In the Gonja language, “Burunche” means “white lady.” For 16 of the last 20 years my husband and I have worked in Ghana, West Africa. For most of that time we have worked in mission hospitals in remote rural areas. My name is Dr. Jean Young. I am a surgeon and my husband Bob is a welder/maintenance mechanic/EMT/jack of all trades. Here in Ghana they call someone like Bob “one man thousand” to indicate the scope of his talents.God has called us to the difficult hard-to -reach places.
When I was growing up in rural Illinois, I always wanted to be a small town family doctor. My heroes were the men and women who faithfully served the little towns near my home, often working long hours for relatively little compensation. I wanted to be part of a community and to make a difference in the lives of my patients and my families. Little did I know that to do all that I would wind up in northern Ghana.
The northern part of Ghana is mostly savannah grasslands-kind of like west Texas or Oklahoma-scrubby trees, low-lying shrubs, grass, and LOTS of rocks. My patients are subsistence farmers, many of whom work with short-handled hoes and other primitive tools that they have made themselves. Now you can buy modern tools and even modern farm equipment in Ghana. There’s a John Deere dealership in Tamale. But for most of our folks out here the only time they employ tractors is when they want to plow their land, and some of the land must be worked totally by hand because of all the rocks.
So this blog is about us-about Bob and me, about the work we do, the people we know, the people we take care of in the town of Saboba and in the Saboba district on the banks of the River Oti.
If you want to know more about us, you can go to http://www.ourchurch.com/member/s/Serving_Ghana. If you want to know more about the hospital where we work, go to http://www.sabobamedicalcentre.net. If you want to see our photos of Ghana, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/servant24-7.
Burunche's Blog 
November 25, 2008 at 5:30 am
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February 28, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Thanks for the message. It is good to see Bob and Jean’s smiling faces. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting them last year. They are a great combo. Lloyd Hiler