28/01: Monday morning 1/28
Over the weekend we drove to and from St. Louis. On Saturday, we conducted a small (22 people) clinic at the village of Gandon, in cooperation with Rev. Bako's feeding program there. The number of people we saw was small because be started late in the day and Carol was our only physician (Dr Bashir's team remained in Dakar). The children at the feeding center were especially cute.
We stayed overnight at the Hotel Residence in St. Louis - a picture-postcard example of colonial French designs - and on Sunday we worshipped in Rev. Bako's church. As always, it was a high-energy service! Afterwards, we saw a demonstration of Rev. Bako's "pen project" making handsome wood-highlight ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils to fund his programs. It was very interesting - they make between 40 and 50 pens each day they work and have sold them to many people and even agencies. After this, we went to a restaurant in St. Louis right on the river - very pretty - and had a fine lunch.
The trip home was made more exciting when we were stopped just outside of St. Louis by the police (a routine event) and it was discovered that the driver of our rented bus had let his chauffer's licence expire 10 days previously! Our choices were to pay a "fine" or wait for a new driver to come out from Dakar (5 hours) to drive us back. So, after paying the fine, we had to pray that we would not be stopped again (most major towns have these random checks) and have to repeat the same process. We approached each subsequent checkpoint holding our collective breath - and managed to get home without another stop!
Today we are going to a town about 90 minutes from home to conduct a clinic in a church. Dr Bashir's team will be with us, so we should be able to see about 100 patients in the time we will have. Our final clinic will be tomorrow.
-- Tom
We stayed overnight at the Hotel Residence in St. Louis - a picture-postcard example of colonial French designs - and on Sunday we worshipped in Rev. Bako's church. As always, it was a high-energy service! Afterwards, we saw a demonstration of Rev. Bako's "pen project" making handsome wood-highlight ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils to fund his programs. It was very interesting - they make between 40 and 50 pens each day they work and have sold them to many people and even agencies. After this, we went to a restaurant in St. Louis right on the river - very pretty - and had a fine lunch.
The trip home was made more exciting when we were stopped just outside of St. Louis by the police (a routine event) and it was discovered that the driver of our rented bus had let his chauffer's licence expire 10 days previously! Our choices were to pay a "fine" or wait for a new driver to come out from Dakar (5 hours) to drive us back. So, after paying the fine, we had to pray that we would not be stopped again (most major towns have these random checks) and have to repeat the same process. We approached each subsequent checkpoint holding our collective breath - and managed to get home without another stop!
Today we are going to a town about 90 minutes from home to conduct a clinic in a church. Dr Bashir's team will be with us, so we should be able to see about 100 patients in the time we will have. Our final clinic will be tomorrow.
-- Tom
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