Our clinic today was in a village called Woama. Of note is this area is known for palm oil production and so as we traveled the bumpy dirt road leading to the village we passed people selling the oil (can be used for cooking and also can be fermented and turned into a popular alcoholic drink) and we passed farmers harvesting the palm nuts by climbing 50-60 foot palm trees and knocking down the nuts. It follows then that our sickest patient today was a man who fell out of a palm tree two weeks ago and sustained an open fracture of his wrist. He went to the local village centre and they pushed the bone back in (remember there is no X-ray machine in all of Kono) and sewed up the laceration (not the wisest thing to do). He went home and for the last two weeks has been treating the arm with traditional medicines. He came in to us today asking for pain meds. His whole forearm was swollen, deformed and infected. We did what we could and hopefully he will survive. Another reminder of something we take for granted in the USA, like good orthopedic care, is not even possible in this place.
Also on our journey today we had to drive right alongside the large Koidu Diamond Mine that towers over this town. In an almost absurd moment I was again reminded of the great injustice present here. Phebian stopped by some mango trees along the road across from the mine and said this is where we obtained all the crushed stone needed for our building project. Unbelievable as it sounds we saw 15-20 children and adults sitting each by a pile of rocks and were using hammers of various sizes to break up the rocks into crushed stone! All of the stone needed for our site was crushed by hand at this place. I could not believe it. But the absurd part is that while I was digesting this new information I looked up across the road and over the large fence and saw a earthmover rumble past in the mine. Phebian's people crush stone by hand and the mine uses large earthmoving equipment to get us all diamonds. This is not justice.
The hardest part of today for our team was visiting the pediatric ward in the government hospital. It is the busiest ward, sometimes with 2 children per bed. It is poorly lit, hot, dirty and an incredibly sad place. There are no fans, no oxygen and no ICU. The nurses wanted us to meet each patient and so we slowly made our way through the ward asking about the patients, praying with the families and fighting an overwhelming sense that something needs to be done about this place! One baby we saw was dying in front of us and hardly anything could be offered.
One of the key questions our team has discussed with Wellbody this week is whether the hospital is so broken (one recent seasoned international medical doctor to Wellbody told them this is the worst hospital he has seen in the whole world) that to try to fix it working with the current system is impossible? Do we create our own system of health care in Kono and rely on hospital as little as possible hoping that someday things will change? Or do we do our best to build relationships at the hospital and try to help this broken system heal? I tend to think we need to stay committed to see systemic change in the government hospital and village health centers if we truly are to see this district have a decent health care system. But when people are dying needlessly everyday due to a horribly broken system it does force one to reconsider this thinking.
Our team is doing great. Today's clinic was our toughest one yet. The village health center CHO had been out sick for one month and so lots of people needed our help. But we survived and saw everyone who needed help today.
Tomorrow we will do our clinic in Koidu by the blind school and then we hope to help at the construction site. They were hoping to start putting the zinc roof on tomorrow but the truck carrying the zinc from Freetown broke down and so now we hope to see the zinc go on Monday. Such is life in this crazy place.
Thank you for praying and supporting this work! God has been incredibly faithful to Jericho Road in Buffalo and now the same thing is happening here in the Kono district of Sierra Leone. Your faithfulness is making a real difference.
Myron
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