Newsletter SoCoFAS from May,11 2009
After Annie paid, last year in September, an unannounced ‘surprise visit’ to our project in Maweni and ascertained that all ‘collaborators’ performed well, we went back this year for a longer period (February, 5 till May, 8) to observe everything from close, to ‘fine-tune’ some things and especially to accept our container with relief goods and to install all these ‘ingredients’ in our dispensary.
The SoCoFAS dispensary in October 2008
The 20’ container with relief goods, mainly gifts from the H. Hart hospital in Roeselare, the Serruys hospital from Oostende, both hospitals in West-Flanders, Belgium and donations from doctor Roelandts from Grimbergen, Brabant, Belgium and your sponsor gifts did finally land in the harbour of Mombasa on February, 28 . It did take us another 7 weeks and several extra Shillings to get it in front of the door, but finally on April, 14 at 01:30 hr in the morning he stood in front of the dispensary. After the nocturnal unloading till about 3 o’ clock and with a lot of help of the local community, our doctor and nurse could inspect their ‘new toys’ the next morning like 2 school kids who just got their Santa Claus. Especially the delivery bed got a lot of admiration and the comments of our doctor-surgeon and our nurse-midwife were pregnant: “We only have 2 of these delivery beds in the whole of Kenya and they are in the national hospital of Nairobiand they are even of an older model than this one !
On April, 1 Janet, our nurse-midwife had performed a, successful delivery, (the first one in our dispensary) still with ‘the old material’ and another 2 or 3 were planned for the coming weeks. So, she was very eager to make use of her new asset. But all is good if it ends good ! Everything arrived, undamaged, got unloaded and installed. So, we can even ‘treat’ our patients better now !
When Annie saw ‘her’ little garden in front of the dispensary, in which she worked so hard with Lucas, our ‘shamba boy’ she had tears in her eyes, because the goats had eaten half or the flowers, plants and palm trees. From the banatree just the stem was left. Lucas en myself were bound to start putting a barbed wire fence, the next morning around our plot, which we embellished the next week with saisal poles at the back and the side. Not such an evident work if You realise that these poles need to be digged in for about a foot. Digging is not the correct word to use here. It’s more like hacking out, because theunderground iscoral rock. For me the first introduction to the local tarimbu(= kind of a digging iron which they use to do all kind of excavations).
Annie kept herself busy relaying out the front garden of the dispensary and kept on going with the garden in the back. And the result is worthwhile to see. Poor Lucas had to work like a horse while we were there and is probably very happy we left again. He had to divide his time by weeding, removing the ‘overdose’ of coral rock, planting flowers, trees and grass. When Annie could spare him for a moment he had to help me with installing the sliding door of the garage of the dispensary, installing the velux curtain in the delivery room, putting a shelf in the women’s toilet and other of these odd jobs.
Nixon, our ‘Bob the builder’ didn’t sit still neither. First off all he spurred the ‘pit diggers’ to get water as quickly as possible by the words : “If you don’t have water by tonight, I’ll drop the rope in and you can stay digging until you’ve got water !” And when I promised them, on top of that, 2 beers if they hit water before the sun went down the assiduity seemed to be encouraged. At 3 o’ clock in the afternoonthere was a shout : “Maji !” (=water). Unfortunately enough the diggers were 2 Muslims and I was forced to replace the beer by chickens. And we were lucky. They had ‘bored’ a sweet water source and were going to return the day after to enlarge the whole very carefully, to install the submergible pump.They feared to penetrate a salt water layer if they weren’t careful, because we struck water at 36 feet (12 meter) and the other boreholes around us had been forced to go to 40 feet, but did struck salt water.
Now Nixon had to go back at work. The rim of the pit had to be enforced by laying bricks, the submergible pump had to be installed and we needed a water tower on top of the well with Ionian pillars in concrete. Double storeroom on the ground floor, a terrace on the storey and a 3200 litre tank on the second floor with the necessary supply pipes and discharge pipes to the dispensary tank, our private quarters and the garden taps. Later on we decided to offer our employees, except the doctor, a small house. That would give them the opportunity to live close to their job and preserve them from extra costs like rent, electricity or water. The arrangement with Nixon was to finish these staff houses before May, 1. He kept his word, which did cost us an extra bonus and on Saturday, May, 2 Lucas and his wife Mary, meanwhile engaged by us privately as domestic servant to take care of the eventual guests in the guestroom of our self contained unit, and their little daughter Veronicah, moved into house nr 1 and our nurse Janet moved into the other house with her son Tony and his cousin Jimmy.
Michael, our manager arranged a ‘public meeting’ with the inhabitants of Maweni and their chief (=mayor) to explainthemclearly what we were actually up to and which were our eventual goals. Big was my surprise, but, at the same time, my apprehension for this ‘meeting’ when Michael started translating my disquisition in Kiswahili. Most of them don’t even speak English. No wonder, they didn’t understand our English pamphlets. And I have to admit, honestly, that my Kiswahili is far from satisfactory to write a pamphlet, let alone carry on a conversation. But, luckily for us, we got a lot of applause during Michaels’ translation. Amongthem was the headmaster of a third school, the ‘Peace village school’ which we promised to admit his pupils to the ‘free package’ as soon as we found enough sponsorship for them. Meanwhile we agreed upon quite reduced prices for his 150 children (= 150 sponsors at € 5) and we promised them free water from our well for washing and drinking.
Meanwhile, with the help of an accidental passing and interested Belgian tourist, Pierre (alias Piet) Deprez of Jupille, we painted the inner walls and ceilings (white) and did we paint all the inner doors and –frames in the SoCoFAS colours, viz red doorframes and green doors. .
