Northwest Africa 2003
Snapshots of the Sahara
by: Dustin Turner

Tuesday, June 2, 2003—My team arrived safely home after 23 hours of traveling. Our flights had taken us to NY, Paris, Northern Africa, and back. I packed lightly, only 2 outfits other than I one I was wearing. But I did take my camera and my journal. And now I’d like to give you a few written “snapshots” of what I experienced in the capital of one of the world’s poorest nations.

Sand—The lives of the people of Northwest Africa is dominated by the environment. There is not enough water to drink. The air is always hot. And sand is everywhere. There’s sand in the air, there’s sand in the food, most streets are sand, the homes are built on sand with sand bricks, and one hardly notices the separation of the sandy horizon from the sandy sky. A man could live his entire life and never know a day without sand on his body.

Riots—We began our work with a free clinic for the people of a remote community. The first day of our clinic, we saw 130 patients and delivered two babies. Then the word got out. We arrived the next morning to find the clinic compound swarming with people. Our Land Cruiser divided the crowd to get in the gate.

Life is harsh there. We saw many problems that would be easily corrected in the states but go untreated there. We saw a lot of dying babies. Many times we would tell the mothers, “You must take this child to the National Hospital now, or they will die,” but we knew that our words would go unheeded.

The third and last day of the clinic was a circus. Even more people were waiting at the door when we arrived. They would line up early in the morning, hoping to be seen. We distributed cards to indicate the number of patients we could see—165. The rest were told to go home. Then word somehow spread that this was our last day and the crowd got ugly. People were pressing hard at the door trying to force their way in. Mothers with children in their arms would come to the open windows and beg to be seen. Angry men also came to the windows. It was an emotionally painful day, and without our fierce African guard, it might have been a physically painful day too. In three days we treated 450 patients and delivered 8 babies.

A Bride-less Wedding—We were invited to a wedding on Thursday night. So we all went to the market to buy the appropriate cultural outfits. That’s where I got my “Bubu” and turban. The Bubu is the native dress for men. It’s a long, poncho-like covering with a wing span about twice as long as one’s arms. You roll up the extra material and let it rest on your shoulders. The Bubu is worn over a long sleeved, collared shirt. It’s not the easiest outfit to wear, and men (especially me) are constantly adjusting it.
When we arrived at the wedding, we found a small army of guests dancing to the sound of American music under a huge tent inside a walled-in courtyard. Of course, women only dance with women and men only dance with men. But dancing is very important to the Mauritania culture, and so we immediately joined in.
After dancing, we were invited into a small room packed with guests to eat and wait for the bride. We ate more Moffá (rice with a peanut-based gravy, topped with goat meat), and French bread. There was more dancing. Then more eating. Abruptly, the party ended around 9 pm. Something was missing—the bride and groom! They never arrived.

We later learned that the wedding is done discreetly at the mosque early in the day. Only the bride and groom attend. The party is when the guest celebrate the union. The bride and groom may—or may not—attend the wedding celebration.

The National Hospital—The second half of our trip was spent teaching and working in the Maternity Ward of the National Hospital. Although there are some public and private clinics around, there is only one hospital in the nation.
Conditions at the hospital are not good. It’s not the facility itself that’s bad; it’s the patient care that’s so scary. Infant mortality is 13% in the National Hospital. There is no such thing as patient “care.” Some of the techniques used in delivery are so barbaric that I will not describe them. Once the baby is delivered the midwives immediately begin yanking out the placenta instead of waiting for its natural release. This impatience can lead to severe blood loss. We saw the effects of this over and over again.
The normal hemoglobin count for a women is somewhere around 10, give or take a few. In testing women who have had children, we saw hemoglobin counts of 5, 4, 3, 2.5, and a staggering 0.9. In the states, all of these women would get several immediate transfusions. In this country, they will probably die. This is why we feel education, along with patient care, is so important to our work internationally.