June 16, 2007
Morning prayers, shower, breakfast and then the first clinic of the season. I didn’t think anyone would show up as it is the first clinic and there are very few visitors here. In fact there were not many and they were all MPR workers. Not the usual stuff of my medical practice, that is for certain. One case of ‘piles’, one of on-going symptoms from a 8 month old case of chikungunya ((sp?) a mosquito borne illness related to dengue fever), and two scorpion stings. One of these stings actually occurred about an hour after clinic was over. No case was serious but it took some quick study on my part with the clinic textbooks to figure out how to help these people. It is also a bit concerning because the stings were from a species that is not too toxic but the workers also killed a different variety that can be deadly. Soon we will likely have several hundred pilgrims from parts of the world without scorpions and lack of proper foot ware discipline to avoid stings. We’ll see.
The rest of the day was only notable for the humid heat and an afternoon threat of a rainstorm that did not get here but gave us the most incredible sunset either Dee or I have ever seen. The lower part of the horizon was an ominous black from clouds but above that the sky was a mesmerizing, shifting swirl of colors that was much like oil on water. We watched from the roof of the MPR for over an hour.
