Snake Doctor
September 4, 2005
The guinea fowl didn't keep me awake last night, after all, although I occasionally heard deep-throated groans in the night from the enormous crocodiles in their pens behind our tent.
I crept out of the tent very early this morning to reach the communal showers before hordes of other campers woke up. The water was not quite luke-warm but the shower-room was reasonably clean, and I was glad to wash my hair.
And then I wandered up to the reptile zoo again to look at the snakes again. They have a few predatory birds here too--the sad-looking vulture here was the only one I saw on this trip.
Pete cooked pancakes for us this morning--delicious. A three-legged dog called Tripod that
Wayne knows parked himself by our breakfast place this morning. He is obviously fed well enough here to turn his nose up at the pancakes that did not have any jam on them...
After breakfast, about half of us made a visit to the medical clinic on the campsite grounds which provides free treatment for the local Maasai people. The doctor there was expecting us.
The building was a small concrete one and several Maasai patients sat waiting outside on benches.
The first thing that greeted us inside was a row of caged snakes.
The clinic was tiny: two rooms with bare concrete floors. It REEKED of pine cleaner.There was a sink, a small table, one bed, and a very inadequate supply of medical equipment.
We met the "doctor", a friendly man who confessed that he wasn't trained as a doctor professionally, but had grown very experienced treating common complaints like diarrhea, infections, malaria, and snake bites.He was particularly an expert on toxic snake bites.
"Actually, I am a snake man", he said, nodding. His other job was snake- handler.
The doctor told us of a few of the cases he'd treated over the years. One Maasai man came to him with a festering sore on his shoulder which had been left untreated for THREE years. The wound had been infected all the way down to exposed bone. Luckily the man recovered, but he had to report to the clinic every day for a long time to have his shoulder re-dressed with a bandage.
The doctor explained that the Masai often avoid seeking medical help, being self-reliant, or are simply too isolated to find it. Some of the villages we passed were way out in the middle of nowhere, where no transportation by vehicle was available.
What would it be like to have a medical emergency here?
Well, somehow the patient would have to get to the hospital in Arusha, the nearest city, because they simply couldn't handle anything that required surgery, for instance.
"It's very difficult", the snake man told us soberly.
Before we left, the doctor let me handle one of the kinder, gentler snakes. It was a hook-nosed snake, which is non-poisonous. It just bashes its prey against the side of their burrows.
As I held the snake I looked up to see a grinning Maasai child's face pushed up against the grill of the window. He was very curious to see why the muzungus (foreigners) would want to hold a snake, I think.
We would have liked to stay and ask more questions. Sarah, the doctor in our group(who was most certainly notfond of snakes), had come up with some good ones about contraception and the like, but we noticed that there was now a line-up of men and women clad in the Maasai's traditional red blankets, stoically waiting on benches outside in the dusty yard.We hurriedly excused ourselves. We didn't want to make those people wait any longer than they had to.
I will never complain again about having to wait around in a doctor's waiting-room here at home.
Footnote:
After I got back to Canada after this trip, I sent some photographs off to some of the people from Britain I travelled with. They were such a good group of people--likeable, smart, funny people, all of them.I immediately got an email back from Helen who has been busy collecting and sending off medical supplies and various other items to this clinic in the Meserani Snake Park.. She had just received word that her supplies had made it to their destination.
I was so glad to hear from her, and what a good idea!
At the end of the trip our group leader requested that we donate what we could spare from our first aid kits: bandages, aspirin, skin ointments, whatever we could come up with, and then they would deliver it for us.
The guinea fowl didn't keep me awake last night, after all, although I occasionally heard deep-throated groans in the night from the enormous crocodiles in their pens behind our tent.
I crept out of the tent very early this morning to reach the communal showers before hordes of other campers woke up. The water was not quite luke-warm but the shower-room was reasonably clean, and I was glad to wash my hair.
And then I wandered up to the reptile zoo again to look at the snakes again. They have a few predatory birds here too--the sad-looking vulture here was the only one I saw on this trip.
Pete cooked pancakes for us this morning--delicious. A three-legged dog called Tripod that
Wayne knows parked himself by our breakfast place this morning. He is obviously fed well enough here to turn his nose up at the pancakes that did not have any jam on them...After breakfast, about half of us made a visit to the medical clinic on the campsite grounds which provides free treatment for the local Maasai people. The doctor there was expecting us.
The building was a small concrete one and several Maasai patients sat waiting outside on benches.
The first thing that greeted us inside was a row of caged snakes.
The clinic was tiny: two rooms with bare concrete floors. It REEKED of pine cleaner.There was a sink, a small table, one bed, and a very inadequate supply of medical equipment.
We met the "doctor", a friendly man who confessed that he wasn't trained as a doctor professionally, but had grown very experienced treating common complaints like diarrhea, infections, malaria, and snake bites.He was particularly an expert on toxic snake bites.
"Actually, I am a snake man", he said, nodding. His other job was snake- handler.
The doctor told us of a few of the cases he'd treated over the years. One Maasai man came to him with a festering sore on his shoulder which had been left untreated for THREE years. The wound had been infected all the way down to exposed bone. Luckily the man recovered, but he had to report to the clinic every day for a long time to have his shoulder re-dressed with a bandage.
The doctor explained that the Masai often avoid seeking medical help, being self-reliant, or are simply too isolated to find it. Some of the villages we passed were way out in the middle of nowhere, where no transportation by vehicle was available.
What would it be like to have a medical emergency here?
Well, somehow the patient would have to get to the hospital in Arusha, the nearest city, because they simply couldn't handle anything that required surgery, for instance.
"It's very difficult", the snake man told us soberly.
Before we left, the doctor let me handle one of the kinder, gentler snakes. It was a hook-nosed snake, which is non-poisonous. It just bashes its prey against the side of their burrows.
As I held the snake I looked up to see a grinning Maasai child's face pushed up against the grill of the window. He was very curious to see why the muzungus (foreigners) would want to hold a snake, I think.
We would have liked to stay and ask more questions. Sarah, the doctor in our group(who was most certainly notfond of snakes), had come up with some good ones about contraception and the like, but we noticed that there was now a line-up of men and women clad in the Maasai's traditional red blankets, stoically waiting on benches outside in the dusty yard.We hurriedly excused ourselves. We didn't want to make those people wait any longer than they had to.
I will never complain again about having to wait around in a doctor's waiting-room here at home.
Footnote:
After I got back to Canada after this trip, I sent some photographs off to some of the people from Britain I travelled with. They were such a good group of people--likeable, smart, funny people, all of them.I immediately got an email back from Helen who has been busy collecting and sending off medical supplies and various other items to this clinic in the Meserani Snake Park.. She had just received word that her supplies had made it to their destination.
I was so glad to hear from her, and what a good idea!
At the end of the trip our group leader requested that we donate what we could spare from our first aid kits: bandages, aspirin, skin ointments, whatever we could come up with, and then they would deliver it for us.
posted by Spider Girl | 4:28 PM
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