The immense mango trees in the large garden around the clinic provide shadow and shelter to the many patients who gather. It is rainy season which means busy days for Seni, the head nurse of this small clinic in southern Senegal. Many children have respiratory infections, diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition. The clinic is not accessible by car, so we walk 20 minutes from the paved road. Together with a colleague we’ve travelled all the way from Dakar to visit a number of Christian clinics. Such a visit is always an encouragement for these health professionals who are often alone. In addition, I do an evaluation of their programs. Trying to ignore the immense heat, we see patients together until the garden is empty again just before another group arrives. During my previous visit, I gave training on how to set up a malnutrition program, and Seni has put it into practice.
A group of mums with their children gathers this afternoon for an interactive lesson on nutrition. They learn to make porridge with local nutritional products, such as corn flour, peanut flour and bean flour. Seni leads a small team of health workers and loves his work. He would like to further develop their programs and start pregnancy care, something that is very much needed in the region. Financially, he just gets by with what the patients pay. “I often sell the mangoes from the garden to buy medicines for the pharmacy” Seni explains. The government appreciates what Seni does and the collaboration has recently improved. Through the network of Christian clinics, I can advise Seni and connect him to others. The dusk already occurs when we leave the clinic and I realize that the mango season is almost over and soon there’ll be no more mangoes for sale in the clinic.
