Central Oregonian

Mission to Africa

Crook County residents joined others to serve people in Tanzania, Africa

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHERYL MEYER

African locals waiting in line to see a doctor. The canopy they are sitting under was provided by BJ Bale, owner of the Meserani Snake Park Clinic, and set up by the team so those in line wouldn’t have to linger in direct sunlight.

Ramona McCallister

April 21, 2011

The average Central Oregonian may never see Africa, let alone an area as remote as Tanzania.

For the last three years, a group of Oregonians — including Powell Butte and Prineville residents — have traveled to this far-away place on behalf of Mbuyu Charities, to provide medical care and compassion and to serve those that are less fortunate .

Mbuyu Charities is a non-profit organization formed in 2008 by a small group of individuals, mostly paramedics and one physician’s assistant, living and working in Central Oregon. The vision began with a common interest in Tanzania, Africa, where a small medical clinic was started in the Meserani area.

Barry and Lynn Bale operate the Meserani Snake Park in Tanzania, Africa. The Meserani Snake Park provides guided tours, a museum, an education center and a free medical health clinic. The park is home to a variety of snakes common in Eastern and Southern Africa, and there are approximately 48 snakes visitors can view. The park is just west of Arusha on the route to Serengeti and the Njorongoro Crater.

Their son, Wade Bale, is a paramedic in Redmond. The Bales started offering a small medical clinic about a mile away from the actual Snake Park in a rented building. They staffed the clinic with two nurses and were treating approximately 40 patients per day, all year-round. They not only were paying for all the medications and snake antivenin themselves, but they also give much of themselves to the community of the Maasai people.

The mission for Mbuyu Charities is “To step forward with compassion and charity, while serving through medical care, health awareness, education, spiritual development, and recreational activities to strengthen the entire person.”

The mission caught the interest of several Central Oregon residents, including Powell Butte resident Sonnie Freauff, a member of a 15-person crew who traveled to Tanzania in January. A Prineville resident, Wayne Muilenburg, is a paramedic and brought his skills with him to the clinic — in addition to the many skills and talents of the crew that traveled to Africa on this journey. The team consisted of one doctor, one nurse practitioner, one physician assistant, five nurses, two paramedics, a physical therapist, and three people without medical training, but who had experience on other missions.

The team also had a professional photographer, Cheryl Meyer, who covered the trip as it unfolded.

The crew left on Jan. 26, and after 48 hours of travel time, all 14 members arrived on Saturday and Sunday and began their clinics on Monday morning. They worked for seven days in a row and saw more than 1,009 patients and dispensed $43,780 worth of prescriptions (in U.S. dollars).

All the money that was used for purchasing supplies in-country was from a Prineville fundraiser. The fundraiser was held just before the trip at the First Baptist Church in Prineville, and consisted of an African-theme auction and dinner that was open to the public. The money raised amounted to almost $4,000. Because it was so successful, they are hoping to do it every year.

All this money was used for medication — purchased at 10 percent of what it would cost here in the U.S. Muilenburg said that in the years past when the group has gone to Tanzania, the funds were split between the medications and supplies. A new clinic building in the Snake Park was built entirely from donated funds from the Prineville community and other partners around the world.

“We were able to operate inside of the new building this year. There are two treatment rooms, a male and female ward with six beds, and some living quarters for the medical crew upstairs,” explained Muilenburg. He said that some of the crew stayed upstairs and the rest stayed in tents outside.

“We pitched our tent in a high, dry spot and that was our home base.”

He said during the days, they would travel as much as an hour-and-a-half or two hours into the bush to remote villages that needed some medical care. The people that they worked with in the region were able to get the word out and let the people know when they were coming to a village

“They spread the word that the ‘American doctors’ were coming to each individual village, and we would show up in the morning and sometimes there would be 200-300 people waiting for us. Some of them had walked over two or three days in from where they live in their remote village,” recalled Muilenburg.

“It was kind of sad because the doctors got there early in the morning and there was already a line of people waiting, and more people would come throughout the day,” said Meyer.

She said that at some point they would have to close up the clinic because they only had limited medications that could be distributed, and they also had to go to other clinics as well.

“There would almost be a mob of people wanting to be seen and needing to be seen. There were also only so many resources, so at the end of the day, they could only take the sickest people,” she recalled.

Every village that the team visited was a relatively long distance from their home base. They would either operate out of a school building or a centrally-located village building. They mostly looked for shade, with a couple of rooms for privacy.

“In the past we have used trees or set up inside mud-huts, all varying types of facilities with dirt floors. Sometimes we had doors and windows — sometimes the window was there, but no glass, sometimes no door that could be shut,” said Muilenburg.

