5/23/98: Met with Dan S. and Doug E. to outline and strategize the details of our work for TEAM here in Zimbabwe. There are interesting and fun projects for both of us! We are so excited to be able to offer some service…
5/24/98: We went to church with Doug and Nancy E., and found it joyful and refreshing to our hearts. After lunch, I had a fascinating talk with Paul C. (an Area Director for TEAM) about church and missionary issues around the world…
5/25/98: Up very early, and packed up to head out to the mission hospital with Dan and Julie S. When we arrived, Dan gave us a whirlwind tour of the compound that left us slackjawed…
NOTE: The main photo above is a group of Shona children excited to meet us as new visitors to Karanda Mission Hospital.
5/25/23: There was a considerable amount of preparation in the year before we set out on this journey. We directly contacted over 150 missionaries through 30 or so different mission organizations, providing them with our personal CVs and offering to come to their locations if we could be of service with our particular skills. We received about 120 positive responses. Knowing that we could only make a meaningful impact by spending 2-4 weeks on each project, we then corresponded with all of those missionaries to winnow the list down to 12-15 project locations. So, by the time we arrived in Zimbabwe we did have a rough outline of what our first project would entail. But still, it was a thrill for us to sit down in person with new friends, and drill down to specifics strategy and tasks for the next few weeks. During our stay there, we found that TEAM’s diverse and integrated work in Zimbabwe was exceptionally well organized and faithfully carried out by creative, enthusiastic and gracious people.
With my background in graphic design and marketing, my assignment was primarily to document the wide-range of ministries that they facilitated through photography for use in their promotional materials. All of the work of these ministries were funded by donors from around the world. Ruth was surprised that Dan indicated her expertise as an Infection Control Practitioner was particularly welcome to him. He explained the standards of a mission hospital in rural Africa were different than a teaching hospital in Chicago, there might be open windows in the OR, and the occasional chicken wandering through as well! But he also assured her that the infection rates were quite low because the immune systems of the patient population were far more resilient than those in developed countries. On that first tour of the compound, she saw that Karanda was far more advanced than Dan let on and was excited that they would be able to utilize her expertise quite well.
That first tour of the Karanda Mission Hospital really did leave us gobsmacked. The campus is not only big, but it was immediately evident that it was extremely well organized, and run by people with genuine love for those whom they served. Dan and the rest of the staff were clearly smart and well-disciplined as well as gifted and compassionate. It is a heartwarming work of stunning faithfulness.
Karanda Mission Hospital includes two surgical theaters, a men’s ward, women’s ward, pediatrics, obstetrics, waiting mother shelter, outpatient clinic, well baby clinic, laboratory, X-ray lab and laundry facility. There is also a nursing school with dorms for women and men.
Here are some amazing stats from their website:
- 4 doctors attending to 152 bed hospital divided into 4 wards
- 30 staff nurses and 55 nursing students
- 75,000 patient visits per year, including up to 4,000 surgeries (major and minor) and 2,000 baby deliveries
- 200-300 outpatients daily!
Additionally, there is a chapel building that is used for staff chapel services through the week, as well as being used by a local church with a Shona pastor. We also saw the airstrip and airplane hangar, though Dan indicated that the roads had been so much improved in the previous decade or so, that it was no longer used. They had three sets of huge water tanks that kept the entire campus supplied with fresh water, a mill where they ground their own corn, and a full-blown maintenance workshop. All told there are well over 50 buildings on the compound!
The mission work there began in the 1930s, but was interrupted by the Zimbabwe War of Independence (aka, Rhodesian Bush War), that lasted from 1964 through 1979! TEAM was able to return eventually and re-established the newly named Karanda Mission Hospital. Dan’s father was instrumental in the relaunch of the hospital after the war, and Dan was continuing the work at the time we visited. Check out the promotional video below, as well as their “About Us” page of their website to get great details about their history and current initiatives. This is a place I would love to return to someday, and if you are interested in traveling with purpose, especially in Christian missionary service, I highly recommend it to you!
