At the clinic, I ran into Bonnie, a familiar face, the mid-wife who was with me in South Sudan, she was volunteering with Hope Foundation as a mid-wife educator.
Today I had a different translator who had been here for almost two months and said that 90% of the patients had epigastric, back pain and generalized weakness. Indeed, we saw a number of patients with such complaints, including the very young ones. When asked if they had seen horrific events that might have translated to somatic complaints, oftentimes they would say no.
I saw Sawanter, a woman in her thirties whose husband was captured by the soldiers and jailed. She had to take her 4 children, 2, 8 ,10 and 11 and walked for 4 to 5 days to Bangladesh. She did not know the whereabouts of her husband.
A 35-year-old man came in with skin lesions which were present for a month, some small and some large ones in his arm and ankle, the large one on the ankle was oozing. He adamantly denied being bit by any insects but I wondered whether he could be afflicted with cutaneous leishmaniasis. We cleaned the wounds and I gave him some antibiotic and asked him to return.
The coordinator estimated we saw around 120 patients, I saw 40 patients, the most I had seen since I arrived.