Day 2: Batuusa (Tuesday)

We were definitely successful in our goal of tightening the process and getting more patients in.  We all became much faster and more confident in our work.  We treated over 80 patients today and were able to provide almost 30 more with medication/pain medicine.  Of course, everyone also got oral hygiene instructions – which were necessary since we found out that most of the patients we were seeing were previously brushing their teeth with a stick!



Dr. Farmer, Dan, Katie & Marc in our "clinic" for the day.



Dan working with a helping hand from Sandy.



All of our backs may be broken.



Even though we expected a huge turnout and some bad conditions, we were shocked at the amount of people who showed up with severe infections, and in debilitating amounts of pain.  We were moreso shocked at the appreciation of the people for our work – even some of the kids who had a really hard time with some painful extractions would say thank you afterwards.  One woman told us to thank our parents for raising us and getting us to be the kind of people who would use our money to come and help people who were in great need – so shoutout to our parents!!! 

Marc doing some night dentistry.



It was a hard day full of abcesses and tears (mostly from children and not us) but we wanted to make sure that we saw as many patients as possible so we ended up staying until about 730PM.  We had to do dentistry in the dark for our last few patients…which was an interesting twist.  We did get to take a nice lunch break with a local meal cooked by the village for us.  We could not believe that they were using what little food they have available to cook us a huge meal of chicken, matoke, potatoes, g-nut sauce, and rice.  We all tried hard to eat as much as we could, with the looming fear of getting sick from using local water for cooking, and enjoyed what we could.  Robert, one of the friars, made fun of us for our weak appetites and told us if he comes to America he promises to not refuse food – so we agreed we would feed him to the point where he had no choice but to say no.

The lunch prepared for us.

Katie and Marc eating ALL THE FOODS.