Making Friends

June 22, a good day for several reasons. First, the human comfort factor (my own personal response to the National Weather Service’s “heat index”) is way up. The humidity is gone. The temperature has dropped. The wind is blowing, as it should near the sea. Suddenly, the air is refreshing and cool again. I don’t expect it to last as the rainy season is approaching. But if I just focus on this lovely evening, the cool, moving air is enough to call it a good day.

But there’s more. This morning, the intrepid trio—Nathalie, Paul and I--met with USAID Senegal’s health division. There was a moment in the very engaging discussion when I almost laughed out loud. I was flashing back to high school debate competition and my box full of quote cards, many of which came from USAID sources. And here I was 40 years later, sitting in a USAID office in Dakar, discussing the need for, the cost of and the potential financing scenarios for the Hospital of Hope.

We got good information but we didn’t get money, And worse, if there is something worse than that, we got discouraging words about the potential for construction capital from any governmental agency, whether US, EU or anywhere else in the developed world.

As I said, not encouraging. But not all bad either. I can safely say that we won another friend/fan for the project. The USAID officer’s support may lead us to another source. We’ll see.

On days like today, when the news is not all good…and the humidity is terrible…I remind myself that the Hospital of Hope has lots of wonderful friends. They’ve given us all the funding we have so far. They’re also building our website, translating texts, designing collaterals and strategizing about our social media campaign. We just haven’t found all the friends we need. Not yet. But we will, one introduction at a time. And we will build a hospital. Stick with us.