Last Day in Yagma, Off to Zabre

Yesterday (the 21st) was our last day in Yagma village. We treated over one hundred patients. We saw lots of adults and children with parasites, dysentary, and other illnesses. What was amazing was the way in which we could go to the local "pharmacie" and for $80 could buy enough medicine for many, many people.

One the great realizations you make as a Westerner when you come here is that so many problems could be solved with basic hygiene. It's not that the people are dirty, it's that they really have no understanding of what we might call the cycle of infection. To illustrate, the bathroom for the whole village is a pit dug by the government. On top of the pit they place a concrete slab with four holes in it. Above that they place a half wall for a little privacy. Not too bad except for the bats that live in the pit, and the snakes that come to eat the bats at night. The problem is that this facility is only for adults. The youngest children do not use it. In fact, the youngest children only wear a shirt, and thus relieve themselves wherever they are standing, even on a couple of us as the day wore on.

If a child has a parasite, and the accompanying diarhhea, the just go where they are standing. In a five minute timeframe I saw a sick child with diarhhea go on the ground, and walk off. Then one of the guinea hens (a key food source) came over and was eating the feces, and then one of the dogs chased off the hen and was doing the same. Talk about spreading the infection and keeping it around.

The other fascinating part was to see the inside of a couple of homes. They are immaculately clean. The problem is that they just sweep all the trash outside. The whole village looks like it is growing a bumper crop of black plastic bags on the ground. One wonders what could be done with a couple of 55 gallon containers marked for plastic bags.

We had so many people waiting at the clinic, that we had to feed them. We got them dried figs in five gallon containers, and some beans and rice. We told the local peanut vendor to give every person in the village a bag of peanuts. About 300 bags for $5.00.

In the City, the sanitation is not much better. We are staying in a"3 star" hotel as rates by the Burkina government. It is not connected to a sewer. Rather a truck pulls up every day to dump the waste. The city has open sewers on every street, into which the people sweep their trash. At dusk, the people light the sewers on fire which produces such a toxic smoke and smell that you can barely breathe. It covers the whole city like a fog for a couple of hours each night.

I also now understand the idea of it takes a village to raise a child. While there does not seem to be too much interaction bewteen parents and their children who are over three years old, every or any parent can control the crowd of 100 kids with a single word. They will instantly quiet down and do precisely as they are told. The men in the village stand back, and observe, but do not get too involved with anything.

Today we are off to Zabre village. This is where we have built a church and a school. It is three hours each way to Zabre, so we are leaving at 645 am. We have to leave Zabre at 4:00 pm, because it is not safe to drive on country roads after dark.

Will post more later, with pictures of Zabre. Keep up the prayers, they are working.