--Malaria Prevention, First Aid, and HIV/AIDS Prevention were presented to 4 classrooms serially. Only 3 WEH children attend this school – they alone were to have health screenings. However, the teachers referred many more kids, and while health education was going on, we were very busy assessing about 20 kids! Most were healthy and well. One 9 yo boy had a very loud heart murmur which at first we worried about, wondering how to find money for a pediatric cardiology consult and probably corrective surgery – then we learned that for all his life the boy’s father, one of the Kake school teachers, has been taking his son for medical care and he is saving for the surgery. Whew! A little boy about 5 years old was obviously ill, weak and lethargic, heart rate 140, temp 100.9. Through an interpreter and his 9 yo brother we learned that he has a twin sister and an 11 yo sister who is their surrogate mother; their mother’s whereabouts is unknown and the father apparently is a ne’er-do-well who is seriously neglectful of their needs. The teachers told us that these kids are consistently weak and listless – and we learned that they’d only had gari, a thin gruel of casaba and water, because they had no food or money. We fed the little boy from our daypacks, gathered more food for all the kids to take with them. The interpreter told us that he could tell by their skin that all 4 kids have AIDS and malaria and they needed to be tested at once. We then got the WEH social worker involved and her advice was not to test them because a) they had no responsible adult available to consent, and b) they have such poor social support, thus if they were positive it would worsen their plight because they’d be even more fearful of their fate. The social worker will find their father to explore further with him, and take steps to advocate for them within the limits of the helping system and available resources.
--Sam had a great surprise - Richard, one of the interpreters, gave him a bag like men carry in the Northwest Province, "now you're a real Cameroon man!"
--The teachers gave us a jug of fresh palm wine in thanks for the health education and assessments. It had a little bite, tasted a little tangy, and I'm sure it grows on you if you're here where its readily available.
--In the late afternoon Joe and I walked up the dusty road to the local “bar” where we bought locally brewed 24 oz beers, “33” brand, for about $1 each, and walked home slowly savoring them and talking with village folk along the way. Here the mist hangs over the treetops all day, every day – but it cleared away and the moon was bright and almost full, lighting our path.
--Each evening the Linfield group, Joe and I have a debriefing session to end the day. Tonight we talked about all the children we’ve identified to date with significant chronic medical and social needs. During clinics when we’ve found acutely ill kids, we’ve transported them and a parent to the hospital and paid for their care. We’re keeping a list of those in obvious but not acute need. We’re realizing that a) we don’t know the cost of consults and follow-up care, and b) paying for a specialist medical consult for each of them will not be enough, and we won’t be here to know the outcome of the consults, ie, their needs based on the recommendations generated from those consults. Probably the nursing students will leave WEH with a detailed list of names and the problems that were identified, and the unspent money that they raised to help with medical needs. Before they came to Cameroon, this class raised nearly $10,000 to help impoverished WEH kids get necessary medical care, and for mosquito nets..
--Francois is the live-in caretaker at the Titi’s house in Mangamba. He is wonderfully helpful with myriad tasks, large and small. Recently he approached some of us asking if we could diagnose his lumps – we could, they are probably fatty lipomas which are a typically benign but may be disfiguring and uncomfortable. He’d learned that the local health center could excise them for 10,000 CFA (about $20) each, but he didn’t have any money. Yesterday he talked about his 10 yo child who was sick, he was worried and couldn’t do anything. At the conclusion of the evening we invited Francois to our meeting; he was overwhelmed with our gift of money which is probably more than he had in years. It's not near enough for all he does for us.
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