Bahai Beach 7

Bahai Beach 7

The show must go on.

Yet again a very sad tiding. One of our Chadian lady workers in the Gender Based Violence Department passed away more or less unexpectedly in N’Djamena due to hypertensive crisis. Our thoughts are with her family and friends. Today the bare minimum of activities was maintained and the national staff is preparing a ceremony to remember her in the house she should to stay at in Bahai. This afternoon we will attend. It seems that bad tidings are the flavor of the day; three days ago our Clinical Health Assistant Alexis who had just returned from N’Djamena found out his father is in a coma in the Teaching Hospital in N’Djamena so he flew straight back the next day. The program in mean times faces some restraints as the other expatriate doctor has resigned. He felt sick and exhausted. The reproductive health department is without a captain again. It is also the department within the health sector that needs the most care/improvement.
On a lighter note; the chickens are doing extremely well. At five they pop up at my bedside (as I sleep outside) and sweetly ask me for food & water. Well I gladly please my ladies and add a song or two because a wise man from Mexico told me if you sing to the chickens they will lay more eggs. Lo and behold two days ago I sang; 6 eggs. Yesterday I forgot; 1 sole egg. Either the guards/mice are eating the eggs, either my voice is indeed a miracle maker. And then the sparrow who think the drinking point is a path and my back is a rock to rest on (and shit on as well.
The access to the camp is getting less easy; rain dances have led to relative abundant rains and instant pulpification of the roads. Mush all over. Shaking the booty when driving the 25 kilometers to the camp every morning at 08.05. My goal of the perfect departure at 08.00 has not been reached yet. But with the arrival of Marc our new logistician in the project and Gang the acting field coordinator there is new power in the project as well as experience. Luckily Marc is ornithologist and Gang owns a 750 chicken poultry so the wisdom is on board for world domination with my chickenfarm.
Cholera is a major headache. Just across the border in Sudan cases are being reported and there is regular transportation. Our preparations are in full swing to prevent outbreak in the camp. Preposition of fluids, oral rehydration solution, antibiotics, classes, early recognition, warning, surveillance, isolation ward constructed and trainings done. Now waiting to face the storm. Talking about which a houboub is nearing, big sand storm right towards the compound. And believe it or not internet access during the evening hours. Not only cholera is at the threshold but also malaria. And given the system of UNHCR we need permission from them to distribute the bed nets while they bumble up the attempts to get the required insecticides to dip the bed nets in up here. I have never been a fan of rules and regulations and truly at times I want to run up the wall and shake some sense into some people working there.
How could I forget I delivered a baby boy in the hospital and the parents want to call him Hashish (ya man spread the message; green leaves are a blessing) . Also a young man who was kicked by a camel was evacuated. He fractured his under leg and because lack of money his parents could take him to the health post only after 4 days and then from the health post Bao (120 kilometer) to Bahai after another 3 days. Sadly his leg will have to be amputated as there is gangrene and necrosis at his underleg. Do you remember the guy with acute flaccid paralysis? He will be coming back on Monday or Tuesday and he is almost recovered 100%.
Yoda Sancho Panchez and I have started a work out program. I am focusing on the triceps as huge as Arnold Swarzenegger in his better days. He is complaining to me about this tiny little patch on his foot. After tons and tons of ointment I have given up on his foot and will amputate when he sleeps. It might resolve my promlems