Closure... Sort of

The health poste in Thiewal Lao is not yet open. Additionally, the health poste in Thiewal Lao will not be open during my Peace Corps service. I have accepted this. It doesn't make me especially happy, but I have come to terms with losing out on this particular Kodak moment.

A Ministry of Health-appointed nurse will be assigned to Thiewal Lao this year. I know this. 15 community health volunteers are trained and ready to do health education outreach. The poste has a trained midwife, pharmacy tech and a functional Health Committee; all of whom are desperately protective and proud of the new facility. For these reasons I can leave Senegal with confidence that two years of work will not be wasted.

But despite some very dedicated self-convincing, there was still a sliver of my heart that was missing sufficient closure on a project that has ruled my life for the past two years. A project that in all reality, no matter how much I tried to phrase it otherwise, was not finished.

Last week I got my closure.

As you might imagine, we don't get a lot of traffic out in my part of the middle of nowhere. So when a fully equipped mobile medical van rolls into town, it tends to make quite a stir. Even the toubab (that's me) was running to stare at the spectacle.

Last week Dr. Gregoire Sar and his team of three doctors and three nurses came to Thiewal Lao to perform free HIV tests, do basic medical exams and give vouchers for a follow up at the health poste in Dabo in three months (if the Thiewal Lao health poste isn't open yet, that is). This alone would have been incredible. But it gets better. Instead of seeing patients one-by-one in the mobile medical van parked in front of the health poste, they spread out, set up their supplies and used EVERY ROOM in the health poste! We don't yet have shelves and chairs and exam tables so people hurriedly brought wood benches, the doctors laid out the diagnostic testing supplies on butcher paper taped to the ground and after three hours they had to turn people away with promise of return. 91 people were examined. Every one of them was thankful... for the facility.

That's the thing. I wasn't so much touched by the excitement to be treated, but for the access to the treatment. It's a small difference, but it is my whole world at the moment. You see, in three hours I was reassured I have done my job. I brought people to the facility. My purpose was to provide sustainable access to medical services and ensure that people use them. And they are. They will. My replacement will have an incredible and overwhelming amount of work to do to educate and positively change the behavior of the surrounding population in many health related areas of daily life. My job was to set up the infrastructure to do just that and it is entirely possible that I did.

Now I'm not saying in any way, shape or form that it wouldn't have been an absolute once-in-a-lifetime moment to have had the health poste open a year ago and hand over the reigns to my replacement to a fully functional rural medical facility with established classes and outreach programs and financial profit... but that sounds a little greedy at this point. When I leave village in seven days the last thing I will pass, perhaps all too symbolically, is the health poste. The point is that it will be there for a heck of a lot longer. It will open. And even though I didn't get to see patients waiting to see the Thiewal Lao doctor, I saw them flock to see a doctor. And for now that may be enough.