To pick one story

We had Christmas in July last week on the ship. We broke out a bit of tinsel, played Christmas carols, and took it as a good reason to have pancakes for breakfast and dessert for a second time that week. There was also generally musing about how on earth we are already over half way through this year, which seems crazy but not crazy at the same time; it’s been a big few months around here!

During this time I’ve been leading and co-leading one of our primary health care teams, teams that across 14 weeks, over three separate outreaches, have seen thousands of patients. It’s been stretching, humbling, and I’ve been incredibly grateful to work with such diverse and fun bunches of volunteers who have come our way to serve alongside us.

There are so many stories from clinics these past few months, and I feel like I have all the things to write. But, instead of trying to squeeze it all in, I thought I might tell you about one of my favourite days from these past months, a clinic we ran in a fishing camp, on a beach, on the coast of Western Province.

“You can still get pregnant for the next seven day but after that no babies for five years – congratulations!”

I’m awkwardly kneeling in an elevated wooden house at a fishing camp on a beach in Western Province, PNG. There’s two of my other team members with me, a collection of gauze, gloves and other equipment spread out in a half circle around each of us so that everything we could need is within arm’s reach, a necessity when there are three of you working simultaneously and if you stand up the floor shakes. In with us is a gaggle of women from the village, all positively beaming as we have a little production line going, removing old contraceptive implants and inserting new ones.

‘Family planning’ is the term in PNG for contraception, and before coming to PNG I’d never considered that, while living in Australia, my access to contraception methods were a privilege. It just wasn’t something I’d thought about as options always seemed just, well, there in some form or another if you needed/wanted them. This isn’t the case for so many women in rural or remote PNG where there are often many hurdles to accessing contraception. In a lot of places we visit families rely on mobile health teams visiting their village, clinics like ours, to access services.

Getting implant services to these ladies has been on my wish list since the first time we visited about six months ago. The first day we came for clinic there just wasn’t enough time to offer implants to everyone who wanted to have one inserted. The second time not a lot of people were around to receive services. The procedure itself (two small rods are placed under the skin on the upper arm, offer either three or five years of contraception depending on the type) takes less than 10 minutes and can have such a huge impact on that woman’s, and her family’s, life.

I was practically bouncing the morning of our third visit. I was excited and I was hopeful; we had packed extra implant supplies on the chance we needed them and we had three people on the team who were trained to put them in so we had extra hands to call on if necessary.

It was a 45 minute boat ride from our ship to the beach we’d set up at, which is actually the village’s fishing camp, the main village being a 1-2 hour walk (depending on who you ask) inland. And it bucketing down, tropical downpour, soaked within a few moments of standing in it, type rain. We had two primary healthcare teams, our dental team and two community engagement teams (who focus on health promotion and teachings) in the boats, intending to land just shy of 40, very wet people, on the beach.

When we arrived myself, a fellow PHC leader, and our bowman jumped out and waded to the beach to see who was around that we could chat to, aiming to talk to a village leader or elder to ensure it was still ok for us to run clinic.

…and found that there was a grand total of two people there.

Although they had known we were coming, the village hadn’t made their way down because of the rain. The two guys we were talking to thought people may still come but it could be a number of hours before anyone appeared, if they did appear.

So, there were two locals and three of us from the ship, staring out at our full zodiacs from the beach.

I am aware that I work in remote places but every now and then I get a stark reminder of that fact. Standing on that beach, two hours walk from the closest village, 45 minutes of ocean travel to our ship, and a good hour plus of ocean travel to the closest village on either side, was one of those moments.

The plan changed from unloading to set up clinic to unloading to see what unfolded. I was incredibly lucky to be working with a ground of flexible and self-entertaining volunteers who took the opportunity for beach walks, hermit crab racing, general lounging, and many games of “I’m going on a picnic and I’m going to bring..”.

And then, about 15 minutes before we’d agreed with the ship that we’d call it and head on home, a dingy arrived with our first patients and let us know that everyone else was on their way.

Within a few minutes we went from having the beach to ourselves to all stations running; there were routine childhood immunisations next to one fishing hut, family planning in another, and beach surgery (a guy had arrived with a bit of bone sticking out of his foot from a machete wound) under our makeshift shelter.

It was all systems go and I spent the afternoon jumping in and out of the house where family planning was happening, checking to see how my team was going between seeing patients. We had our little implant production line, me taking old or expired ones out and my co-leader coming along to put new ones back in. As part of the education about the implants given to the women she would say “You can still get pregnant for the next seven day but after that no babies for five years – congratulations!” and you would watch the ladies just beam.

While we spent the day there, we had about 3 hours of clinic. And, while we also did so much else in clinic that day, getting implant services to those women, women who had been praying and waiting for someone to come and be able to do that for them, was something to celebrate.

What’s next?

I flew back to Australia two days ago. I’m off for a few weeks break before returning to base in Townsville. The current working plan is that I’ll be in PNG again before the end of the year, but I will spend a bit of time working from Townsville between now and then.

Below is a picture flying out of PNG; if you’re flying there I recommend a window seat as it can be pretty spectacular.

PS: If you have any questions about what I’m up to or what I have been up to please reach out – I’d love to chat with you! If you would like to consider donating to help support me financially in the work I do here please check out this link for more details.