Mobile Clinic at Chimwang’ombe

Today was a good day and a sad day. Jayme left to go back home to Texas so the bus was short one person. We will miss you Jayme!! Additionally, today was supposedly our “last” mobile clinic due to finances. I was excited because I was finally going to be able to assess BMI at this mobile clinic something that I have been trying to get done since the 2nd mobile clinic. Once we arrived at the feeding center where the clinic was going to be held, we were surprised by the amount of people that had showed. Due the amount of people, Mwawi (the clinical officer who acts as the doctor during the mobile clinic) had us just start assessing people without a proper set up. This made the first 20 minutes a bit hectic but soon we became a smooth operating system. I did vitals with a labor and delivery nurse named Sarah. But seeing how there were 300+ people and we were down 2 people on the vitals station ( Jayme went home and Joseph, a paramedic from the states, didn’t come that day), we only assessed those people who looked febrile, were elderly, or pregnant. This proved a bit problematic because the people were used the normal flow of things and when we wouldn’t do a full vital set on them they would be perplexed. I had a few of the elder women get in my face motioning that “all should get their arm squeezed” [this was done by pointing to everyone in line and then squeezing my arm and A LOT of ARM GESTURES!!] Sarah and I finally got someone to translate to them what we were doing and they were content. During the lulls of no vitals, I went over to the weight station to see if I could do some height measurements and assess BMI. Unfortunately, the tape measure that someone brought for me was too short. So I was out of luck. But I am hopeful that I have already attained enough information via the crisis nursery and basic observation to fulfill my nutritional assessment hours.

We finished up the day having served about 340 people. The shocking thing was we were done earlier than we ever have been in the past. But that is understandable because we didn’t do everyone’s vitals. If we had, we would have been leaving at 8pm seeing that there were only 2 of us manning that station!

Reflection: Sometimes we are thrown into situations which you are just called to action. No time to organize just go. There are also times where those moments of preparation help to make the action run more smoothly. Yet whatever the situation, it calls for perseverance and a willing heart.