Another outreach
is coming to an end. It’s hard to
believe that 10 months have come & gone. Looking back at all we’ve done, it’s amazing
to see what had been accomplished while we were in Guinea. In 10 months, we did roughly 2,873 surgical procedures,
over 45,000 dental procedures, provided training & education for local
professionals, donated numerous items & helped renovate local hospitals,
clinics & schools.
Time on the ship
has its own meaning. Yesterday was 3
months ago & last year was only the other day. For example- a friend was on the ship &
then left, only to return again. When I
saw here, I asked her where she had been I hadn’t seen her all day; her
response was that she had been gone for over 5 months & just got back! We call it the AFM Time Warp, time really has
no meaning here J
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| The Preop bench |
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| Bubbles on the wards |
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| Patients up on deck 7 |
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| Crazy scrub day in the OR |
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| Conakry in the distance |
While working in
the hospital took up most of our time, we also had plenty of opportunities to
get out & see what
Conakry
was like.
Conakry
is the capital of
Guinea,
with about 1,548,500 people living within it’s city limits. The primary religion is Muslim, with large
mosques dotting the skyline. Heavy
traffic clogs the bottleneck that connects the port & embassies trapped on
the peninsula to the rest of the city. The
markets are full of traders & business, you can buy just about anything in
the markets, from car parts to cloth to food to monkeys & livestock. I even heard of one of the local surgeons
sending his patients out to the market to buy the surgical implants needed for
their surgery! The markets are loud,
crowded & dirty, bartering is the key to purchasing items. Navigating through the market can be fun
& exciting & terrifying at the same time. Shops & stalls are packed tightly together
& other merchants weave in & out of the crowd with their wares on their
heads.
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| Did you need a goat, or a cow? |
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| They deliver |
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| Wheelchairs |
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| Children help with the family business |
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| Typical street |
The streets are
not always clean, with open sewers, 3 feet deep, lining the sides of roads that
act as a dumping ground for all sorts of nasty things. Often times trash is burned in these concrete
troughs, smoke rising up & filling the air with a bitter ash. They are used for trash collection, toilets,
drains & in some places, drinking & cleaning water. When the rains come, the ditches are too full
of trash to channel the water away & the streets flood with raw sewage. People live right next to & sometimes on
top of these ditches.
Houses are a communal
affair, extended families living together under one roof or in an
apartment-type setting. A small
courtyard, shared by many families, acts as the kitchen, laundry room, family
room, backyard, barnyard & everything in between.
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| Burning trash on the side of the road |
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| At the tailors |
Soon we’ll be
leaving Conakry & West Africa behind.
We’ll sail to the Grand Canaries for shipyard & some will leave for
good or for a vacation. When we do sail
again, it won’t be back to the familiar shores of West Africa, but to Congo, in Central Africa. It’ll be the first time the ship has been
there.
It was hard work,
a lot of long hours, but when you look at the numbers, you realize how much it
was worth it. I will miss my dayworkers,
my nurses, my friends. The lives we touched & those that touched us will
always stay with us. The old saying of “I
need Africa more than Africa needs me” is very
true.
Blessings