“The most dangerous part of the whole mission is physically driving places on the roads. When we go to the remote villages, we are on pavement for maybe 2-10 miles, and the rest of it was out in the bush on dirt two-track roads, fording rivers because bridges have washed out.”

In the course of their journeys, the team also had the opportunity to see a wide variety of wildlife.

Muilenburg said they saw turtles and ostriches, zebras, elephants, and lots of domesticated animals, because the Maasai people are historically nomadic herdsmen. There are also many different kinds of snakes, crocodiles, vultures, and barn owls in the snake park.

One story that he recalled was a Mom who brought in a 10-year-old child that had been herding cattle and got a large thorn stuck in his leg that had broken off deep inside.

“It’s a large-sized thorn, as big around as a pencil, not just a thistle. It was infected and inflamed and pretty painful for him,” he added. “They were able to make a small incision and grab a hold of it with surgical pliers, get the pieces of it and pull it out. Left untreated, he could have lost his leg or worse. That’s some really cool stuff that we were able to do, and it seems like it’s pretty minor, but it’s really not.”

Freauff recalls the incident, as well.

“Her son was on the procedure table getting a thorn taken out of his leg. He seemed to be relaxed and doing quite well, but she — a Maasai mother — was not well. I walked over to her and held her in my arms as we stood together. She began to lean against me, trembling at the thought of her son lying there with a thorn in his leg that could, left untreated, surely cause him to die . . . As soon as the thorn was removed, she fell to the ground, almost taking me with her. Her arms thrust to the heavens, and she began to say ‘asante, Jesus, asante Jesus, asante Jesus,’ over and over again. Asante means “thank you.”

Another significant incident that they dealt with included a snakebite victim. He came in late in the evening around dusk, and had been bitten by a Puff Adder, which is considered one of Africa’s most deadliest snakes. Its large fangs, potent venom, mean disposition, and willingness to bite make it a very dangerous snake. The venom can cause skin and tissue necrosis, and most fatalities are a result of poor clinical management or neglect to treat the infected area.

The snake had bitten the boy in the ankle, and he had been transported by his friend on a motorcycle for almost an hour.

“They come banging on our door, and now it’s well after dark. ‘My friend is bitten on the leg by a snake,’ he called. We were able to give him antivenin, antibiotics, some steroids to help with the whole process, and pain medication too,” said Muilenburg. “By the next morning he was resting comfortably, the swelling had stopped and gone down, and we kept him there in one of our clinic beds for the rest of the time we were there.”

During the time that the patients are in the clinic, the crew make sure they have food and water, and are healthy and ready and able to go back home.

When treating patients, there are many challenges — some of them deal with cultural challenges and some deal with health-related issues.

Muilenburg said that they also have the challenges of tribal and cultural differences. He said that is one thing that they are working on — slowly educating the people, while keeping the culture of the people in mind. They teach the resident nurses working at the clinic how to do procedures, how to recognize illnesses, and treat different medical incidents.

A lot of the revenue from the Snake Park is given as a donation to help pay for the nurses and clinic and medications and supplies, including antivenin, which can cost as much as $500 per dose.

Meyer said that one challenge that the group encountered was the fact that the people in the Snake Park often go to the witch doctors before they come in and get treated for snake bites. By the time the doctors in the clinic can treat them, the necrosis is often already spreading.

“During the rainy season, they get more bites than during the dry season because it rains and the snakes crawl into the peoples houses,” recalled Meyer.

Muilenburg also made reference to the very danger of the trip, with an incident that happened shortly after his team arrived back in the United States.

“Two weeks after we left, one of the guys that was working with us — an interpreter for us through the church — he was killed along with three others in a car accident right around the same area where we were driving.”

Muilenburg said that he really has come to appreciate the simple things that we take for granted here in the United States that makes our lives so much different from the harsh living conditions that many people in Tanzania can’t easily escape.

“Just having clean running water that you can drink anywhere is huge. I don’t have bugs crawling in my bed here like I did there. We can shut the door and keep out poisonous snakes when it rains. We don’t have those types of fears that are fairly commonplace for the Maasai people,” emphasized Muilenburg.

“It comes down to having been blessed enough to live where it’s not so harsh of an environment. Life here is pretty easy comparatively speaking.”

To find out more about this local organization, and to get involved, go to the Mbuyu Charities website, mbuyu.wordpress.com, or look them up on Facebook, keyword Mbuyu Charities. To read more about the Meserani Snake Park go to www.meseranisnakepark.com