First Medical Camp

Good Evening From Tsavo Park. Today has been a long but rewarding day. We started out our morning at Voi Guest House with a nice breakfast right after sunrise.

We dropped off our team leaders at St. Joseph Hospital to see the retired Nuns and provide for their medical needs while the rest of us took a bumpy dusty ride to a remote village to perform our medical camp at an outlying clinic. On the way we saw Camels, Baboons and other animals. One of the interesting things we saw
looked like giant ant hills of red dirt, but our guide Simon told us they are actually termite hills.

At the medical camp we broke up in too teams, with 3 teams seeing patients and one team running the pharmacy. We saw 120 patients in the time we were there, from small children to Grandmothers whose age was unknown. Many of them complained of pain in their joints, allergy symptoms, headaches and vision problems to name a few. One of our team leaders extracted a tooth.

It was hard to send them away at times when we didn't have what they needed, but they always thanked us anyway. Everyone is so friendly and appreciative for every little thing we could do for them, even if it was just lubricating eye drops. We had a large group of local volunteers performing intake, pharmacy, translating and even a Kenyan Medical Officer to help see patients.

After many grateful goodbyes, we traveled into the park to stay at a guest house. We drove some very poor areas on the way to the guesthouse and it was fun watching the small children wave excitedly at the "Mizungu" which although is probably spelled wrong is the Swahili word for White People.
On arrival we checked into our rooms, and went for a nice swim in the pool overlooking the Serengetti. We saw a lot of Elephants watering at the water hole as well as water buffalo and some gazelles. We haven't seen any lions yet but we have heard them. Then we enjoyed a nice dinner, and some of us retired to our rooms while others sat up playing a card game called Pick or enjoyed the stargazing. Tomorrow is another travel day as we head to our next medical camp site.
Till next time.... Heather and Danielle