Clean Water

Clean water is vital to good health. There are several ways to transform marginally safe or contaminated water into drinkable water. A common practice in the remote islands of Indonesia is to boil the water. It takes time and fuel to boil every drop of water a family drinks. A well (bore) can be drilled at a per-foot cost. It can be too expensive for some villages. Another option is to hand dig a well. This is a lot of work and the well remains open to future contamination. Roof catchment systems can also provide drinkable water. The challenge with this method is that you only get water when it rains. In a region that has a wet and dry season, there can be long stretches of time between the rainy days. Using water out of streams and rivers is also common. The rivers are used by everyone who lives near the river for everything including bathing, toilets and washing clothes. The water from these rivers can be just full of disease. These are all methods used by the poor to get drinkable water.

Recently we had a wonderful portable hand pump water purification system donated. It will be very valuable for our teams to use on mobile clinics. The medical and dental teams go to remote villages to serve the needs of the poor in their villages. These teams will stay in the villages for one day or as much as three months. In many villages the challenge is having clean water to use for the medical and dental work. This portable purification system weighs only 20 pounds and will be used by the mobile clinic teams to guarantee they will have good water. It doesn’t take a lot to help in big ways.

Surgical Team

TheIFC/Hohidiai staff at the Medical Clinic and Hospital are looking forward to this team coming to focus on cleft lip surgeries. The permits have been secured with the Department of Health for this team to bring hope to the poor that come for help. Those needing the cleft lip surgeries are now just waiting for the team to arrive.

There are a couple other special cases for the medical team to assess. The top of the list is a middle aged man who is badly burned on his back from his neck down to his feet. He is in desperate need of specialized burn care.

There is a lot of logistics for a medial team of 13 people. Our short-term team coordinator and team leader, Dan Holmgren, have worked long and hard to get the travel, lodging, visas, letters, supplies and permits organized. It is a huge job but well worth the investment--those cleft lip patients will leave with a new face and new future.

Jet Lag

The sky was a stunning blue as I looked down on the glaciers and snow covered mountains of Western Canada and Alaska. It was a view that was the best welcome sign you could see. I was nearly home—weary but excited to be close to the end of my travels. There is no place like home even after being in the remote islands of Indonesia and the beautiful continent of Australia.

I left the northland with a dental team in early February. Seventeen flights later I am back in the same place from which I started. The international flights were all packed and the local puddle jumpers were nail biters. I was stuffed into seats made for people much smaller than I, and I sat next to Sumo wrestlers in training on a nine hour flight. The one I communicated with could not speak very good English and he definitely took up his seat and more. I even gave him part of my in-flight meal which he received with a smile. The meal was hardly a snack for him even with my donations. I met a wonderful 18 year old Singaporean who was going, during school break, to join a team to help the Japanese tsunami survivors. It has been one year since that disaster and he was giving his time to make a difference. I was so proud of him and only imagined what he will change in his lifetime. He did spend most of the trip sleeping on my shoulder. I met people who wanted to talk and those who wanted to sleep. I slept when I could and read a couple books between Sumo wrestlers in training, young world changers, cramped seating and wondering how the plane landed in that tropical rain storm.

The miles went zipping past at 600 mph over the Pacific Ocean and over the dry plains of the great southland. I am now home but jet lagged. I know what that means for me over the next few weeks. I met some wonderful people and added thousands of miles to my mileage plan. I will need to use them because I will be back in the air in a month or so. I wonder who will be sitting next to me over those cloud piercing miles.