Friday, December 30th
Hello everyone! My name is Olivia and I am a nursing student on this trip! Today was an incredible day! We begin the day learning to be flexible here in Tanzania with a broken down safari vehicle. With some great help from the incredible people here, we managed to regroup and make it to our outreach clinic.
Once we arrived we set up shop in a school right in the middle of the Masaai tribe in the mountains. We had some wonderful Tanzanian social workers, nurses, and a doctor! Once we arrived, word got out fast that we were here and offering medical care. The Masaii tribe is very far away from medical help. Due to lack of funding it is very difficult for people to get the medical care that they need. The first couple of patients we saw had extreme cases for cerebral palsy. It was so sad to see some of these cases but we were grateful to provide them some support and guidance. More and more patients flooded in and we saw cases such as cancer, fungal infections, deep wounds, immense back and chest pain, vision problems, motorcycle and vehicle accidents and so much more.
I was grateful to have hands on experience and get to work right alongside the team by assessing my own patients. As a student I was able to learn so much from Gayle, Julius, and the other amazing medical team here in Tanzania. One of my favorite parts was getting to work with the Tanzanian people on our team. They were so passionate about caring for their people and they were so fun to get to know. I also thought it was very cool to learn more about the Masaai tribes culture. These people experience some medical problems that we do not see frequently in the US, such as pain from carrying things on their heads and very progressive diseases from lack of preventative care. There culture was different from anything I had ever seen before. They live in a very tight knit family network and were there to help one another. As a nursing student, I got to have some great practice communicating and assessing. One of my absolute favorite things about today and the work Hope Ministries does is that we didn’t just provide short term solutions, but we had long term fixes. When we got a patient who needed lots of care we were able to refer and provide funding for all their treatment. The doctors in this area that Gayle has established relationships with were very receptive and willing to provide further care until their needs are fully met. The Maasai people were incredibly grateful for the ability to finally receive the care they needed. I feel so blessed to have gotten the opportunity to meet these people and provide care in ways they would not have received without the help of Hope Ministries. Thank you to all the donors who allowed us to make today possible. The light of the Lord Jesus is truly prevalent in this beautiful country! Thank you for all your prayers and support, we look forward to another outreach clinic tomorrow!
