The things you see on the road

Written yesterday, posted today:

Yesterday I finally arrived in my mission: Apartado, Colombia. The original plan was that I was to get an early flight at 6am, with a connection in Medellin at 08 and arrive at 0845. But when it comes to me taking an airplane, something has to happen, right? So, I was not surprised when they announced that the  airport in Medellin was closed due to poor weather, and it didn’t reopen for 2 hours. I was also not surprised when I missed my connection to Apartado, because of miscommunication. Similarly, I wasn’t alarmed at all when the next flight was only late for mere 6 hours and I had to sit patiently at the air port with my i-pod. Looking at the bright side, at least my luggage made it, and actually got here before me, since it did take the connection I missed.

When I looked up Apartado on google, from my comfy chair in Canada, I didn’t find a whole lot of info, but it said that the economy was based on the plantation of Bananas and Platano. So I imagined a few banana farms. Well, was I ever wrong… this is banana LAND. Coming down on the plane, as far as you can see on the horizon, it is banana trees. Amazing… everywhere you look there are banana trees. I mean everywhere, with their bananas carefully covered with blue plastic for bug protection. I thought the plane was going to land on them.

Anyways, that was yesterday. Today I was put on the road already, and didn’t even had time to unpack, but rather had to repack everything (or rather a few MSF t-shirts, a hammock, mosquito net and essential items) in my “new” (in reality used, but new to me) MSF backpack. We got into the car early, at 0730am, bound to Rio Sucio, a small community in which there is a “hospital” and MSF has a small clinic.

I was quite impressed with the road initially; narrow but decent pavement. But that was just the start. We take a turn to the right and then it’s welcome to the moon. Big craters, mud and a lot of bouncing. I realize now why MSF cars have tall roofs: to avoid head injuries from banging your head so much. We did this jumping around for 3 hours, our skilled driver didn’t get stuck once, and there were occasions when I was sure we would get stuck.

On the road I saw many interesting things. One of them was the “bus”, which consists of a small truck that looks like a 4x4 jeep to me.  It would beep when passing a village and people jump on the back. If the back is full, then they jump up on the roof. We passed several of them with the roof packed with people trying to hold on to this little metal bar. I have no idea how they manage to hang on while the truck negotiates the big holes and the mud, but they must do it since I saw nobody lying dead on the road.

We stopped at a small village for a break and a little girl, obviously curious about this big white truck and this funny people with white t-shirts mustered the courage to approach us and ask questions. She was 12 and I was happy to notice that she looked healthy and well nourished; she was also attending school. The village was very poor, that was not a question. But I saw several children on their school uniforms, carrying their books and looking at us with curiosity.

We continued our journey to Rio Sucio, passed a military roadblock with no difficulty. They just looked at our little flag, that the car has with the MSF logo on, and opened the gate without any questions.

Although we didn’t have to stop for the military, we had to stop for the cows. About 100 of them, or maybe more. Walking quickly with the cowboys on their tails. Cows gone, we kept going.

Finally arrived in rio sucio around noon. We leave the car at the entrance of town and proceed to the MSF house by boat. The town is flooding. I got to meet some of the MSF team at the clinic briefly: one GP, a ObGyn (that comes once a month), one nurse, and a bacteriologist.

At the house I met the coordination team and we went out for lunch. When walking on the street, the water was going up almost to my knees, but just low enough for the rubber boots, so I did not get wet. Lunch was good, beef, rice, beans and platano (of course).

Back in the house I had more briefings and a look at my schedule for the next month. We are going on an explo mission in a week to a small aboriginal village called Urada. We will have to drive to a certain point and then proceed on foot for 3 to 4 hours. At least we will have some mules to help carry the supplies, but there was a big debate here on how to carry the water. There are 9 of us going, and we need at least 3L of water per person per day. That is a lot of water to carry and I am not sure how it is going to be done, but I trust the expertise of these guys.

Tomorrow I am going to the clinic and getting to work finally. But first I have to survive the night with the rats. I can hear one somewhere in my room and have already found “evidence” of their presence. They reassured me that with the mosquito net I am safe in my bed, and that ultrasonic rat repellents have been ordered along with fumigation the end of this month. For tonight I just have to tuck in my mosquito net tightly and pretend that what I hear is a bird. If only I had my cat here…  But overall I am very happy to be here, and very happy to be able to help.