Mary Jane Trinkus Reports on First Africa Mission

We have just returned from a 2 week mission trip to Naivasha, Kenya.  It was a successful mission – our first in Africa. 13 nurses, 1 labatorian, 2 physicians, Vic and Jim Allen, an infectious disease doctor. Than God for him, otherwise Vic would have been the only male.

We worked in a poor sub district hospital. Resources were limited, nursing and medical care quite behind the times. In all our mission trips, this medical institution was the most desperate.

Wound care was atrocious not because they don’t care but they don’t know. All wounds I saw and treated on an inpatient basis were infected and not improving. Maggots were found in one wound, gangrene in another. Meds were ordered but not given because the families can’t afford them. No screens in the hospital, flies all over the wards, especially in the ones with infected wounds. I discovered two dead patients on two different days, lying under blankets. Some patients were on the floor on mattresses, some entirely covered with blankets not because they were dead but to keep the flies off.

I helped deliver 4 babies, all healthy boys. But, maternity care was very difficult to see - episiotomies done by nurses with bandage scissors, women coming in but too exhausted to push because they hadn’t eaten in a couple days, a couple stillborn babies left on window sills and still there the next day.

I can go on and on but also I must write of the nurses and doctors we worked with – always eager and excited when we came to their department asking if we can work with them for the day. Welcomed with warm smiles, helping us orientate to their areas, joyful because we are working side by side, full of questions, asking how do we nurse back home, wondering if possibly we could help them come to the USA.

The other site we worked was at Upendo Village. Upendo translates to ‘love’ – a ‘love village’ for women and children with HIV/AIDS. We worked a clinic for 3 days from 9am-7pm, everyday more people coming. We worked until they stopped coming, turning no one away. Our biggest day we saw 192 patients. Some had to wait all day, we couldn’t work faster yet they were always smiling, so appreciative of what we could do for them.

We went on home visits to patients too ill to travel to the clinic. ‘Homes’ with dirt floors, one room mud shacks in some cases, the sleeping area divided by a cloth. We visited a man who lay in his bed all day and night, his son giving him a thermos of porridge and then off to work for ten hours. Alone in a dark, windowless room, his only company was a chicken is a basket on the floor sitting on her eggs. When we visited him, he was too weak to lift his head, much less open the thermos.

I befriended a little girl, Mary who was staying at the shelter at Upendo Village; her mother had died of AIDS, her father absent. Little Mary was 11, looked like an 8 year old. She herself has AIDS, face and arms covered with lesions. She was staying with her grandmother who had young children herself. Mary was becoming weaker and weaker. Special nutritious food was prepared for her, but as her grandmother had to work, the other children would take Mary’s food. You see, they were hungry too and it is ‘survival of the fittest’. When Upendo Village became aware of Mary, she weighed 20 pounds at age 10. She has been living at Upendo Village, gaining weight and improving. She’s a sweet, little girl always greeting me with a smile, reaching for my hand. I wonder if she will be alive when I return next year.

Sat. and Sun. were our days off. We went to two national parks and saw the beauty of Africa -  giraffes, four lions, rhinos, probably a million (no exaggeration) pink flamingoes, even fed giraffes and warthogs from our hands. A truly beautiful country yet amongst the beauty such devastating poverty.

We were fortunate to visit a Maasai village (like our American Indians many years ago). They have shunned our technological world. They live in mud huts, herd their cattle and sheep, use no electricity or running water, start their fire by rubbing sticks together. Their huts are formed in a circle, their “fences” a tangle of thorny branches. They bring the livestock inside the circle at night to protect them from leopards and lions. The dung, the smell and the flies are everywhere. I am told the flies are not biting flies, they are looking for moisture, and hence they are on their faces, mouths, eyes, noses. They don’t seem to notice, never waving them away. It was all so amazing to see.

We brought many supplies for this mission – 16 duffle bags weighing 50 pounds each, full of medicine, medical supplies, vitamins, disposable gloves…just a drop in a bucket really.

But it’s not about only the supplies; it’s about bringing our love and our friendship. And it’s also about not saying “goodbye” when we leave, but instead saying “we will be back.”

Mary Jane Trinkus