My Granny was the head of nurses at the VA in Lubbock for quite some time, and I am sure that the things which she saw come through the hospital had an affect on her.
This realization came to me on Wednesday as we were running a health clinic. We had run 1 on Sunday in our home village of Bowe. And then had gone out Monday and Tuesday to different villages to administer health and medicine.
It was not until Wednesday though that I was affected. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and did my exercises and continued to Church at 6. We ate breakfast afterwards and then hopped in the trucks and headed towards the next village.
It was all of 45 minutes away, although riding in the back of a truck on bumpy roads the whole way makes the trip seem much longer.
So we set up inside this building, which was a church. So we set up the pharmacy on the altar and made sure it was not a sacrilege before we did (Father Stephen said no) and we started work. The pace was good and people were coming in but what I noticed is that these people were really sick.
It was like I could feel death lurking around. And what I found out later was that in these villages 3-4 people would die a week. One of our first patients in there was a young boy who was an epileptic and while he was there he was having seizures.
This was a hard one to deal with. I happened to be the one who had to go give his father and mother the seizure medicine for him. That is his father sitting next to him. As hard as it was at this moment I was glad to see later, after the boy had taken his medicine, to stand up and walk out of there. We were all very happy after seeing that. I realized at this point about my Granny. That there was a switch which you had to develop when treating people. One which you had to switch on while you were at work and one which you could turn off when you leave. But with everyday exposure to that environment I could see how that would become part of ones personality.
The rest of the time Tom and I were quite busy running the pharmacy and did not have much time to do anything else. Actually it was a very depressing day because of all the sick people we saw. When Tom and I would work it would be from 9-5 standing on concrete all day, rushing around all the time. Nevertheless it was exhausting to do.
We did this all day and never got a break from anything. About 45 minutes before we left we heard drums outside and people singing, but we could not leave our post because people needed their medicine. So Tom and I quickly looked at each other and grabbed his son and this girl named Madison and had them replace us.
We rushed outside and the local choir had assembled and were dancing and signing. Standing there and watching them I could just feel a heavy weight being lifted off of my shoulders. It was so relieving to see that after all the pain and suffering we had seen all day.
When we returned home that night the doctors administered antibiotics to all of us because of what we had been potentially exposed to that day.
The next day one doctor was sick and so only half the crew went to the clinic. I could feel the tension in the air from the day before. It had never left us. We finished up that day treating a total of 162 patients which was quite amazing.
This is Father Stephen and our great interpreter and helper Timeyo.
The next day (Saturday) we headed to Kasungu National Park. It was about a 3:15 drive which was not too bad for the game we were promised.
As it turned out though, the park had been poached out and there really was not anything to see......except some fat lazy hippos.
So that night we took a drive (four of us: Scott, Phyllis, Tom......Me) to Blackrock Hill. It took about 30 minutes and we got to this hill and headed to the top. I am not sure what to call it, a hill or a mountain or what. Regardless of all that, it did not take too long to climb and once we reached the summit we could see the entire park and even over into Zambia.
scott, phyllis, tom, luke
Tom just made a damn funny joke and had me laughing pretty hard
It is now Sunday night and I returned from a 5 hour car ride with Father Stephen. We went to two villages today and said mass. This was followed by Father Stephen introducing me to the village and them me shaking all their hands. It was a lot of fun and I started working on my dance moves in Church.
Tomorrow we head to Kelimbe where I am starting to draw up plans for a dormitory.
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