Back to the grind-Heading to Rauya

Today everyone was a bit tired from their weekend excursions so we were a bit slow to start. We are short three medical staff and one logistics person (Gabby) who is staying behind to watch surgery (toe amputation and tumour removal)

We have been told that this week we will be visiting the most poorest communities. In order to not have repeat of the poor attendance from last week, Two of the translators have been sent out to talk to the elders of each community, letting them know what we are doing and why we are coming there. The feeling is that with support of community elders, more people will show up.

When we arrived, there was already about 100 people waiting for us in the dispensary front yard. The church had placed benches out for the patients and they were stringing up tarps to keep the people in the shade.

This day was one of the worst for traffic flow. We were restricted to what rooms we could use so the medical, gyne and opthamology were all set up side by side. This caused immense confusion because patients were confused on where to wait and medical staff were not sure who is first in line. One logistic person had to pretty much stay put at the entrance to medical just to keep everything flowing properly.

As the day progressed more and more people arrived. There seemed to be a lot of confusion as to where they should go. We constantly had people sneaking in side doors and sitting down in queues expecting to be served. We had many queue jumpers which caused arguments amongst the locals.




Security guard (sans Machete)

  The church had hired a guy to help with security-he was dressed in army greens and carried a machete.

At one point a local politician showed up and decided to do a campaign speech on our front steps, forcing triage to a grinding halt.


Local politician arrives



Logistics @ work

Despite the traffic flow problems it turned out to be a good day. A couple of the patients we saw...a young man who had just be run over by a car, someone diagnosed with both leprosy and HIV,a woman who had been burned down her right side by her husband's girlfriend who threw boiling water on her, and a young man who was in a wheelchair with a huge, open wound that ran from his knee to his ankle. The wound was severely infected and full of fungus. 

The medical staff are reporting many wounds (daily) caused by machetes. Everyone here seems to grow bananas and to take proper care of the trees, they need to be pruned everyday. The tool of choice for pruning...machete.
                                                       
We had decided to stop processing people at 4:00 pm. As soon as we did that the crowd got pretty nasty. Many people were yelling at the translators. It was pretty awful because we all felt bad about having to turn away people. The deciding factor is really how long the daylight will last. The buildings for the most part do not have electrical lighting so the medical staff are working by daylight only.