Gusu Village Clinic

"If

you live for the next world you will get this one in the deal; but if you live only for this world you lose them both". C.S. Lewis

Wednesday and Thursday we (Joseph, AKA Jose, and I) joined up with a team from California – high school and college kids, and went to Gusu, a village about two hours out of the capital. We had one nurse, Becky, with us on day 1 and Carson, another nurse, joined us on day 2. For those Texans reading this, Carson and her husband have committed to three years here in Malawi. He teaches at ABC and Carson is a nurse. They came from Wichita Falls, Texas, where Carson was an ER nurse.

Back to the story – Gusu is a village that was the ministry of Sam Kawale while he was an ABC student. All students are expected to have a ministry while in school. He, with the help of others, has started an agricultural program, using irrigation. They have three wells in the village area. He has started a goat ‘farm’ and is hoping to work on raising pigs soon. He has helped build a school. He also arranges village clinics when teams are available. The first day we saw only children, 18 years or younger. Joseph acted essentially as a doctor and between the two of us we saw 180 kids. Some not so bad, some really, really ill. One of those kids had fallen in the cooking fire a week ago and burned his right arm, then two days before we got there, he had burned his left arm. He has seizures and appeared to have a congenital mental issue. The nurses cleaned and dressed the wounds (the old one was bad, infected, oozing…. Just a mess) and told his father to bring him back on the second day for a re-check. We saw a variety of rashes, colds, fevers, coughs and assorted other things. We actually had a way to test for malaria and had several positive tests. Joseph seemed to have a run on ‘bad ears’ and saw lots of nasty ears. He also had a 2 year old with episodes of painful swollen hands and feet – we suspect the child has sickle cell disease, but had no way to test for it. At the end of the clinic a runner came from the village area, saying there was a girl too sick to come and could someone come see her? I went with Becky and some other members of the team. On the dirt floor of a traditional mud hut was a 12 year old girl. Her left leg was hot and swollen and she did not want it touched. She had an ugly wound below the knee that was oozing green exudate (pus). She was in obvious distress. The story was that a week ago she fell and hurt her leg on one of the mud benches in the church. The next day they took her to a health clinic and the leg was sutured – no xray, no antibiotics, no pain meds. We decided the best course of action would be to load her in the truck (the team came with a bus and a truck to carry supplies) and take her back to ABC and the in patient clinic with us after the village clinic was done. After the clinic was finished for the day, we all went back to Lilongwe; Becky, Joseph and I worked on the little girl – started IV antibiotics and pain meds, plus removed the sutures and washed out the wound. Her name is Taona, which means ‘we are suffering’. I ordered an xray for the next morning (we don’t have techs at night). Day 2 at Gusu was to be the adults. It started with our first patient lying in an ox cart, too weak to get up. She was quite ill and we ended up starting an IV on her for dehydration. Her malaria test was negative, but she kept saying it felt like malaria. We treated her for general infection and malaria, plus pain meds and vomiting medications. It was the first IV the nurses had started in a village clinic and they did a fine job! They hung the bag from a strip of gauze wrapped around a rafter. She seemed better by the time she left on her ox cart to go home. We ended up seeing ~160 adults. They take longer because they have many, many complaints and they all want to ‘tell their story’. There were probably 200 people that were not going to be seen, so Becky and Carson divided them up into groups of ‘general body pain’ stomach problems’, and ‘coughing’ and just handed out medications. It is dry and dusty now (dry season), plus the smoke from the cooking fires – well, everyone has a cough. We also saw lots of vision problems (which we could not help), as they are in the strong sunlight and they have the dust and smoke blowing in their eyes. We saw lots of diffuse pain, coughs, high blood pressure, and stomach pains. A few wounds that needed attention, some very funky rashes, a couple of hernias, some ‘private parts’ issues, and a goodly number of bad teeth. The boy with the burn returned. We decided he should come with us to the ABC in patient ward to arrange a consult with the Malawian doctor, Dr. Lungu, at the Korean hospital in case he needs skin grafts. While we were in the village, Dr. Young (ABC doctor) called – Taona’s leg is broken! She had an open fracture that has now sat in a cesspool of infection for a week. The plan was to transfer her to Kamuzu Central Hospital for an orthopedic evaluation. Pray for her that she does not lose that leg! Finally we were done for the day and drove back to Lilongwe, to tuck in one more village child and family. We came home to no water and we are filthy… but God is good and the water came on in about an hour. We are exhausted.

We can only hope that we made a difference in the lives of some of the people. While we were doing the medical part, members of the team were interacting with the kids and teaching about the Gospel. Pray for Taona and for the burn boy (I think his name is Joshua).

Pray for us!

Pictures: Joseph and Charles, ready for the patients! A child with a burn on her face from flaming plastic that a sibling accidentally threw on her. Child with front central incisors that have not erupted but with swollen gums -this has been going on for some time, any dentists out there have any suggestions? And the right arm of the burned patient that we ended up bringing to the inpatient ward. Excuse any errors as I am too tired to really do a decent spell check!