SW Clinic

Me: “I need a job to do.”
Woman 1: “I don’t even know what I’m doing. How can I give you a job to do?!”
Woman 2 to Woman 3: “The nasara needs a job.”
Woman 3: “Go serve the salad dressing in the second room!”
This was Saturday morning. It was busy, beautiful, eventful. We were in full swing with the inauguration party for the clinic and every person within the walls of the courtyard was running at full pace. We’d been running in overdrive all week getting ready for the party, but it was here!
The inauguration party was to celebrate a huge gift from Rotary International. The Sheltering Wings clinic received a donation in the excess of 25 thousand dollars (in the form of medicine, moto, lab equipment etc).
The week before the party I’d spent a great deal of time, alongside many from our team, working in the clinic. We organized, sorted, stocked shelves with the new medicine, implemented new tracking methods and did a little painting to get ready for the party.
Friday and Saturday everyone pitched in cleaning school classrooms, assembling tents, setting up chairs and sound equipment and the women cooked. Oh did the women cook!
Saturday I had the amazing privilege of working alongside the women to serve the invitee (invited guests) a meal. I’ve attended plenty of fêtes in Burkina but always been a part of the invitee; it was so much fun to see it from another side! Between making sure everyone of the guests had a drink (and it had been opened), that each had enough salad (and that it was dressed), rice and chicken, we would meet in the library (our service room). It was there that we discussed what needed to be done next (or realized none of us knew...), exchanged some laughs, and where I got some dance lessons as the fete winded down (there is always time for dance lessons with Tantine Nongawindé- I love it!).

Above are Bea and Josie (our two nurses and previous borders at SW) standing beside a symbolic representation of the gifts we received.
Below is a picture of some of our (wonderful) women with the ‘croute d’été’ (salad) they’d prepared for the fete. Tantine Nongawindé (that gave me dance lessons) is on the right.



Lastly, here’s Therese and I after the fête was finished (One of the boys took this shot so it’s a little crooked, but I liked it anyway...). Therese is holding a sachet of bissap. Bissap is a delicious drink made from boiling a part of the sorell plant and ginger and tons of sugar.