Saturday, 18 April 2009

• Sudan/Kenya Medical Missions Trip 25 Feb - 17 Mar 2009

  The following entries take place in Pibor, Sudan or Mombasa, Kenya, during a medical missions trip to Sudan.  Pibor was a minor village in Southern Sudan that had no access to medical care besides minor TB and malnutrion care provided by MSF (Doctor's Without Bordors).  The trip was taken with four doctors, four nurses, and three lay people.
  
  28 February 1154
       Arrived at airfield.  It’s lined with huts and Sudanese.  Also, one army truck with anti-aircraft gun.  Welcomed warmly, men in suits, others in rags.  Only non-hut visible is UN WFP tent.  Surprised at easy landing on dirt strip.  One 15-18 yr old boy with fancy hat stood out.
       Wanted to take pictures, but didn’t.  Don’t want to be tourist like I’m at Disneyland, these people aren’t an attraction to see.  Shake hands today.  Tomorrow I’ll be a photographer, not tonight.
  
  Robert and Rick boarding the plane we flew into Pibor
  
  28 February 2119
       We decided to sleep outside tonight, the wind is nice, no bugs, and too hot in room.  Hazy, but stars are beautiful.
  
  Outdoor sleeping area in compound
  
  1 March 0213
       Sand and rain and wind storm arrives with lightning and thunder.  White people scramble to get their beds inside.  Windy all night.
  
  2 March 1014
       [Read ‘ March 1030’entry for conclusion of this entry]  Heike will successfully insert IVs into three dehydrated, sick babies today.  But this also happened.
       A woman in her 20s has showed up.  She went to MSF, but they were unable to start IV in her baby because of dehydration.  The baby, 1 ½ yrs old but the size of an American 3-5 month, was skin and bones – dehydrated to the extreme.  Heike tried one vein after another, with Leigha helping.  Every vein had too little blood to keep the IV.  Again, again, again – we must or the baby will die.  Again.  We are out of 24 gauge needles, we have no more.  What now?  We have a 20 gauge needle, it’s too big for a baby.  Heike tries anyway.  She gets the vein – it’s too big, the 20 gauge is too big for the vein.  It won’t work.  We are out of needles, out of options.  Heike leans her face into the woman’s knee and weeps.   The woman says God can help.  Heike prays for the woman and baby.  We send her to MSF again.
       It’s Heike’s birthday today.
  
  Heike and Leigha working on baby that she was not able to successfully insert an IV into
  
  Heike successfully inserting an IV into another dehydrated baby
  
  An improvised IV insertion and stabilizer
  
  2 March 1325
       Want want want.  They all want.  They all want something.  Even if they are healthy, they want something.  They beg, plead, won’t let us go away without giving them something.  And many times they are not grateful, they are almost bothered by us, just wanting what we have.
       Yet our love is not based on their gratitude.  Just read Philippians 2.  Love is tested here.
  
  Sudanese asking for medicines at the pharmacy
  
  2 March 1429
       Taking picture of Heike bandaging burn on boys arm.  I want to be a photographer, not a tourist, but would rather, I think, to help people like my wife.  I’m a photographer.
  
  The boy's badly burned arm
  
  2 March 2107
       We use the pit latrine here in camp – though not much.  Too dehydrated to urinate, and MREs are made to stop you up.  Just a 30 ft. hole with metal grating over the top to squat on.  It wobbles when I stand on it, worried headlines will read “US Youth Pastor Killed in Pit Latrine Accident in Sudan.”  The locals decorated it today.  On the far wall now sits one of those motivational posters you see in boring offices, with a picture of a waterfall and “SERENITY” spelled out below in block letters.

   3 March 0945
       “Hey hey hey!  Go away!  The goats are eating our injectables!”  I yelled as I turned around to see a goat munching on a couple of vials of injectable medicine.
       “And don’t come back without a paper either!”  Heike yelled at the retreating goats (patients weren’t allowed to come to the pharmacy without a paper from the doctors telling us what to give out). 
  
  Our "pharmacy"
  

  3 March 1345
       “I hope that was bird poop,” I thought as I quickly pulled the pen out of my mouth.  Not 30 seconds earlier I noticed an odd yellow sludge on the end of my pen.  Didn’t know what it was, but sitting in the pharmacy surrounded by hundreds of sick, coughing Sudanese, I’m not sure I wanted to know.  So I wiped the pen on a tree, then my shirt, and went back to writing.
       My mind occupied by something else, I stuck my pen in my mouth absentmindedly, only to quickly jerk it out again a few seconds later.  Only time in my life I wished I’d just eaten bird poop.

