Greetings from Zambia

Report one of June 2008 in Zambia, Richard Waggoner
After thirty hours in transit, I arrived in Lusaka, Zambia at 10:30 P.M. Next morning at daybreak a convoy of six loaded vehicles left Mapepe campus headed for Central Province about 7 hours Northeast of Mapepe. One vehicle was a tour bus loaded with an American doctor and four nurses, one native assistant doctor and four native assistant nurses, one American dentist and two national assistants, Two American Optomitrists and four American assistants, one American cooking supervisor and six native assistants. One vehicle was a 2 1/2 ton truck loaded with medical equipment, folding chairs, tents, and sleeping bags for most of the sixty people involved. There was a pickup truck loaded with food suplies and cooking equipment, and a four by eight foot trailer-van pulled by a "Land Rover" loaded with about 5,000 pair of prescription eye glasses and another trailer-van loaded with prescription medicine. The convoy and organization reminded me of the post World War II period and pre Korean period when I was in the National Guard and they were training us to fire World II cannons. The week-end warriors would travel about 7 hours a day and stop to set up tents and make camp for the night. After 7 hours of travel, the medical convoy pulled into a camp site that also had some small motel buildings. Twelve of the older people, including me, got the buildings for their sleepling. The rest had 8 to 12 people tents and sleeping bags. As the sun set, the soup was ready. After soup, we had a devotion and instructions for the next day which included leaving the camp ground before daylight for a village two hours north where everyone like a bunch of beavers set up the mobile clinic and the days operation began. There were already about 200 hundred standing in line and the long day began. At two thirty P.M., the P A system announced to about 100 waiting in line that we would be unable to care for them because we had enough already on the inside waiting for treatment to last us until darknes came. After we got back to camp and supper, the report was made to us that we had served 1400 patients that day. I worked with the Optical unit as a preliminary screener, to determine whether their sight was 20/20 or 20/400 or somewhere between. As the line formed outside the optomitrists offices, which were made from tall grass tied together with strips of bark on poles that had been cut nearby during the four days before we arrived by the advance team of students at MBC, I talked with those waiting about studying with me through the World Bible Study. I sought out leaders such as: Chiefs, police officers, army officers, or teachers, to study with because they would provide the new churches with leadership. As the process was duplicated in six remote villages for the seven day operation, the team surved approximately 7,000 sick people. In the Optical section, we fitted 1,793 people with glasses. I wish you could see some of the people dance around when, through their new glasses, they could clearly see the world again. Occasionaly, the line would have to wait while Dr. Judy Jones performed surgery to remove a foreign object, such as a splinter of rock or wood, that had been in their eye for years. Numerous babies came through with a bacterial infection, similiar to pink-eye, that was spread by flies, to get treatment to cure it. Before the week was over, we had run out of medicine at the portable pharmacy, and one day I made a fast trip back to Lusakawith a native driver, to purchase approximately $1,000 of medicine from the funds that had been given by you. During the week, there were 23 baptisms and three churches established, with the prospects for many more because 4 native evangelists were left behind in each community to stay another week.