First Recovery Day and Second Village Clinic

Our First Recovery Day

Click here to see photos of our first day at the Hospital to restock and tour the hospital. The day after our first village clinic was spent “sleeping in” until 9 a.m. (3 a.m. Omaha time) since we didn’t get back from their evening services until around midnight. It was a 1.5 hour drive back to our mission complex in Koutiala, and over an hour of that was spent weaving back and forth in the desert darkness to find the flat spots on the trails, which are mostly dry creek beds until the rains come in June. The temperature was around 100 degrees with the humidity about 8-9 percent at high noon.

We went to the Koutiala Women's and Children’s Hospital and received a wonderful tour of the five main buildings from Ed Bonvillain and Dr Brett McLean, (seen in some of these photos). We then spent the afternoon restocking the supplies and medications we were taking back to the same village the next day.

Dr Brett McLean, Pediatrician

Ali and Chelsea sorting supplies

Building #5 in the finishing stages

Second Village Clinic

Click here to see photos of the second village clinic trip.

The second village clinic trip was back to Bobola Zangasso the hub of about 11 villages and over 16,000 people. We had been to see more women and children only on the first trip, but this time the men of the villages would come. The culture of Mali is based on the traditional Islamic, male-dominated society, so it presented organizational challenges (keeping the man seperate from the others). We saw over 750 patients on this visit. There were about 250 men, another 200 women, and almost 300 children (in addition to the first visit) all seen in about eight hours.

Dr Dan (OB) and Dr Brett (Peds) both canceled the trip because they were sick with a 72-hour virus and didn't want to expose themselves to that many people who might have been very vulnerable to whatever it was. The other doctors and residents who would have been seeing adult men also had to be diverted to women and children. So Vaughan and two experienced Malian nurses from the hospitalsaw the 200 men. Things were much simpler for them given the language barrier, but Mary, a nurse who still learning but very capable in Bombara, kept us going.

This male-dominant society was clearly observed at the pharmacy window. Before, we had the lines separated, but at the pharmacy window, there was one combined line. However, a Malian man is not going to wait in line behind a woman, much less children. So they would come around the corner and go straight to the front of the pharmacy line, cutting in front of the women. The pharmacy tech would send him to the back of the line, but then the next man would come along.

Ed Bonvillain (seen in photos), a lifelong friend of Dr Dan, is the Director of Operations for the Lab and Pharmacy at the Koutiala Hospital. He retold the story of how he watched a group of these elder men congregate off to the side under a tree, making their plan for about 10 minutes before rushing the line to cut to the front as a group. They demanded that the pharmacy technicians serve them before the women, and they wouldn’t go to the back of the line like the others had done. Ed announced that everyone had to take a turn and closed the pharmacy windows. The pressure of about 30 women and 10 men in line behind them was enough to make them take their place at the rear and the windows were opened.

Being an agricultural society takes its toll as women spend hours each day using heavy poles to mill the grain in giant mortars for their daily meals. They also bend at the waist (literally) hundreds of times a day, keeping their knees locked-straight, and lifting everything from babies to firewood straight up. We take an Ibuprofen or a Tylenol for headache, but, to them, it’s a miracle drug. We ran low too quickly.

Vaughan had the opportunity to pray with a couple of men (with the Malian pastor) whose complained of fear and anxiety, insomnia, and distracting sounds any time of day. It could not be reasonably diagnosed as any physical condition. They were both very alert people leading normal lives with jobs and families, with the exception that they said an enemy had a curse placed on them by the local shaman. More about that another time.

Recall, we were given a ram for our services two days before (see photo). Of course we couldn't refuse such a valuable gift, or could we strap him to the top of the Land Rover for the trip home, so we diplomatically left him behind for the village to serve us two days later… not to mention a lot of villagers who got to partake also. We sat in circles of five or six people around the common bowl of rice with all the cooked meat with a few peppers or onions in the stew. And it's the whole ram, intestines and all.

In the first two nights, three people have come forward to profess their faith in Jesus Christ. There are no Christians in this community dominated by another religion (Islam). This is a bold and significant step, but it's steps like these that cause a church to grow from two to 125 believers.

Tomorrow we go to a smaller village, Tempela.

For the Mali Medical Team 2/11

Vaughan