Clinic is growing Thursday and Friday

Clinic is growing

Word has spread that the American doctors are here and are helping women for free. On Thursday we saw 35 new patients and several rechecks from patients we saw on previous days. The rechecks were patients we gave medicine to who we asked to come back so we can tell if the medicine is working. Now remember, none of our patients speak English. So the exam is very long because everything said by the doctor or the patient must be repeated by our translators. And, although our translators are very good, there are many words in both languages that do not translate. For example, Swahili does not have a word for “to have”. The Swahili for that is, literally, “to be with”. So you do not have a cup of tea or a home. You are with your tea or your home. And when that is combined with the heavy accent of our translators, it is easy to see why an exam can take 45 minutes or more. It was 6:30 before we finished with our last patient Thursday and we were all very tired, but had a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. We helped 35 people! And some of those 35 people will have surgery Saturday.

Today, Friday, we held clinic only in the morning and left the hospital to go to the Faraja Trust. On of our translators, Mamma Epi, is the director of the Faraja Trust, which is dedicated to helping children and adults who are HIV positive. The children are from 1 month to 15 years old and the adults are from 25 years old and older. The youth, in between those ages, are helped by a different organization. They currently have 120 children and 70 adults they are helping. They make visits to each home bi-weekly to see how they are doing—are they taking their medicine and eating well—and to counsel them on how to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

We toured the simple facility and then split into three rooms to see their patients. Part of the team went with the doctors, and the others played with the children and talked with the patients waiting. Although we did not have the availability of lab or a pharmacy to dispense medicine, we met with them to listen to their problems, examined them and gave advice and wrote prescriptions. And we loved them. Mwanaisha is one of the patients we examined and she shared a story of faith with us that touched our hearts. Thursday night, she prayed that God would help her—that He would give her hope and healing. When she slept, she dreamt that she saw a lot of people and they were all doctors and, during her dream, she felt healing. She then told us that after seeing us, her dreams had come true, and she was filled with hope. God is great! All the time!

The primary source of funds for the Trust is from the batik fabric that the women make to sell. Your mission team seriously depleted their stocks, so some of you will know that the gifts we bring you are helping support these people who so desperately need our help.

Tomorrow is a very, very full day for us. We ask for your prayers as we will be performing 5 or 6 surgeries. The sixth surgery will be determined by the hospital staff—whether the anesthesiologist and the OR tech will agree to stay late and whether there are enough beds for the patients. St. Mary’s has only 8 beds for inpatients and when we left today, 3 of our surgical patients from yesterday and Tuesday had not been discharged.