On one of my first days at FAME Medical as the new Volunteer Coordinator, a very young girl arrived from Oldeani Village with one of the worst cases of funzas to date.  Funzas are worms, found in the local red clay dirt, that start off microscopic in size and, burrowing into your skin, grow to the size of small peas.  I have seen some pretty bad cases, during previous trips to this area, but nothing compares to this little girl. We were told that she lives in a mud hut and is raised by grandparents, too elderly to care for her properly.  After sedating her, Dr. Ivan and Nurse Safi went to work removing dozens of funzas from her fingertips and toes.  It was a long and intense process.  Luckily for this girl, she didn’t feel a thing, and the funzas were removed before permanent damage was done.  Thank goodness for the kindness and skill of the staff here at FAME who treated her like she was their own!

It’s so strange to sit here writing to you - everything in Karatu still seems so close as though I’m going to wake up there tomorrow and walk to clinic.  It’s hard to explain, but I’m sure you’ve had others describe some difficulty making the transition home, even after such a short visit.  I think it’s obvious that my time at FAME Medical and in Karatu was an experience unlike any before it and it’s been difficult to put it into perspective with the world here - they are so different.  Everyone here asks me how my trip went and I don’t really know what to say to the - I tell them “fantastic,” “wonderful,” or maybe “amazing,” but none of those can really capture or even come close to the true magnitude of the experience.  I haven’t been able to really get my arms around it yet.

So I’ve found myself telling everyone now that it’s really impossible to describe because it’s so different, so foreign, so unlike our lives here.  Perhaps because every moment is so meaningful there, I really can’t explain it.  I’ll tell someone what it was like walking up to the clinic in the morning for a new day, but it doesn’t capture the real emotion of that moment on the other side of the world in such a different land.

To tell you that I’ve thought about the clinic, Karatu, red clay and dust, the smell, the sun, every single person there, those whose names I knew and those who I never really did, every day, if not every hour, since my return would be the truth, but it would still not express the full extent of the impact my visit had.