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Team 2 Pentecost, Maewo and Ambae
It was time to head outfor team 2. We decided that Brian would wait in Santo for the Aussie nurses and the dentists from the Santo Dental hospital and we would go ahead and collect the staff from Lolawai.This was a good plan for us as it gave us a chance to call in and see Tony's 'brother' Keith (he was the one who gave us the live chicken in 2007) and family. We left early and had a great sail over to Loone on Ambae.Keith was very surprised and excited to see us. Him and the three girls were batching because his wife Clarris and the two small boys as they were holidaying in Villa. Chantelle remembered Sarah and after a short time they were playing like old friends. We had a great time together catching up and shared a huge dinner that night.
Team 2 got off to a frustrating start.Firstly the plane with the two Aussie nurses was delayed about 9 hours which meant that Brian and Jan on Angel couldn't leave Santo until about 1.30am Wed morning. Secondly we arrived at Lolawai on Ambae at 8.30a.m. on Tuesday morning concerned that we were half an hour late. We went up to the hospital to let them know that we had arrived and they could load their gear onto the boat.They all looked at us in surprise - they were expecting us on Wednesday, in spite of the fact that we had given the health manager the dates for the team back in July, and a phone call on Monday confirming our arrival time for Tuesday morning at 8.00a.m.
Nonetheless they got a team together and gathered all their gear and were on the boat by about 3.00p.m.We headed out across the reef at low tide with the boat fully loaded. Thankfully we made it with a metre to spare. The wind was right on the nose so we tacked across to Maewo and anchored at Asanvari for the night.We were up early and headed off to the first clinic on Pentecost Island in the village of Abwantuntora.The crossing between the two Islands was pretty rough and some of the locals got sick. It should have been a 1 hour journey but with wind up to 30knots on the nose and current against us it took about 2 ½ hours.
We arrived and set up the clinic as much as we could but of course Angel after her late start was nowhere in sight - in fact after a very rough 14hrs with half their crew throwing up and the jib starting to come away from the clew (tearing in one of the corners), they were glad to catch up with us at 3.30 Wednesday afternoon. They had had up to 38knots coming across between the islands. It was decided to do the clinic the next day and to rearrange the schedule slightly.None of the people were expecting us so that gave them the afternoon and the next day to walk in.After a busy day on Thursday we headed off for the next clinic.The annoying thing was that no one knew we were coming or the message was confused at just about every stop down the Island in spite of Mandrea -the local team leader's best efforts to notify.He sent messages with Taxi boats, people from the villages ahead and the hospital in Lolawai was supposed to call all clinic staff.This didn't happen, in spite of digicell putting in heaps of new towers the cover still is very patchy.
The problem with lack of communication on Pentecost is that the majority of the people live inland, not in the coastal villages and need time to walk in to the clinic. The other thing is that Pentecost is visited by heaps of yachts so two yachts anchoring in the harbour causes no excitement and they pretty much ignore you, whereas the people on the West Coast of Santo who don't see that many yachts all come down to see what's going on so it is easy to spread the word.
We completed all the Clinics on Pentecost and did an all night sail back to Asanvari on Maewoto do the Clinic there. It wasn't as fully patronised as expected but they have a great local nurse who has been there for years so are well looked after. We did another two clinics on Maewo which were really well received.The clinic nurse had advertised our coming and there were heaps of people.
Again we split the team in two because the dentists and the physiotherapist needed to go to Lolawai for two days of clinics and Angel needed to head straight back to Santo with the Aussie nurses and an emergency patient - with appendicitis.They had a great run back to Santo and arrived by 8 the next morning.We decided to run back to Lolawai at night also and arrived there at about midnight (There were 10 of us on the boat and they decided that sleeping would be a bit cramped, whereas at Lolawai four of them would go home to sleep).Thank goodness for computer systems and tracks because we had to cross back over the reef at midnight in pitch dark.The leads don't show up that well at night because they have very little reflector tape on them.
Here the dentists were the busiest they had been on the whole trip because there had been no dentists at Lolawai since 2006. They had 158 patients in two days - 125 Extractions and 94 fillings.The compressor on the drilling machine was hot when we loaded it onto the boat so when we found out how many fillings there were, we understood why. The two dentists and Sarah were absolutely dead on their feet by the end.The dentists have one of the most backbreaking jobs as they are standing all day and bending over the patients to do any work.No fancy chairs here!
Overall in spite of the setbacks the team did about 3000 consultations including General nursing, Dentistry, Immunisation, Specialist TB nursing (mostly checking existing patients) Physiotherapy, Handing out glasses, taking Blood Pressure checks and health education.The Aussie nurses were kept pretty busy most of the trip and the dentists were run off their feet. Most of the time I helped the dentists in the capacity of receptionist and Sarah helped with sterilising instruments, hammering the chisel for Musang (One of the dentists on this team that we worked with in 2007) to break the tough teeth and even pulling the odd one.The most exciting part of this trip was the fact that we can now fill teeth in the clinics with the portable drilling machine which now works after much blood, sweat and tears from Tony and Brian. Tony was Captain and general organiser for all the gear and people on our boat.Most nights we hosted all the team for dinner on McDiver.I didn't do all the cooking though, Angel cooked and bought some food each time and the local girl on our boat helped me cook with authentic local flavour and style.Our meals were supplemented by the fish that the boys caught every night and the favourite dish was fish cooked in fresh coconut milk.However, eating lots of reef fish is an occupational hazard as both Tony and myself now have a touch of fish poisoning - Tony worse than me because he ate more.Mostly the symptoms are itchy hands and feet, there was no vomiting or anything so it's not too bad.They tell us we shouldn't eat fish for a while which is ok in Santo because rump steak is pretty cheap. Not sure what we will do next week when we head North.We leave Santo on Tuesday 21st September.
Anyway, that's about it for now. Happy birthday to Peter Johnson, Holly Batten, Dianne Wicks, Lisa Batten and Christie Johnson (In order of birth date) because I'm not sure we will be able to call you on your special day. Our Digicell phone +678 56 866 87 loses coverage somewhere between Santo and Mere Lava (The first island for team 3) so we have another phone for up north this time with TVL cost $10 including $4 of credit.The number is +678 77 255 95 should you need us urgently, however I'm not sure how good the cover will be.
Love to all
Carol and the Crew.
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