The teachers are back at Butonga for the second day of classes.
We’ll return tomorrow morning for one last session each and graduation.
We’ve been accompanied today by the medical team.
A lineup of about 100 or 150 had already gathered for the treatment, and we’ve already been swarmed once by about 50 children from the other side of the fence, curious about the goings on.
There are now at least three supervisors with switches.
One of the doctors said this was the longest lineup of people they had so far at the beginning of the day, and by days end they thought they had seen 1000. There were a lot of people, but it was not a satisfying day from the perspective of the team. The lineups were unruly, there were various layers of privilege being discovered as, for various reasons, some were being promoted to the front of the line. Under these conditions, the sickest in the group are often overlooked. The site, as mentioned, is next to a school and a couple hundred school kids were added to the list. And facilities were cramped with two teams on one site. One of the volunteers suffered heat stroke having sat out in the sun for too long.
The eyecare team didn’t fare much better. There’s was an outdoor location, a great and boisterious crowd gathered and, for whatever reason, the assigned local interpreters went missing around noon. The situation was getting out of hand, and the clinic packed it in. Still, they saw and fitted nearly 300 people. They arrived home around the usual time.
The other side of it is that even the modest treatment that the clinics offer is out of reach for most. What the medical team offers is the equivalent of 4000 Kenyan shillings for those who would otherwise have no choice but the hospital – about a third of a year's income. And I heard that when a local hospital was visited a year ago to get some idea of what the medical teams could expect, it was noticed that the local pharmacy had next to nothing in it. A few bottles of Tylenol and medication for malaria. The mission clinic, by contrast, is bountifully supplied, and will leave the remainder behind.
At suppertime tonight, Kim Beard estimated that all the teams combined have dealt with about 20,000 people so far who’ve attended the medical and eye clinics, who’ve attended classes, who’ve been part of the construction projects.
*We’re near the end of our stay in Bungoma. Early Saturday morning we leave for the Masai Mara game reserve. There’s a flurry of activity sorting out farewells, the distribution of leftover supplies and what and how to pack. We each brought two suitcases and though one was filled with supplies that have been used – or will be left behind - in principle, we’re permitted to take two home. That said, the second must be packed and ready to go tomorrow evening on a separate truck which will make the delivery to our accommodations in Nairobi. The simplest solution, and the one most are following, is simply to return with one suitcase, plus carry-on.
*Farewell gifts and tips are being sorted out, but we learned today that caution must be taken in presenting them. At the end of a previous visit by an English delegation, a gift was publicly presented to Bishop Wabakala. Two days later, his home was broken into and robbed.
*Our formal graduation ceremony will take place tomorrow morning, but the film crew was on site so we staged portions of our classes and a mock graduation. It was great fun, and the crew certainly had landed upon the biggest and liveliest of our three groups.