Volume 13
September 30, 2004
Hello, everyone.
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| Allyson (and Dr. Dean Thomas, lower right, upper picture) at work in Darfur |
It’s been a couple of weeks since the last volume. Part of the reason for that is that Allyson spent most of that time enjoying her R&R in Khartoum, where there was air-conditioning (sort of), television (yippee!) and slightly better food. But alas, on her way from Garsila to Khartoum (a two-day drive, topped off with a plane ride), Allyson, whose strong constitution had kept her from getting sick during her first two months in Africa, finally succumbed to the gastrointestinal distress that hits most everyone who spends any significant time in the bush. So she spent most of her R&R not feeling very well. The only good news is that she was allowed to extend her R&R by three days because of her illness. (Beginning November 7, she gets two full weeks of real vacation. We're going to meet each other in Nairobi, Kenya, then spend two days in a safari camp in the Masai Mara game preserve and then six days at Manda Bay, an island off the Kenyan coast in the Indian Ocean. I cannot wait to see her.)
Earlier this week, she made it back to Garsila. Very soon after she got back, she had a new encounter with the woman whose child she had helped deliver in Zalingei (see Volume 12). I’ll let her tell the story:
“The mother and baby I took to Zalingei are back in our hospital, and I got to see them yesterday. The mother has an infection in the incision, which is not surprising given how hard they had to fight to get the baby out. But she is fine otherwise, and the baby is beautiful. I gave the mom a big ol' hug, and it was great to see them.”
Which just goes to show you that even in the direst of conditions, good things do happen.
Since returning, Allyson has spent a lot of time on the road, traveling to villages near Garsila with Dr. Dean Thomas (see photos above), the fellow who is writing the diary for The Guardian, attending to ailing folks there. “It's been so great to get out in the land cruisers and travel through the African bush on roads that basically don't even exist,” she wrote to me this week. “It even rained today and we got to mud-bog African style. We have been to the villages of Um Kher, Delieg, and today Bindisi. Each day, Dean and I have come back with an extremely sick child. The first two days were malaria, and today some horrible infection we're not sure about.”
And she refers to all this work as a “great week.” You got to love her.
Until next time,
Chuck