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Published: April 21st 2009
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Friday 20th March
We arrived at Banana Village where we had planned to meet the CRU dental team at around 4pm after our 32 hours bus journey across what seemed like the whole of Africa but in actual fact was only three countries! We looked a little dishevelled and slightly dirty to say the least and had hoped that we could have a shower before meeting everyone. Sadly Barbara caught us sneaking to our room and so they would have to put up with our dust covered faces and the slight stench of “African travel”!
There were seven of us on the team including Lucie and myself. Paul and Aliya were both fully qualified dentists, Paul from Ireland and Aliya from London who was half Pakistani, half South American and had red hair! Michelle was the Northern girl, she was a trained dental nurse and carried out quite a few extractions. Michael, who was also Irish, was non-dentally trained like Luc and I and he was in charge of sterilisation. Barbara ran the show. She was the coordinator of the whole trip and had put in unbelievable amounts of work to make it happen. Everyone had his or her
jobs but Luc and I would have to wait till our first clinic day to find out ours!
I had been slightly anxious about the two weeks I would be spending with the team as I wasn’t sure whether I would feel on my own in terms of age of depth of knowledge of the dental side of things. All my anxiety went as soon as Barbara came to greet Luc and me with a big hug and handshake and introduced us to the team. I knew from the start that I would have an amazing time with them and that they were a very lively and funny bunch even having just got off the plane from London!
Everyone was quite tired on the first night and I knew we could do with a good nights sleep in a bed after that journey! We enjoyed some great pasta and a couple of Nile Specials (soon to become our post clinic refreshment) and had an early night in anticipation of what the first clinic would bring!
Saturday 21st March
We were up bright and early to the sound of the birds (and monkeys) in the trees to
a beautiful day. Banana Village is a gorgeous hideaway of little huts along with a conference room/restaurant at the back of a village. We were on the Kampala-Entebbe road in an area called Garuga. There were monkeys running around the place day and night and occasionally you would hear them scampering around on the thatch of your hut!
After a quick breakfast we loaded up the pickup truck and all jumped in to a Matatu (Minibus), which we had hired for the day. The area we were to set up or clinic for the first three days of our time in Uganda was called Bwerenga. A friend of Barbara’s has set up a school and community there and it is named Bwerenga Hope Village. We were greeted by lots of the locals all very willing to help us with our trunks of instruments and dental chairs to set up in the church. The church comprised of a lot of lengths of wood supporting a tin roof with lots of benches and a few tables. It was the perfect size for what we wanted to do. There was enough room for a waiting and triage area, Michael’s sterilisation, the instruments,
treatment area and finally post op!
The first day was probably one of my best, although it is very hard to pin down any lows for the whole trip, just because of how much I learnt and how busy I was during the clinic. Dentaid, which is the dental charity I am officially “working” for, had supplied three dental chairs that were specifically for use in outdoor or remote situations. We had to crank them up with a big handle, which became quite tiring (and sweaty) after a while. I soon found my speciality in dentistry, instruments! I was in charge of setting up the trays for the dentists, cutting and preparing gauze, sorting out the different instruments into the correct boxes/trays and getting anything that the dentists needed whilst they were treating or had dirty hands (had been into someone’s mouth) and so couldn’t touch any of the instruments. I soon learned the names and uses far all the instruments from Warrick James’ to left and right Upper Molar forceps.
We must have removed over 80 teeth that day and treated more. The state of the teeth was dire on the whole but there was a big
range of cleanliness. You could clearly see that some tried to look after their teeth as much as possible but on the other hand some had maybe never seen let alone used a toothbrush. Regardless of whether someone needed treatment or not they would receive a brush and some past as well and dental hygiene advice, which was predominantly Barbara’s and Lucie’s job in post op.
We finished the clinic around five o’clock and had had a very successful day on all fronts. I had enjoyed the day so much and found it really rewarding seeing people leave our makeshift clinic now without the pain they had when they first walked in. The team worked so well together and the whole process just flowed amazingly.
On Sunday morning we held our own service at Banana Village, which was really nice. Barbara had a vehicle in Uganda that the team was going to use. The only problem was that it was in Kamuli, which was about four and a half hours away. Lucie and myself had done a lot of traveling in Afrcia by this stage and so were more than happy to go and fetch it. We left
Kampala at 11am and travelled to Kamuli by Matatu. I drove the big minibus back from Kamuli, via Jinja, without much hassle, just the occasional sitting on the horn when someone would proceed to pull out on me! We had dinner at a very nice hotel on the shore of Lake Victoria and got a good night sleep ready to go back to Bwerenga Hope Village in the morning.
Monday 23rd March
Moday followed pretty much the same format that Saturday did. It was a lot busier though and we later found out that it was probably due to the fact that lots of our patients from the Saturday clinic had gone and told the rest of the fishing village that the Mzungu Dentists were ok and that we did not hurt them! A lot of their previous dental experiences would have been very painful and probably carried out by traditional healer in a mud hut!
A mother came into the clinic with her two children (babies) and expressed that they were very ill. As we were only a dental clinic our first answer is that we were not doctors and that we could not really treat
anything other than teeth. After Michelle had chatted with the mother for a while she found out that the father had run away as he was scared aboput having more children and being able to support them! Not only this but he was HIV positive and so there was a chance that the children were too. Upon looking at the kids you would have guessed their age to be around 4 or 5 months. When Michelle heard that they were coming up to two years old we know there was a cause for concern and so paid for them to go to the local hospital and for them to be treated. There are so many cases like that one in Uganda and across the whole of Africa and it is so hard to pick and choose which ones to put the money toward.
We carried out one more clinic at Bwerenga and then headed to Jinja, to the east of Kampala.
I'm sorry I am so behind in my writing but I am trying to catch up.... only a few weeks behind now so hopefully I will have finished before I finish my trip in just over 3
weeks!!
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anonymous
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looks amazing todd what an experience xxxxxx great photos cant wait for more xxx love you xx