First day of Clinic
6th July, 2009 - Posted by Camille Cotton -
Every day, we meet together for morning devotions, only today we had many more joining our family. We welcomed 5 practitioners from Uganda (3 dentists and 2 doctors), a handful of Kenyan medical students and doctors, as well as 12 Kenyan volunteers to help with various tasks at the clinic. Pastor Shadrach (local Kenyan Pastor) delivered our morning exhortation. He reminded us that we were created to serve others and God, and we are most fulfilled when doing so. He challenged us to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves when serving. Many do good in this life out of human wisdom but not all is done with the intent to do no harm.
The bus arrived at the Kambi Teso slum to see a line already forming at the clinic entrance. This could have been a predictor of the difficulty we would have with crowd control. Tomorrow we will have a few extra volunteers from FCI, Forgotten Children International, to help direct people and manage the crowd. While most of us hurried around setting up pharmacy and various supplies, a large crowd gathered for an evangelistic message brought by Pastor Shadrach. Following this, 5 people responded by accepting Christ as their Savior.
After the meeting concluded, and most of us had eaten our daily PB&J sandwich, clinic began! Final statistics are not yet known; however, our best guess is that at least 163 people were treated in the medical clinic, 90 people seen in the vision clinic and at least 30 people had dental extractions. More than 175 prescriptions were filled. No one was taken to the hospital, but triage was quite busy! Both of the nurses stated that they had never taken so many manual BPs in their entire life!
Only a few people came to the prayer tent, and we realized that was probably due to its location and lack of advertising, so tomorrow it is being moved closer to the entrance and ushers will ask everyone if they would like prayer. A woman came forward for prayer who had lost her 2 week old infant only last evening. The baby was not ill and she did not know why it would not wake up, we can only presume it died from SIDS/Cot death.
Overall, “Dr. Rachel” (Rachel Gallagher, Co-Founder of OAI), said today was the best, most organized first day of clinic they have ever had!
Now we are back at the hotel waiting for dinner. The FOX team has arrived and is quite jet-lagged! They have already been to the Village to do some filming of the construction, and the next 2 days they will be with us at clinic. Thursday, we are hoping to take a smaller group of us, along with FOX news, to visit one of the local hospitals.
All for now,
Lynn
Posted on: July 6, 2009
Filed under: Eldoret
1 Comment
Chris & Linda Richardson
July 7th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Hi Philip heard lots of good stuff about the trip from Louise on Sunday. Cant wait to hear about all your stories when you get back. Thinking of you in our prayers. Take Care love Chris & Linda R
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