  3 March 1434
       It’s slow, so I’m thinking.  Thinking about marshmallows.  See, I read an article in Scientific American the other day about boys who were four given the choice of eating one marshmallow or waiting five minutes and getting two.  Some chose one, some two.  Then the researchers followed the boys over 25 years, and found that the two marshmallow boys were profoundly more successful in life.  They knew what it meant to delay gratification.
       So I was looking at the bag of 30 500mg Tylenols in my hand, wondering which patient (almost all got Tylenol – it’s easy to have pain in Sudan) would finish their dosage in two weeks, which in a month, and which would save them bit by bit for six months.
       Then I realized it didn’t matter.  In six months, none of these people would have any marshmallows.
       Unless we or someone else comes again – loves them again.
       “Enjoy your marshmallows” I said as I handed out the Tylenol to a smiling 20 yr old man.
  
  Sudanese waiting to be seen by doctors
  
  Rick testing patient's eyes
  
  Mary triaging patients
  

  3 March 1752
       I sat counting and bagging Doxy, a medicine for Syphilis (there was a Syphilis outbreak in Pibor), as we had just ran out of bagged Doxy and, though we were closing, we would need plenty more tomorrow.
       After we close triage at around 5pm, we get patients at the pharmacy for about another 45 minutes.  But we also get stragglers.  Mostly older ladies with kids in tribal clothing, these woman come in after the gate closes and stand at the pharmacy, begging for medicine.  It’s hard to tell them to go home and come back tomorrow, especially 'cause I can’t speak their language.  Also, I know it wouldn’t do any good to randomly give them medicine as they haven’t seen a doctor.
       So I sit there, sorting thousands of pills, trying to ignore these begging women who are standing behind the pharmacy “wall” – a rope about 3 ft. away.
       All of a sudden, one of the women is beside me.  She somehow slipped between the wall and the stick holding the rope.  She’s right there beside me, nothing separating us, no “walls” between us.  I know I still can’t give her anything without a doctor, but I almost start crying.  What do I do?
  
  Women and children waiting to be seen
  
  Women in traditional tribal clothing
  

  3 March 1837
       My feet are always dirty.  Adds insight to Jesus’ time, where, just like here, you walk everywhere in dust with sandals.  My feet get coated in dirt.  So did Jesus’.  So did his disciples’.  Meaning when Jesus washed their feet as an example, he was doing a very dirty job – God, serving men in a dirty way – and saying we should do the same.  Serve others.  Love others.  Here, in Sudan, where we get to go home to everything and they will always have nothing – we should serve them, not the other way around.  Serve them not only by handing out meds and diagnosing, but also by carrying water, cleaning pots – doing the dirty work.
  
  My dirty feet
  

  5 March 1513
       “They said they can translate, but they won’t.”  All of a sudden, after spending the morning serving in the prison, then the afternoon eating, moving meds, and visiting a dilapidated mission hospital from the 50’s in hopes of one day opening it again.  Now we were back at the church compound, ready to work for another few hours – but something was wrong.  The translators would not translate (with the exception of James and James, two medically trained pastors / teachers).  It took 30 minutes before word got to me that they were striking, because they wanted our bottled water and to eat our MREs.
       Parts of this were wrong – especially the way they went about it.  But the way our team reacted was even worse.
       “Get off your lazy butts and start translating…We paid out of our pocket to come over here, and we aren’t getting paid while we are here so you need to get to work…We came here for you, to help you, get back to work.”  These were the words I heard.  Later were explanations of “Twenty-four trips and this has never happened” and “At the end of the week we always work out a tip with their leaders.”  But these didn’t hold water.  They didn’t know about tips.  They didn’t know about other trips.  They aren’t getting paid vacation for what they are doing either.  They don’t even know what paid vacation is.
       They have served us all week, willingly spending 10-12 hours a day translating, moving people and meds, and bringing us stuff – including our two cold waters a day from the market – which they also wanted.
       But in the end, it didn’t matter how they served us.  Never – ever – in the Bible is our love dependent on other’s reaction, gratitude, or response.  In fact, it is explicitly stated that we are to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, and serve and love those who betray us.
       We are not superior to them, we are just richer.  We are not better, only more educated.  They are not our servants, but we are theirs.
       Jesus – God himself – washed his disciples feet just hours before they deserted him.  He wept for those that crucified him.  He forgave his enemies.  He forgave you.  He forgave me.
       So this is to be our attitude, that of Christ Jesus, to go to a hot, dry, and poor country, where the men beat their seven wives and a large house / hut is smaller than your kitchen; where the local market has flour and soap and not much more, and people die of illnesses that you popped pills for as a kid.  To go there and sweat at night, and look them in the eye and see them as human, to serve them with ever fiber of Christ in us, and to love them – no matter what they do in response.
       Yes, our love is truly tested here.
  
