Bahai Beach 60

Bahai Beach 60

Back to Chad

May 6, 2007

A long break in India has done a world of good. Time for reflection. Visit of family and friends and lots of loitering. Bahai Beach 61 or 62 will be devoted to parts of my trip in India.

Here in April a lot of positive changes. Our translator is back in Bahai. We have a new female and male nurse. Three verandas and a shower have been built and more constructions are underway. Nowadays > 85% of the mothers in the camp deliver in the maternity ward, supplementary food is being distributed to over 400 breastfeeding mothers and pregnant women.

The weather varies from hot to cooking hot. In the afternoons one sees the refugee, national and international staff huddle in the shadow trying to ward off the swarms of flies and escape from heatstroke. Today luckily the sky was clouded and a mild breeze has been blowing all day. Unlike N’djamena or Abeche nights here are generally very tolerable. Food distribution has been going on since Tuesday and long lines of donkeys and people are making a great panorama of vivid colors and movement.

Not all-good news from Chad. While the house constructed for the major pump at the Chateau was effectively crashed into by a water tanker a full three days after completion of the building. The whole building has to be rebuilt from scratch delaying the introduction of the gravity based water distribution system. It is similar callousness that has caused our fence to be smashed by another water tanker. Then we have armed boys in town from different denomination and the old adagio guns lead to trouble holds true. Shots can be heard on a regular basis, most is not target practice. Our Congolese loggie managed to tango with a motorbike in Rwanda leading to a bad fracture of his foot. Wishing him a speedy recovery from here. The saddest news by far however is the departure of my Jedi knight buddy Mr. Sancho Yoda. He has rejoined Princess Adriana. May the force be forever with him. Hope to see you sooner in LA!

In the camp despite our efforts a mother decided that the traditional way of healing was better for her child. She there fore left the hospital with her dehydrated and malnourished baby and had a traditional healer carve the little one with more than 50 incisions by razorblade. It is clear that these avoidable deaths are hard to accept yet there lays the challenge of the work. When to act and when to accept other choices, other treatment modalities. We hope to find out this week what made the mother take this path. As per the story the child was born outside of wedlock and is a big problem in the camp.

Since several months we have a health committee in place, which will ultimately manage the health care infrastructure, the committee consists of male and female refugees only and there are advisory members from IRC. The issue of scarification is definitely one of the issues that need to be addressed. Even if the practice is much less common than 4 years ago. Preventable death is an issue that with the help of the leaders and the health committee can be addressed.

My end of contract is rapidly nearing. There are so many things I would still like to do. But for now I will focus on a limited amount of things. Drug Management System, preparedness for the rainy season (yes even in the desert we can have torrential floods) cutting off access to the camp for days to weeks.

For today this will do.

Tomorrow a parable from India or more about Chad

Namaskar,

Ashis