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Bahia Malaga Again

I spent the day at the Hospital at Bahia Malaga again. The ride in was calm, and that was a nice way to start the day. I wasn't there yesterday, but I heard they were busy. Again, it was a busy day at our clinic, with a bus bringing in new patients every hour or so. I had the antenna set up by 09:00 and while I was setting it up a couple of the ITs from the ship covered the comms needs with a BGAN antenna. The rest of the day we've used the GATR antenna for our communications needs, and it performed flawlessly through rain and sun for seven hours, providing us with a broadband Internet connection.

What the ITs do is chat with the ship, to let doctors know that there are patients at the clinic who need surgery. If one of the doctors can do the surgery, and there is time available on the OR schedule, the message comes back that the patient can go to the ship for the surgery, staying there one or more nights. More than once I heard the news come back the the surgery schedule was full, so they had to tell patients they could not have a needed surgery. For some, who can't pay to have surgery, this is a chance of a lifetime. Tonight we have 44 patients on board the ship. One of them is a six-year old boy who has had a pin in his elbow for a year. It needs to be removed, but his family cannot affort the surgery.

Throughout the day I was able to interact with local people. One of them told me how grateful they are that we are here. Of course, everybody from the patients to the Colombian Navy personnel want to know what the big ball is for. I spend a lot of time explaining how it transmits and receives signals from a satellite 22,000 miles up in space so that we can have an Internet connection and chat with doctors on the Comfort. As I work on my laptop, the kids are fascinated by it. Many of them are not familiar with computers at all. I shared pictures of the Comfort with a few of the kids, and they could not get over how large the ship is. They were fascinated by my camera, and a couple of them wanted me to take their picture so I could show it to them.

Of course I must also spend time doing some crowd control. Even though I put up caution tape around the antenna, that does not deter many people from ducking under it to walk in front of the antenna. That's a bad thing, because I don't want to cook them with my transmission signal, and I don't want them to block my receive signal. But, when you don't have any health care at all, can't afford to pay a doctor, and you are looking at the chance of a lifetime to see a dentist or a doctor, you aren't going to pay much attention to a piece of tape around a big beach ball.

At 16:00 we packed up the antenna, stored it in the administration office, and took a bus down to the dock. After having our bags checked by American military security guys (I guess they were searching us to see if we had some Colombian cocaine in our possession) we loaded onto a boat. At first I thought we were going to be on a Comfort hospitality boat, but to my welcome surprise we stepped onto a Colombian 38-person speedboat with three outboard motors. What a ride we had, going a slightly different route than usual. We passed by small islands jutting out of the bay, covered in think jungle growth, and teeming with birds. The speed of the boat and the gentle swells provided us with a exhilerating ride, at times not unlike a roller coaster. Finally, as we neared the Comfort we were provided with a short glimpse of a humpback whale. Throughout the thirty minute ride I thought of digging my camera out of my bag, but realized that photos could not do justice to the experience.

It's been a once-in-a-lifetime day for me.

Posted by David at August 26, 2007 09:52 PM