Malaria treatment "house calls"

Yesterday morning Awa brought her sick two-year old sister to our house. Jana checked her over and figured out that she had malaria (not hard to diagnose around here) so we took her to the clinic since we don’t have malaria treatment supplies at home. The clinic was closed, so we took her to Daouda’s house in the village, but they told us he was working at the hospital. (He recently began working the night shift to supplement his $50/month salary from clinic.)


Awa and her little sister at our house last night

We were ready to head home, but saw Daouda walking down the road. Even after working all day and night yesterday, he went straight to the clinic and opened everything up for this little girl. The treatment and injections only took about half an hour, but he asked me to do the next round that night so that he can get some sleep.


Jana's backyard first aid sessions

When he went to the pharmacy room to get her medications, I told him that Jana and I were paying for it. He looked at me kind of strangely, so I said again, “I would prefer that Jana and I cover it.” He smiled and mimicked me exactly and said, “I would prefer that the clinic cover it.” This may not seem like a lot, considering her treatment would have cost about $12, but here that’s almost a week’s pay and it means a lot to us that even though Daouda knows we can afford it, he won’t let us pay since the people we bring in are our “family.” If any of the other three clinic workers brought in a family member, they would not be asked to pay either. So we will be sure that the money gets back into the clinic somehow, but are very happy to accept his gift.


Roxaya's week-old baby girl, Fatou Kine


Petit Moussa insisted that he too needed glasses to read his book (upside down)

Plans for this summer’s F4F program for college students are well on their way…and it will be a very busy summer! The latest count would give us an F4F team comprised of four Pathfinders, four ESL workers, and 12 public health workers. In addition, our team will work with four volunteer teams coming to do ESL and healthcare, among other things. As you can imagine, planning for this many people is quite an undertaking, so our team met earlier this week to begin figuring out logistics and details. (Well, most of us did. Some people decided to catch some Zs on the porch!)


An un-named ISCer of the Lebou team working on beauty sleep!


Fun in Dakar with Jana