I got a good night's sleep Sunday with the exception of the loud dance club's persistent thumping bass coming into my room. They shut down around midnight and it was better after that until one bird was singing around 5. It was probably some kind of Weaver. Not too bad. We had breakfast and headed to the clinic a little late, since our footlockers full of supplies needed to be delivered by our van before it could pick us up. After several false starts at trying to make the layout of the clinic we had gone over as a team the night before, we got something that was workable if not ideal. There are always tweaks that need to bad at every one of these clinics that I've been involved with. I told the team on the bus on the way in that I had been thinking overnight and I came to the conclusion that every single one of us on the team is already a leader, both in their daily lives as Christian educators, coaches, business people or other vocations and I just knew that my job would be to coordinate things based on past experience. Every one of the team took ownership of everything they did and were joyful doing it. I've been so blessed this time to have a team which only gets better and better.
Once early morning hurdles were overcome, things began to run smoothly. This may be the best first day of a clinic I've ever had. By around 1:30, we had seen about 350 people. Even though it slowed down a bit, giving us a chance to have some rice, beans and cabbage that Catherine's sister had prepared for our team, I'm guessing that we ended up with around 450 patients for the day. Part of this was due to our having been gone since 2019, part was the good job the church did in advertising the clinic through posters and the rest was a God thing! We will be having dinner soon, at which time the team will help me count and classify the cards for statistics that the Kenyan government wants to see and I will have final figures before posting this.
I was interviewed by local media about what we are doing and why. I gave what I thought was a good explanation and they were happy after one take. Cool!
I worked a little bit in each of the stations of the clinic throughout the day, teaching and encouraging where I could. Some of the rest of the team worked in more than one area, which is good, because some jobs are mostly sitting and some stainding and it makes the day go when there is a bit of variety. Also, the goal is to get more and more involvement from the local church volunteers, to give them a sense of purpose and accomplishment. It's fun to see young people given some responsibility and watch them begin to shine.
I'm just back from dinner, we saw 410 people according to the registration cards we counted and our log book had 419 entries. Usually we see maybe 4 or 5 cards get away from us, but this is fine on a first day. The team learned a lot while counting the cards, it give you some insight into the other areas of the clinic and helps prepare them to work in different area during the week.
That's about it from here, need to get some sleep to get rested up to do it all over again. Word of mouth is our biggest friend and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see 800 or more people tomorrow. Wednesday is a question mark, it's a holiday and it could be very good or very dead. I've seen it both ways before. Regardless, we will do our best to serve those whom God brings us. Blessings everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment