The Long Drive

Thursday, March 12, 2009

The rhythm of music echoes in my memories of the day we almost turned back. I was skeptical of the long drive into the Sierra Leone bush outside of Makeni to the village of Karina and opined that with the time short and the village still an unknown distance away that it wasn’t worth continuing. Short on fuel, everyone hot and dusty, it just didn’t seem wise to keep going. “How many patients can the medical team see in just the afternoon anyway,” I reasoned.

Just a few miles after my complaints we heard the drums. As we topped a slight rise the windshield filled with children’s faces—dancing, singing, everyone drumming on wooden logs or hollow bamboo, others on any spare tin can or plastic jug. The whole community of Karina was waiting for us and a festive mood pulsed through the crowd as they saw the white faces of our medical team.

Several uncontrollable factors led to our late start and long drive, but all my concerns melted away when we saw the village neatly set up for our arrival and our makeshift clinic arranged wonderfully. They even nixed the ceremony they had prepared so the doctors could see as many patients as possible in the limited time.

Dr. Fernando Espinosa roped off an area in the shade of nearby trees and began seeing the first of around 200 young children, referring the sickest into the main clinic and effectively keeping the overall volume in check.

The other doctors and the team jumped right in with the practiced efficiency of two previous weeks of mobile clinics.

During a spare minute I went outside to look around. The village elders, with the Deputy Minister of Energy and Power (Dr. Conteh’s contact at this village) acting as a translator, sat me down for a chat. I found out the local school had about 650 students—serving the whole section including 7 villages. The population of the sector was about 3500-4000 people. There was no clinic nearby and the elders stressed that there was a lot of “deep sickness.” During the war the rebels had burned the local church and it had not been rebuilt yet. It was a Muslim area but I’m not sure of the status of a mosque.

The elders made it clear that they have about 2 or 3 acres of land set aside with the hope of starting up a medical facility. And they asked for our help. It is always tough to separate your heart and the image of those pleading eyes from the reality that an organization like HCJB Global has limited resources and has to prioritize. Yet you never want to be guilty of shutting the door where God wants to work. There was no doubt about the need for health care here. But my job was to leave the possibility open without promising anything.

A farewell song, two goats presented as gifts from the community and the smiles of more than 130 adult patients that were treated were testimony that the long drive was worth it.