The Village of Kaban

Before we left Mali, we traveled by van to a remote village named Kaban. In this village we met with the Chief and asked his permission to do check ups on the children and to clean and bandage any wounds that the people in his village might have. We also gave him an offering of 50 lbs of rice for his people. He gave us his blessing and said that we were the 1st American group to ever come to his village. Many of the children were given antibiotics for ear infections and such. As the doctors did the check ups, the rest of us cleaned wounds. The sores we cleaned were crusted in dirt, ulcerated and infected from the lack of proper care. However, even the smallest children held still while we scrubbed their wounds, applied ointment, and then bandaged them up.

I hope that this picture is not offensive to anyone, but I have to say that I got a kick out of it.

This is inside the school building. The children sit on these wooden benches in this concrete room.

This is me cleaning the sores on this little guy. Honestly the children were so brave.

These pictures are a little out of order, but this is also inside the school house. They just use chalkboard paint on the concrete walls for a blackboard.

This is a picture of the village chief offering Dr. Kammeyer a chicken in his gratitude for us coming and helping his people. He said he wished he could give us 5 chickens, but he could only afford to give us one. This was a very kind gesture considering their lack of food and resources.

This is just me looking out one of the windows of the school house.

This little girl came to us with 2ND degree burns on her arms from spilling scalding hot porridge on herself. I actually got sick to my stomach listening to her scream as I watched another nurse scrub off all of the dead, burnt, and infected skin. My nausea was probably made worse by the mid day heat. But either way, I had to walk away and sit down for a few minutes.

The top part of this sign reads "Educate a girl and you will educate a community". Pretty forward thinking in these parts.

As a side note to the three of you who played the "pay it forward game", I finally put your gift in the mail a couple of days ago. You should be getting them soon. I am anxious to know if you like it.

Take Care!

---Allison