  Heike with our amazing translator/pastor, James and his family
  
  Two of our translators, Juma (right) and David (left)
  

  5 March 1835
       Heike and Dr. Carrie told a 56 yr old woman and her family she would die of ovarian cancer – that there was nothing in this world that could save her.  We prayed with them.  Never seen that, felt hope die.

  6 March 1030
       The woman who came on Heike’s birthday with the dehydrated baby that Heike couldn’t stick, comes back.  She has come only to tell Heike thank you.  MSF was finally able to stick the baby and give it fluids.  The baby will live.
       This woman came again because she saw Heike’s passion and love, knew that she wouldn’t give up, but had no choice.  She came back to say thank you, and to say she saw God in Heike.
  
  The woman who came back to thank Heike for loving her and her child so much
  

  6 March 1547
       MSF compound refused to take our remaining meds due to regulations.  Discovered temp was 42 degrees C in the shade (110 degrees F).  Feels better than SC in the summer – absolutely no humidity here.  Decided more dirt in this country than all of USA.
  
  A view of Pibor village
  

  7 March 1521
       Have been hanging out with a guy named John all day.  Or rather he has been hanging out with me while I work.  He doesn’t speak great English, though he speaks more than most, so a lot of our time is silence.  He is 15, and involved with the youth of the church in Pibor.  I gave him a soccer ball from the youth group, the ball pump, and some Gatorade mix.  He asked if next year we could bring a camera for them to use.  I told him I would try.  He wears funny hats and has jeans with pictures of rappers on it.  He’s not dirt poor, like most are here, I think because he belongs to a pastor’s family.  But I like the guy, and enjoying talking to him.  So much hope here…and so little place to go with it.
  
  A group of boys who received a soccer ball from my youth group at Ft. Jackson
  
  John and me
  

  13 March 1006
       It’s so easy to be skeptical here.  Every person sees you as a white person, and white people have money, so it’s do whatever you can to get money from the white person.  Scam them, lie to them, overcharge them.  So we are skeptical of everything and everyone.
       We are on the night train to Mombasa.  The train has stopped before we reached the city, and we don’t know why.  There are dozens of taxis outside the train on the side of the road, their drivers yelling up at us that the train won’t go any farther, that we have to take a taxi in.  But we don’t trust them.  We stand there, saying we will wait for the train, we know this isn’t the last stop.  It’s easy not to believe them, but you have no idea what the truth is.
       Then the conductor comes down the train, stopping at every room to tell us that there is an accident on the tracks, and we can’t go further on for several hours.  These taxis were brought here to bring us into the city.  We don’t even believe him at first, wondering if this is some ruse.  But we get off and look for a taxi.  As we do, we hear the conductor yelling out at the drivers, forcing them to charge us a fair rate of 800 shillings instead of the 3000 that they were telling people it would cost.  This man was making them charge us fairly – he was honest, and we didn’t even believe him.  I wanted to go back and thank him, but it was too late.  It was so sad to me that I trust so little, when I met an honest man I didn’t even trust him.

  14 March 1156
       Visa – accepted everywhere you are.  Except Mombasa, Kenya.  Misjudged need for money.  Can’t find more.  Should be fun.

  More Pictures from Sudan:
  
  A woman who has had a full-body skin condition for seven years.  We performed a skin biopsy in Sudan and pathologists in Kenya and the United States are still studying the skin to determine the cause of her condition so that we can send medicine back to Sudan for her
  
  
  Dole, a lady with elephantitis in her left foot. She had an awesome smile, and she and Heike became friends
  

  
  A close-up of her foot. We didn't have the right medicine for her, so once we got back to the States, we sent some DEC back for her through one of the pastors
  
  
  Church service in Pibor
  
  
  A boy playing with his homemade toy truck
  
  
  Heike playing 'Goat, Goat, Elephant' with children waiting for their parents
  
  
  Our medical team - back row, left to right:  Sam (MICU RN), Dr. Jen (ER), Dr. Lori (Pediatrician), Mary (RN), Robert (Team Co-Leader), Dr. Rich (OB/GYN); front row, left to right:  Leigha (ICU RN), Heike ("Baby" RN), Rick (Eye glasses, Water, and Prayer); not pictured:  Dr. Carrie (OB/GYN) and myself (Pharmacy)
  

  • 10:15 PM
  • 7 Views
  • 2 eProps
  • 1 Comment
  • email