We finished oursmalllaboratoryas well, so the autoclavegotits official place in our dispensary. For the microscope and the blood centrifuge we are still looking for sponsor money, some € 1 950.00 !
Once the delivery table was installed, Annie threw herself into ‘tailoring’ and produced a beautiful plastic curtain to curtain off the delivery room from the reception hall. The technical part, adjusting and installing the velux-rail, was my job of course.
Additionally, we built 2 extra toilets at the back of the dispensary and outside, as prescribed by the Kenyan Ministry of Health. We decided, though, to appoint the inside toilets as ‘patient loos’ and the outside ones as staff toilets.This was not exactly what the officials had in mind, but after a little pressure and after mature consideration they finally agreed with our proposal.
Our dispensary is now ready to be accredited officially by the Ministry of health and that gives us the advantage that we can order and receive all the vaccinations, foreseen by UN resolutions free of charge. But, like everythingin Kenya, this official paperwork goes very ‘polé-polé’ (=slow) and we will probably have to wait till August, before we can open officially. Meanwhile we operate all ready a full year full time. But our doctor could really spare no time for this ‘paper war’ right now. The poor man, meanwhile, got married to an extremely beautiful German-Kenyan nurse. In the meantime he got replaced by a college of him, doctor Polycarpe, a very smart gynaecological surgeon. And he is definitely on top of his job. That he proved on Wednesday, May, 6 when he saved, by his fast and determined intervention, a new born and his mother from certain death.
Pongezi daktari (= congratulations doctor) !
Yes, indeed, we had already three (3) deliveries in our dispensary. The first child was born on April, 1 from a 13-year old mother. That one, Janet performed at her own with the ‘old material’. The two (2) following ones ‘waited’ till the ‘new delivery table’ was in place and gave birth, respectively on Monday, 4th and Wednesday, 6th of May.
With the birth of the First child, the ‘world’ on our plot came to a sudden halt. The fundi’s (bricklayers) and their helpers were still busy building thewater tower, in the back of the plot, and stormed all together direction back window of the dispensary, when they heard, with unbelief, the screams of the newborn. Evidently we gave an mbuzi (goat) party after the works on the water tower were finished on which we toasted extensively on the well being of the newborn and his mother and on the excellent performance of Janet, our nurse-midwife.
Daughter Karen and her girlfriend Petra (our first guests in the SoCoFAS apartments) attended the festivities as well. They invited me to take a day off and so we went on a one day safari toTsavo East, spotting creatures, great and small.
And because the sponsoring for our ambulance aircraft not really gets off the ground, but we really needed a means of transport for our patients and because we were informed by tour guides from Neckermann, viz. Peter Scheerlinck from Jetteand Ken Cypers from Diest that they were replacing their fleet of safari busses,I changed my initial idea for a 4x4 ambulance jeep by an all terrain minibus (a Nissan DT Doby with a 2.7 diesel engine) which could be converted into an ambulance. And, because Ken did do some lobbying with hisbosses and the responsible of the vehicle fleet with Acorn in Mombasa,we were able to get one at an acceptable price (KES 700 000,00= € 7 000,00). But, even for this we did not have enough sponsor money, so I advanced that sum as well ! The conversion to ambulance, meaning removing the seats and replace them by a stretcher, shift the back seats to the left as seats for the escorts (doctor, nurse and an escorting family member), installing an oxygen bottle, painting and installing the flashing lights and the siren , we will do in August and should be possible for KES 300 000,00 = € 3000,00. I filed already an official application for the on board radio, with the frequencies of the surrounding hospitals, and will cost us KES 60 000,00 (=€ 600.00). We did have to heighten the garage gate of the dispensary by 20 cm.
You can see that we didn’t sit still in these three months we went back.
What did happen concretely with Your sponsor money and -goods ?
1)The stock of medicines has been put up to date and the drugstore has been prepared for the vaccines.
2) We sent a 20’ container with medical material from Veurne, Belgium to Maweni, Kenya with the help of Dens Ocean, Zeebrugge, Belgium.
3)In the dispensary a delivery room has been installed and curtained off. The sickbay has beensupplied with modern hospital beds, bedside cabinets and baby beds.
4)The foreseen kitchen has been converted into a laboratory.
5)An ambulance bus has been bought.
6)The ambulance stand has been adapted. Big sliding door from sickbay to garage and the garage gate has been heightened.
7)Two staff houses have been built, so that our nurse and our supervisor, also the ambulance driver, do not have to walk 6 km from where they lived to the dispensary. It does make the dispensary operational 24 on 24 .
8)Electricity has finally been connected.
9)We bore a well and built a water tower which guarantees us an assured supply of running water to the dispensary.
10)The dispensary has been completely refreshed and embellished.
11) The garden has been relayed out and a double fence (barbed wire and saisalpoles) has been erected.
12)Our own self contained unit with a guestroom has been finished. So, Your first potential holiday home is available !
13)We conceived the idea of selling the clothes which we received from you as donations in an own small ‘sponsor shop’ to make some sponsor money for the dispensary. The purchase and fitting up of the little shop should be achievable for KES 30 000.00 (=€ 300.00).
14)Standing Operations Procedures anddetailed job descriptions have been drafted and the staffing has been reviewed.The manager has pulled out.
The points in ‘black’ have not been realised with Your sponsor money, but was paid by our own personal funds.
The people of the village, the prospective mothers, the patients taken care of and especially the children in the schools and we too, of course, are wildly enthusiast !
Financially it doesn’t make us any better. On the contrary, but you cannot put a price on the gratitude of the people and that wealth does reflect onall our sponsors and sympathisers. Meaning You !
Congratulations and thank you very much.
The SoCoFAS team,
Hugo Goovaerts, chairman
Karen Van den Driessche, vice chairman
Annie Buysse, secretary-accountant