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Published: October 23rd 2008
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Nonepak Landing
The reef here is only navigable at high tide. I lucked out with my arrival time. The first full day in Vunap had two projects running. First off, the doctors held a clinic day in the village which served more than a score of patients. Several surrounding villages sent people to see the doctors as well, which was nice. We didn’t think that the word of our presence would travel so fast, but apparently it spread like wildfire. Like in Jereviu, there was a scabies problem in this village that affected several small children. Also, much to our surprise, there was a problem with STDs. There were a couple cases of syphilis and gonorrhea which Chris (the only male medical personnel on the team) had the pleasure of diagnosing. STDs are rarely seen in the remote villages such as this but are common in the cities. That evening we altered our plan of doing a workshop on scabies, and focused on sexual health instead.
The second project of the day involved a trip North up the coast. I took three local men and the Ripster back out to sea in order to visit some of the Northernmost villages in Big Bay. These villages on the Northern tip of the Western arm are so remote that the
Spacious Accomodation
The village put us up in the Nakamal, but we pitched tents inside to keep mosquitoes off at night. government cannot reliably reach them on a regular basis. The villages are smaller and more spread out, but the need for our help here is no less than in the larger villages. What makes this stretch of coast so much less accessible is that it is exposed to the swells from the sea and does not receive any sheltering protection from the Eastern arm of the Bay. With high seas beating heavily against the rocky shores and no roads to speak of, the only access to these villages is by footpath along the jungle. During the rainy seasons these footpaths can easily be washed away, and the villages to the North are frequently cut off.
On the day that I visited the Northern villages the sea was unreasonably calm. The waves crashing onto the beach were only a meter and a half and the wind wasn’t blowing all that hard. The village where we landed the Ripster was called Nonepak. There was an aid post built here but we’d heard from last year’s exploratory team that it was inactive. A big part of my mission that day was to find out why.
Nonepak is a small village on
Nonepak Aid Post
After looking, it's a small wonder why there isn't an operating aid post here. a breathtaking bit of land. It is smaller than the villages to the North of it, but it has been designated by the local chiefs as the spot for the multi-community aid post. There is a partially trained aid post worker here but as soon as you see the aid post structure you understand why it is not operational at the moment. After collecting my information and meeting with the village elders I motored back to Vunap in the Ripster to close out the day.
Our stopover in Vunap also allowed us to visit the Clinic in Pessena because it is quite a short hike. We made a medicine delivery to the clinic for the Ministry of Health and in order to keep up our unorthodox methods of delivery, we brought the goods on horseback. The government nurse, Pierre-Paul, is an amazing health care worker. He arranged for a full clinic day to be held and brought over a hundred patients from several villages surrounding Pessena. Many of the ailments that the doctors saw that day could not be treated with the equipment available, but we still did a lot of good.
Another aid group is building a
Day hikes
After the initial clinic day, the team hiked to surrounding villages. bathroom and shower for the clinic and hopes to complete the project in a few months. I am also hopeful that Pierre-Paul will be able to continue the training of the aid post worker in Nonepak. This way, when they do get an aid post structure set up they will have a trained village health worker to operate it.
After the couple clinic days and workshop evenings, our team loaded the Ripster again and headed South down the coast. It was a sad goodbye because our team had made many friends in Vunap, but hopefully we’ll be able to go back there in the future. The next stop on our trip was a village called Peamatsina, which is located a few miles South of Vunap.
Luckily for us there were still plenty of people in the village when we arrived. We had to send a swimmer to the shore to get some help before landing the boat. The waves were high as usual, and if we didn’t get help to carry the boat up the beach quickly we’d surely flood the thing in the waves. When we finally did land, everything got wet again but not as bad
Mounted Delivery
It was really nice to not carry this 100 lbs of medicine. as before. We were getting good at this.
The village of Peamatsina is a Catholic village so they speak French and Bislama rather than English and Bislama. Luckily for us, there were two men in the village that spoke English and worked with us as translators. Without them we would have been lost.
Our activities were now becoming routine and each team member knew what they had to do. The job of holding a clinic day, visiting nearby villages, and providing medical care where possible had become our standard operating procedure. The main medical complaints of this village were not the standards (infected wounds, malaria), but had more to do with age and physically strenuous lifestyle. There was a lot of joint and back pain as well as arthritis. During the clinic day, we gave out a large number of reading glasses to the elderly members of the community that were having difficulty with their eyesight up close.
The people here have a much higher mean age than that of surrounding villages. The terrain to reach the gardens is also much more severe because the mountains are very close to the sea at this part of the
Pessena's Wora Dispensary
This is one of the nicer clinic that I've seen in Vanuatu. coast. It was so difficult for us to tell certain patients that we didn’t have a cure for getting old. Many of them were hoping for a medicine that could cure the ailments of age, but there just isn’t a pill for certain problems.
I should also make note of a birth that took place in Peamatsina. The mother was in labor for over a day and the delivery was not an easy one. Throughout the intensity of the experience, however, the mother never cried out in pain or screamed in agony as we usually see in the movies. The women here are far too tough for that. The baby boy was born in the afternoon and he was named Seamus (after the only other man who happened to be in the room).
There was an excursion to a nearby village and many patients were treated there as well. Chris Groves made his first hut call there and give his first referral letter. The chief of the village had apparently passed a gall stone for the record books, but had no idea what it was. Chris had to make the explanation and the prescription. Also of note was
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Pierre-Paul was delighted to show us around his clinic. He's only been there a short time, but he's done wonders for the community already. child with badly broken legs. If we could bring a pediatric physiotherapist back to this coast, they’d have their work cut out for them. The children here incur injuries at a much higher rate that other locations we’ve been.
When our time came to an end, we once again loaded up the Ripster to head home to Alvei. The payload was much lighter since we’d made so many deliveries and dispensed all of our supplies. The tall ship at the corner of the bay was a sight for sore eyes even though we’d only been gone for 6 days. As we approached the ship just after sunset, the crew let off fireworks to signal our return. We got a warm welcome once we hauled ourselves back up on deck.
The trip back to Luganville was a long one into the wind, but we made the anchorage in time to have a going away party for our volunteers. To tally up the month: Almost 2 dozen volunteers participated, over 2 dozen communities were visited, nearly a ton of supplies were distributed, hundreds of patients were treated, and friends were made for life. All-in-all it was a good month.
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Mom
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Horsepacking!
Blisters? ;)