December 29, 2009

I struggle with descriptions. I tend to ramble off verbose paragraphs of adjectives frustrated because I can’t quite find the right words, and by the time I do find the words the vivid images have already slipped away into that limbo between half-remembered and imagined. But this one I can do…

Mali is red. Red is everywhere you look. It all originates from the expansive dirt paths and fields. The dust blows up painting my skin and clothes; it’s there when I blow my nose or spit. There is no washing it away because even the water carries that same red-tinged color. And when the sun sets the entire sky is illuminated with red up until the moment it turns black.

Two days after Christmas I joined a group of OB/GYNs, nurses and an anesthesiologist and boarded a plane in snowy Salt Lake City bound for Mali. We are working through the Ouelessebougou-Utah Alliance in Ouelessebougou, a village 50 miles south of the capital city, Bamako. The Alliance was founded in 1985 by a group of Utah's community leaders who were concerned about the devastating drought in North Africa during the 1980s. For the past ten years, surgical teams from Utah have ventured to Ouelessebougou to perform gynecologic surgeries. The Alliance has an in-country staff here that coordinates our visit and notifies the community of our services. Approximately one hundred women from the immediate and surrounding villages come for evaluation and consultation. About thirty of the evaluated women will receive surgery for various reasons including extreme genital prolapse, infertility and large fibroid uterus. The team provides all the surgical supplies, anesthesia and post-operative care for these women. Additionally, the physicians work in partnership with the hospital providing training to the local interns.

Today I joined the two OB/GYNs in clinic taking histories to evaluate who were good candidates for surgery while the rest of the group unpacked the supplies and set up the OR. We have a full schedule and will begin operating tomorrow. Before today I had never seen a pelvic exam, but after today I feel I could properly identify uterine prolapses, cystoceles and rectoceles with some confidence.

Erin Greenberg, MS2
Ouelessebougou, Mali