We were heading back to the Mang’ola region today for the second of our three mobile clinics this week, so it would be another test of everyone’s fortitude considering we had much of the same drive today with no relief of the bumpiness or the dust. The town that we’d be heading to today is Mbuga Nyekundu, which in Kiswahili means “red park” or “red clay,” and is a small village in a farming community that is inland and further from Lake Eyasi than Barazani was. The drive is about 80% the same as yesterday’s, with the final stretch being through a bit more remote (if there could be something more remote than Barazani) of an area and travels across a very cool bridge over a rocky wash that was dry now, but one could easily imagine what it would look like during a raging downpour with boulders the size of a suitcase careening out of the foothills.
We have been coming to Mbuga Nyekundu for at least six years, and during that time, they’ve built a large clinic building with an open central area filled with grass that has multiple rooms for us to use as clinic rooms. Similar to Barazani, though, furniture has been at a premium here, and I have tried to help the issue by donating desks, chairs and benches to these clinics that have worked with us in partnership over the years. That furniture remains here at Mbuga Nyekundu as it does at Barazani and several other clinics that we’ve traveled to over the years.
Once again, it seemed the number of patients we would have today appeared to be far fewer than we would have hoped for based on the fact there was no one waiting for us on our arrival which is not often the case. It was a similar story as we were given yesterday, that everyone was out planting crops, but as I mentioned yesterday, there was also the ongoing theme of the upcoming elections and some political unrest making everyone feel a bit restless and less inclined to travel some distance to a clinic. Regardless, we worked on setting everyone up in their exam rooms with the necessary furniture (leaving nothing comfortable for Cat and me to sit on and relegating us to the most uncomfortable bench one could ever imagine) and readied ourselves for the possibility of an onslaught of patients that never materialized.
The patients that were seen were certainly legitimate and needed our care but had traveling a great distance with two vehicles and a large staff making it not the most efficient or cost effective as it would have far less costly to have paid for the patients transport all the way back to Karatu. Balancing the benefit of our visits to the villages and the impact our presence has against the shear cost of the bringing everyone such a distance from FAME is not always the easiest to calculate. I have been convinced from our very first mobile clinic to Kambi ya Simba fourteen years ago, that our visibility in the community has served to not only secure an increased access to healthcare by the residents of these communities, but has also led to greater awareness that many of the illnesses they suffer from are very treatable. This has been most evident for the diagnosis of epilepsy in which we frequently encounter patients who have suffered with seizures for their entire lives never realizing there was help available despite their living in Karatu district where FAME has had a presence for so many years. Most of these patients live well within the reach of a simple bus ride from FAME but have never known that coming here could so greatly impact their lives in a positive way. Going to the villages and encountering them essentially in their homes, then treating them successfully gives them more than enough reason to make the trip to FAME in the future to continue receiving the medications and treatment they so crucially need.
What still remained for us was the drive home from Mbuga Nyekundu and the dust and bumps, but thankfully the drive tomorrow for mobile clinic would be much shorter, though equally dusty. I learned later that Cat, Joe, and Jack, all of whom sat in the very back of Turtle, which is exactly where all the dust collects, had developed a system for the ride home. Just for reference, Turtle has seating for nine people in four rows – two in the front, two in the second and third rows, and three across the very back. They are all bucket sets, though the middle back does not have arm rests. Driving home with the heat of the afternoon and the rumble of the road is apparently very conducive to sleeping, though there are two significant problems – first, with the heat, you must leave the sliding rear windows open, but as soon as another vehicle passes in the opposite direction, you must quickly close the windows or else the dust floods in. Second, falling asleep puts you at risk of hitting your head on the window whenever we hit a bump. The three of them devised a system so that whenever someone saw a bump coming up, they would yell, “bump,” and whenever someone saw another vehicle approaching, they would yell, “dust,” and you would immediately slide your window closed. I can’t confirm how their dust reduction system worked, but I can confirm that we arrived in Karatu with no significant head injuries.
I suggested a few options for the afternoon, considering that we had arrived home earlier than expected, and visiting the Highview Lodge to enjoy their pool won out over a visit to the vegetable market and a walk in town. The Highview Lodge is a mid-level resort that is just up the hill from FAME and has always offered to host volunteers at their pool as a gesture of friendship that has always been appreciated. Though it’s always been an option to enjoy some relaxation there, I have never taken advantage of it in the past. I have attended a few going away parties around the pool that were lovely and also had my surprise 60th birthday party thrown there a few years ago. We came home to put on our swimsuits and arrived to the Highview minutes later. It was a lovely evening, and we had about an hour or so before the sun set which was more than enough time for Cat and me to enjoy a Moscow Mule along with a jump in the pool which was so refreshing after the dusty drive home. We were all worried that the pool was going to turn brown from all the dirt we had collected on our bodies, but thankfully that didn’t occur, or else FAME volunteers may never have been invited back again.
The other important event that occurred at poolside was that the Patrick Liu missing sock mystery was finally solved. All the laundry of the house is done together as well as those of our neighboring houses, and as good of a job as the housekeeping staff does in keeping every separated between the houses, an occasional item may go missing until it’s finally located in one of the other houses. Patrick had slowly been losing pairs of his black ankle socks and had assumed they were in someone else’s house, but when he finally mentioned it this afternoon, it turned out that Cat had brought very similar looking socks and had been taking both hers and Patrick’s from the clean laundry. Now you would think that Cat may have recognized that her sock collection was multiplying and there were more pair than she had brought, but she hadn’t until Patrick mentioned his mystery and she put two plus two together. When we came home, she quickly released the kidnapped socks to their rightful owner, and all was right with the world again.
We would be off to Mang’ola Juu, which literally means “Mang’ola up,” in the morning and were planning to bring along Tim, who is the Brain Capture trainer and has been here all week, along with Nurse Jacob, who has been trained to perform the EEGs, so that we might have the opportunity to perform a few EEGs in the field and see what the feasibility would be of doing this away from FAME.