Thursday 10/27 - Woke up to 6am Zumba with Yolanda that turned into Zumba with the Malagasy instructor... looks like we talked too much about it yesterday bc everyone wanted to come today! Eleanor apparently takes Zumba every Weds and Sat and told her instructor to come so he brought his book box and took over the class! He was doing high kicks and twirls like crazy. Round 2 is tomorrow... I need to start to prepare now!
Our clinic today was 75km west of Antsirabe into "the bush" (Malagasy for super rural). The drive was absolutely incredible and you could watch as the terraced mountains rose up around us and the number of towns drastically declined. The further from the city we went, the worse the road became. We even passed by an area where the road simply was gone from a landslide so there was only one lane left and no guardrail. The quality of housing also declined and the majority of houses were made from mud and thatched roofs. The further we got, the poorer it became and we knew this was going to be a very interesting clinic.
About half way to our clinic, we started seeing tons of people walking on the side of the road and Pastor Honey said it must be market day in the town. Apparently there's a big market in town every Thurs for people to come in to buy and sell groceries and supplies. We saw people walking from 10+ km in both directions to get to town. The market was packed and people were trading goods and services. It was a bright colorful chaos.
We arrived at the church after 1.5hr drive to a huge crowd of people waiting. The church really stood out from all the mud and straw houses nearby bc it is a beautiful brick building with glass windows and steel accents. It will definitely weather any storm and keep the people safe! We had a devotion to bless the clinic and then started seeing patients!
So the drive was already making me get a little choked up at the level of poverty, but once we saw the people coming through the front door, my heart exploded for them. These wonderful people have absolutely nothing and are happy as can be and love life! Their complaints were so minor, like lower back pain, joint pain, and headache. The kids were overall pretty healthy and were so smiley!! One thing I love about the people here is how much they smile! Medical tourism is clearly not in Madagascar and the people are still excited to have visitors come in and provide necessary services to them.
One patient was so glad we came and started crying tears of joy when I gave her a Polaroid picture of herself. She kept saying how she wished she had brought vegetables from her garden to give to us as a thank you for coming to serve. Again, they have nothing and are willing to give up everything! We can all take a life cue from them.
We saw over 470 patients today before having to pack up and head home at 2pm. We had to leave early bc there have been reports of bandits coming in and stealing the zibu so we needed to be on the road with plenty of buffer time to be back in safe areas before sunset. It was so hard to say goodbye to the families we met today. I would give anything to come back to this village and spend more time serving the people in whatever form is needed!
Our drive home was a sleepy one after a hot day. We did make a very cool stop on our way home at the Royal Fig Tree. This tree is absolutely gorgeous and signifies a king used to live there. It's considered good luck to touch the tree so obviously we had to stop and take pictures posing with the awesome roots!
As we left the tree, the rain slowly crept in from the north and soon we were in a full blown storm! People were running to take cover and so it was like playing chicken with way too many moving objects in addition to not being able to see! The cutest part of the rain was seeing all the kids coming home from school... they were running full steam ahead to get home but had the biggest grins on their faces the whole time!
After dinner we had our last pill packing party, which ended up looking more like a meth lab thanks to the Malagasy ziplock bags. We ran out of actual ziplock bags so Damoina had "ziplock bags" made for us. They are two sheets of plastic sealed using candle heat and we had to friction open the top and then candle seal the open side once we put in the meds. Gotta love learning new tricks...
Daily devotion: 2 Corinthians 12:9
“And he hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” -2 Corinthians 12:9
This is the scripture that the local church had painted on their wall above the alter. I think it is so fascinating that each church adopts a specific bible verse as their own. Knowing the people we treated today it makes sense to emphasize Gods ability to bring up the weak
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