First Caravan - Macoma


First day on the job. There always seems to be a smell of smoke in the air because everything is cooked over fires.

Every morning we wake up and anticipate seeing mount Kilimanjaro out of her cloud cover and today we were not disappointed! Everyone was out, snapping pics, knowing that the clouds would roll in in a few minutes.



The Caravan begins



The drive to the dispensary in Macoma was very bumpy.We piled into 4 vans, practically sitting on top of one another.

We set up the triage outside the hospital in shady areas using tarps and bungees. We had a translator dedicated to handing out numbered cards to the patients who were already waiting in line.



Registering patients



Logistics needed to:

• make sure that signs were taped in the doorway of each of the rooms that explained what each room was for (in Swahili and English): Gyno, Opthamology,testing, (blood, glucose,malaria,STDs, HIV) and pharmacy
• make sure that all the medical staff had enough chairs, a garbage bag, pens, clipboards and requisition forms
• distribute drinking water to staff
• set up chairs for the triage group and the pharmacy distribution group
• set up desks for the translators for patient intake
• set up benches/chairs whatever for the patients to sit on while waiting
• direct patients, keep them moving and assist medical staff when needed

In triage,we took weight,blood pressure and heart rate. Anyone who's systolic was over 180 or who looked very sick we fast tracked to the front of the line. During the day we had to fast track probably about half a dozen people- one person who we couldn't get a BP reading on (our logistitian tried several times) ended up having to be put on an IV drip to try and get his BP up.

One middle aged man came out of the testing area cheering loudly and high 5ing everyone; we assumed because he tested negative for something.

One young boy came in with a pretty mangled face from a beating.

We saw one mother pulling, dragging and whipping her daughter with a stick to force her to come to the clinic (the girl's diagnosis-chest congestion)

We ran out of urine testing bottles and had to recycle them (imagine what that job is like); speculums are sterilized and reused after use.

There we extra translators and doctors that showed up so there was little if not no food left for the second lunch shift (meaning us- basically white rice, oranges, and watermelon)

Our mission lead was not with us all day because she was at the immigration office trying to negotiate our working Visas. She was gone all day which we took to be not a good sign.

De-worming Line

At one point during the day Rick was handing out stickers to the kids. They were getting unruly, so Rick asked one of our translators to ask them to settle down. Dr. Kilby was walking by and suggested that since there were so many kids around it would be a good opportunity to de-worm the lot of them.  So...one of our pharmacists brought the bottle of mebendazole (de-worming pills) out to he road. The kids (about 40 of them) all lined up excitedly. They were each handed 4 pills from a spoon and were not allowed to walk away before swallowing. It was funny to watch them full of anticipation about what they were getting, only to swallow the pills and start gagging at the taste. They all left the area very quickly after that.

Rick and kids after closing

We have a 12 year old boy and a 15 year old girl helping out with logistics. During the day, many school girls were running down to see what was going on. A couple of them seemed to be interested and kept writing messages to him. It was so cute.

Type of issues seen today- severe infections, massive breast tumours, and many women complaining of MSK (probably due to the fact that many women carry 20-30 kg of stuff on their heads).


Total patients seen: 314
HIV Positive: 1

Turns out that our working Visas have FINALLY been granted - only after handing over $1,200 US per volunteer to the Tanzanian Government.