Notes from the Field

Our mission station volunteered a truck, a driver and me to assist the Kenieba hospital with a polio and vitamin A vaccination program. My friend Kaba came along to help me communicate with the doctors. They spoke French and Bambara, I spoke a little French and a lot of broken Malinke and Kaba understood us all. He helped us understand each other.

We gave the vaccinations to newborn babies up to five year olds. I was responsible for giving the polio vaccinations to them.

As we were making our way from village to village in the remotest parts of western Mali  I felt good to be a small part of such a big undertaking as to eradicate polio from the whole continent of Africa. 

It is good to be a part of something that is bigger than me.

The name of the polio vaccination program is “Kick Polio Out Of Africa.” The symbol is a child kicking a soccer ball. Everyone loves the symbol because everyone loves soccer.

The polio vaccination were in small plastic bottles that looked like Visine bottles. Mothers lined up with their children under giant baobab trees. I squeezed two drops from the bottles under the children’s tongues to protect them from the dreaded disease.

Most of the children were terrified to receive the vaccination, and most of them were terrified of me! We were so far out into the bush, the children had never seen a white person before. As you know, white people have harmed Africa. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Albert Schweitzer and do something good for the people.

I hoped the children could see that in me.

Their moms had to hold them still and I had to squeeze their jaws with my left hand until their mouths opened and I could drop the vaccine with my right hand. 

Sometimes, I had to hold their noses and blow into their faces to get them to swallow the vaccine! “The cure can be more painful than the disease,” my grandpa used to teach me.

Not in this case, though. Polio is a powerful and fearful disease.

One little four year old girl was struggling against her mom and me with all of her might. Just as I got the first drop of vaccine under her tongue Kaba yelled, “Bakary (that is my African name) watch out!” A stream of pee came out from her little dress all over my sandaled feet.

I didn’t blame her.

“I love you,” I said in Malinke. She looked at me through tearful and defiant eyes. “You have a strange way of showing it!” she must have thought.

I hope my small moment with her with the polio vaccination under the baobab tree will help her live and remain a beautiful life for the world.