We had a great weekend. It started Friday night with the graduation party of my first class of Eye health nurses. Boa Vista has a basic training course for nurses 2 or 3 times a year. This round we had 4 students. They all passed and received their certificates, now we are sending them out to practice basic eye health (think optometrists in the USA). They can prescribe medications and glasses. They also diagnose cataract blindness and refer the patients back to us for surgery. It's an important part of our strategic plan to erradicating cataract blindness in Angola.
Congratulations to Raquel, Zacharias, Oswaldo, and Ricardo (from left to right, Dr Afonso is at far left)
Lori made a great cake for the reception. All the people loved trying the "American" cake.
Then, like all good trauma cases should start, this one began at our graduation ceremony.
A family arrived at Boa Vista after driving more than 8 hours with their 10-year-old son who had suffered a terrible injury to his left eye at 6 o'clock that morning. He was walking on the side of the road with his father near a construction sight, a split rock flew out from the work site and struck him in the left eye. The family lives in the Bie province, they first went to their local hospital only to be told that nothing could be done for them there; he should drive to Benguela, 8 hours away. The family arrived in Benguela at the unfortunate hour of 4pm on Friday and the Central Hospital of Benguela turned them away saying they could do nothing for him because it was Friday. The Family was crushed, they had driven all that way only to be denied the help their son needed. Unfortunately, this is reality here, there are government hospitals for "free" with good equipment, but often they're unable or unwilling to help people when they need it most.
Fortunately one of the nurses at the hospital was trained at Boa Vista and said that they should come and see us.
After one look at the eye I could tell that it likely could not see again. He had a large laceration of his cornea, sclera, and already had a cataract, plus the retina and vitreous were coming out of the wound (see photo).
I could tell that the family was really desparate and I felt moved to do something. So after our graduation ceremony I took him to the operating room. We don't have denveral anesthesia here (the central hospital does and would be ideally suited for this type of case), and you can imagine how a 10-year-old child would behave when trying to do surgery on his eye while awake. But, through God's mercy, I succeded in giving him an anesthesia shot behind the eye, so he calmed down after the first 5 minutes and things went smoothly after that. I closed the cut, took out his cataract and did my best to make the eye whole again. He actually could see shadows the next day, so we will wait and see how it turns out.
The look of deep gratitude from the family, desperate to help their child, was all the thanks I needed for spending my Friday night in the operating room. I'm grateful that God has allowed me to be in this place and show compassion on his people.
After a night of excitment for me, Lori decided that we as a family should have some fun. We drove out 30 miles from Benguela along the coast to a ridge called the "Sombrero"
We don't have true mountains here in Angola so climbing here is as close as it gets. We had beautiful views of the coastal cliffs, cool ocean breeze to help beat the 90 degree heat (that's for you midwest/northeast folks). You can see the rock formation in the background, the pyramid like structure with the flat top is the Sombrero. We hiked up to the base, then I free climbed up to the top as the staircase had been destroyed.
Finally, we finished the weekend with a church service celebrating the anniversary of an association of Evangelical Churches working in partnership. It is the group of churches that work with us at Boa Vista providing the devotions daily to the patients. Having a group of different churches work together through their differences is something beautiful to behold. We have been to all 6 of the different churches, and they definitely have different styles of worship, but they all want the same thing: to reach their nation with the Love that God has for all of his creation. I'm happy to be a small part of this effort.
With Love From Angola,
John