me were the similarities,’’ said the hospital’s 32-year-old administrator, Benjamin Anderson, who has been the catalyst for the program. “I am not saying rural Kansas is the same as a developing country, I am simply saying rural Kansas and rural Zimbabwe struggle with some of the same challenges — they just look different.’’
I suppose skin color would only be one way, right?
In both places, people have difficulty accessing medical care, face housing problems and can feel isolated.
Related(?): Sunday Globe Special: Give the Plummer a Call
You may be heading that way, Americans.
And while on the topic, the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe washed right down the MSM memory hole, didn't it? I'm sure the sanctions haven't been lifted, so WTF?
Situated in the vast prairie of southwestern Kansas, Ashland is a sleepy cattle ranching and oil town filled with modest homes and an aging population.
Yes, that is different from Zimbabwe; most people there do not have modest homes.
The major employers left are the schools and the hospital. It has a small grocery store, but no gas station....
That might look the same though.
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My assumption is Zimbabwe has been out of the paper for a while because Mugabe either can not be dislodged without military action, or he's become more amenable to the empire's demands in recent months.
"Zimbabwe’s ‘Hanging Tree’ falls, reviving superstitions" December 09, 2011|By Angus Shaw, Associated Press
HARARE, Zimbabwe - The felling of Zimbabwe’s famed colonial-era “Hanging Tree’’ is reviving legends and superstitions and has many believing it signals a new era for this troubled southern African nation, whose hardline 87-year-old president is in the winter of his long rule.
Sometimes I think my Zionist prism reinforces stereotypes.
Witnesses said the 200-year-old Msasa tree, declared a historic site and national monument, fell Wednesday after it was hit by a truck and collapsed onto one of its strong branches in the middle of the street. Some of the workers in the truck then fled, believing it a sacred omen of “bad things to come.’’
There are a heck of a lot of those around everywhere you look lately.
Icons of the first uprising against white settlers, including the ancestral grandmother of the nation Mbuya Nehanda, were said to have been hanged from the tree in 1898.
Not talked about much, but there are a bunch of those in AmeriKa, too. Too bad they weren't being used now, what with the lying war criminals and looting bankers this society is sheltering.
A n’anga, a witchdoctor, performed rites over the split trunk and gnarled branches yesterday demanding that homage be paid and forgiveness sought at Nehanda’s grave site north of Harare for the destruction of the tree. Crowds gathered at the felled tree to take pieces of its billowing green leaves, splinters and bark.
The fall of the tree came on the same day that President Robert Mugabe, suffering from ill health, marked the country’s national tree planting and reforestation campaign by planting a tree in the second city of Bulawayo.
I'll bet many Zimbabweans were hoping the old man would be hanging from the thing.
It also coincided with the annual congress of Mugabe’s party, its last major gathering before crucial elections next year. The vote is meant to end a fragile coalition government with the former opposition of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai formed after disputed elections in 2008 that were plagued by violence and allegations of vote rigging.
Yeah, that is ominous.
“It’s got to be a sign something big is going to happen,’’ street vendor Mathias Vinyu said of the tree’s felling.
The Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association said yesterday that the tree represented “powerful forces’’ in the nation’s social and political life. Its toppling is believed to signal the dawn of a new era of truth on past injustices, including Nehanda’s execution, the group said.
That DOESN'T SOUND like a BAD THING to ME!!!!
After a decade of political turmoil and economic meltdown, Zimbabwe’s political leaders are gearing up for elections next year amid new allegations of violence and intimidation by Mugabe militants.
Mugabe has traveled to Asia eight times in the past year for medical treatment, reportedly for prostate cancer. His party has been split by calls for him to leave office and claims he is not healthy enough to lead a rigorous election fight.
He gonna die, and that gonna be a good thing!
The indigenous African tree, or brachystegia speciformis, was commemorated on a Zimbabwe postage stamp in 1996 and political rallies have been held there.
Historians, however, have cast doubt that it was ever used for hangings.
Nehanda was a tribal spirit medium believed to have had immense powers. She is upheld by superstitious Zimbabweans as the country’s greatest symbol of black resistance to colonial rule.
Zimbabwe historian Rob Burrett said yesterday that records indicated she was actually hanged on gallows at a prison.
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Time to hang it up.
