Trip Day 5-Day 3 in Burkina

The computer says that it is 12:36 am in Texas as I write this, but it is 6:36 Ouaga time.

One thing I relaize, is that time has no meaning in Burkina. An appointment for a certain time means that someone will be with you in within one hour on either side of said time. We time conscoius Americans have had to say "Que sera sera" several times.

Today, we head back out to Yagmar village, which could be called a suburb of Ouagadougou. It takes about 40 minutes from the hotel. It consists of all brick and straw homes (about 100). It is a primarily Muslim village, but the ministry we are working with ha built the clinic (now building a bigger one) and a school. It has also supplied the Doctor and nurses to the village. To put things in perspective, the doctor sees about 40 patients a day, treats them with what he has, and gets paid about $300 (US) a month.

Yesterday, we treated about 50 people, and already we have a waiting list of 40 for today. There will be more than that for sure, and we will do the best we can. We will have more translators today (in Yagmar not much French is spoken but the local dialect of Moray) so that we can pre-screen some of the patients and help the medical staff more. What is needed here is about 4-5 doctors with local nurses and translators. This way the minor cases could be cared for in the brush arbor outside.

Some patients needed IV's and wound care, some just wanted to see a US doctor. We had to give a lot of Malaria pills, and hopefully saved a 3 month old whose mother was not producing enough milk. We went to the local "pharmacie" and bought some formula and other medicine for about 40,000 CFA or $80. This, we pray, will change the child's life. One woman had cataracts, so we got her on the list for surgery at the local hospital.

Today, we will go back and try again. We will also speak to all the classes at the Christian school in the town, in hopes of providing enough encouragment for one or two students to go to the Universitie in Ouaga. One thing that we learned about Burkina culture is that the more educated you are, the more you are expected to give back, even if you receive nothing for the services you render. The attitude seems to be: "Why go to school if I'm going to wind up in the same shape I'm in now?"

One amazing thing is that the village elders in Yagmar have never question the teaching and preaching of the Bible in the school. Praise God for that. In this village they have a Khadaffi mosque, one of mant we have seen, where the leader of Libya has paid for Mosques to be build. They are just larger versions of the mud huts, but they have effective speakers. I will try to post a picture of this later today.

All is well, but keep up the prayers.