Report on visit to Ishiara AEPC Mercy Clinic Nov 2008
The trip to visit the clinic at Ishiara, which AAF had been sponsoring for the last 2 years, we knew would be a very long and tiring day. The clinic is only 75 km away but it involves crossing 10 dried up river beds and takes over 3 hours , we were not even sure if it would be safe to return the same way if the rains started when we were visiting !
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We set off at 6.30 am and finally arrived at 10.00, Seven of us bounced around in the back of the land cruiser. John Kauvi, the nurse in charge, met us with sodas, bread, hard boiled eggs and bananas to fortify us for the day ahead.
Simon, David and Jeremy were shown the local church which was to be the waiting room and consulting rooms for the day. Initially looking very bare until desks were brought from the local polytechnic and the patients started to arrive. Eventually over 100 appeared and the use of numbered raffle tickets allowed some order to be achieved.
I meanwhile set off with John for a further 45min drive into the bush to visit some of the community health projects he had set up with AAF funding. A group of Kenyan ladies met us with their wonderful chanting songs and led us to one of their homes to demonstrate the building of a new safer more efficient cooking stove - burns to children being one of the most common accidents. They also had learnt to dig proper latrines with simple hand washing facilities; designed a hygienic drying rack for household crockery and also developed a kitchen garden in a sack to use the limited water supply to provide green vegetables for the family. Simple but important improvements to their lives and their health; achieved with team work and unity - but needing charitable funding to act as the stimulus to start the whole project. Hopefully we can continue to support similar projects in other areas.
On returning to the clinic I found the queues at last getting shorter and Jeremy had a new career as a dispensing optician to the 80 proud owners of new spectacles. A quick visit to the polytechnic followed to be welcomed by a song and meet some of the students, a gift of football shirts from Yeovil College and also a new volley ball net and ball. Before we left for the long journey home we were presented with a fully grown banana tree which we gratefully accepted and is now proudly planted at Tei wa Yesu clinic.
The day had achieved many things - teeth pulled and dental problems treated - glassed dispensed and bibles now able to be read - community projects visited and seen to be working ; hopefully funds can be made available to maintain and develop these simple but very practical solutions to the communities own problems.
J.R. Buckle.
