Organization of Hopital Schweitzer

As I was walking around the hospital grounds today, I realized that I don't know if I have ever explained to everyone how the hospital is organized. Excuse my error in not laying the groundwork with a good expose. Let me try and paint a picture of how things work here.

The Schweitzer compound is situated on the banks of the Ogooue River, but not right along the river as it originally was. Schweitzer built his house and the first hospital wing literally abording the river (probably to save time and energy from hauling everything to a higher location), but in the 1970s or 80s they moved all the hospital buildings to higher ground. Now everything sits about a quarter mile from the river on a hill overlooking the water. The hospital consists of a cluster of buildings organized into wards. The wings of hospital are internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, maternity (where childbirth and the first few days of life happen), “cas sociale” (psychiatric cases), and a big classroom. There is also a huge building called, appropriately enough, “la grande salle” where adults are seen as outpatients, the pharmacy, radiology, ER, and laboratory are all found. I spend most of my day in the pediatrics ward, with sproadic trips to maternity, radiology, and the laboratory.

The hospital set up is straight forward enough. The weird thing about the rest of the grounds is all political. There is a giant laboratory run by the University of Tubingen (German) that does research on malaria and TB. They have a lot of money, grants, Gates Foundation backing, so they have a lot of sway. And they bring a lot of Germans to roost here. This sets up the potential and sometimes realized inter-European conflict between the lab Germans and the French who run the hospital, as well as adds to the subtle anti-American spirit that courses throughout Schweitzer. Finally there are other random European-Swiss, Spanish, and Austrian--folks who wander though rounding out our ragtag international ex-patriot community. I have had good relations with just about everyone that I have crossed here, but I had no idea that the scene at the Hospital would be as politically charged as it is. My naivite strikes again.