As Julie Andrews taught me in The Sound Of Music, the beginning is always the best place to start. Therefore, I'm going to be super ahead of things and start my story of Sierra Leone now. At the beginning of last semester, fall 2010, I went in to talk to my advisor Prof. Borrello and asked him if he had any suggestions for summer internships or service trips I could partake in this coming summer. He suggested a clinic in Sierra Leone, and the more he talked about it, the more excited I got about it. He told me that Dr. Hulme, one of the political science professors here at AC has been trying to help fund a clinic in Sierra Leone, and is hoping that the college can 'adopt' the clinic in a sense and help fund their cause. Life in Sierra Leone for natives, especially in the bush, is short. Sierra Leone is 180th out of 182 on the development scale, so it's the lowest of the low. I don't know the exact statistic, but I'm pretty sure you can count all the health care facilities in the country on two hands. Infant mortality is very high, and maternal death rates are almost highest in the world, 2,000 deaths per 100,000 births.
Education is required from age six through three years of junior secondary education, but because there are so few teachers they can't implement it. As a result, most people aren't educated on public health issues as simple as using protection can keep you from getting sexually transmitted diseases. Electricity, even at the clinic, is sketchy, and people living outside the city have no way of knowing when the next time that the power will be on is going to be. It's not uncommon for people to only have a general sense of how old they are, and it's a rarity if someone knows their actual birthday because they don't take an interest in recording such things. Despite all this hardship, the country is a fairly safe place, free of civil war. People living in the bush tend to come together to help, rather than become divided by greed.
Out in the bush of Sierra Leone is a clinic run by a man named Dr. ABD, who has dedicated everything he has to provide health care to as many as possible. They have a maternity ward, a therapeutic feeding center, and an operating run that rarely gets any rest from the constant flow of surgeries. Mr. Borrello told me that it was absolutely an amazing opportunity, that it would change my life and make me an invaluable assest to any institution where I might want to study medicine or work after medical school. I was so excited, and saw it as an opportunity to finally take a step toward living my dream. I want to someday work for Doctors Without Borders, and taking a short term trip to see first hand what that would be like would be invaluable insight. I started preparing my application right away.
After many hours spent re-writing my answers to the application questions, and much research on the cost of air fare, vaccinations, weather in Sierra Leone, and so on, and a very helpful informational meeting about the clinic from two students who had already been there, I submitted my application.
And then. Today. I got an email saying my application was accepted.
WOOOOOTOOOOOOOO WOOWOIOSUOHAOUEKSKOQIWOQHBKEWEJKWET OIJJJJJAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHSJHJOWPEPWNDLJSJLJLJJJJJJDJDE UH HUH!!! UH HUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(That was me being excited. Just FYI.)
So here starts the story of my journey to Sierra Leone. How I prepare, obstacles I encounter, what I see there, everything. GET READY!!!
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