Duotiayee clinic

Earlier this week I made my first trip out to one of the four clinics for which I will be "responsible".
This clinic is located in the village of Duotiayee. A note to those interested in pronuciation in Liberia - pretty much, you pronounce everything. So, Duotiayee is pronounced "due-oh-tea-eye-ee".
Duotiayee serves as a Primary Health Center for the village and catchment population of approximately 10,000. Note, though, catchment population essentially means "how many people could walk to the clinic in a day", so the figure is quite large. The region itself is sparsely populated.
The trip to the clinic takes approximately one hour by TLC (Toyota Land Cruiser). The road is pretty much nonexistant for much of this trip. However, it suffices, at least during the dry season. When the wet season comes in April it may be a different story.
MSF-H supplies the clinic with materials and drugs that the MoH (Ministry of Health) has no money for. In this case, that's everything. We also have one doctor and one nurse who make weekly trips to the clinics (there are four total) to do consults. The clinic serves as an outpatient service only. There are a few beds (three) in the clinic just in case of emergency, but as there are really no staff on shift in the evenings they truly are "emergency" beds.
So, what does Taj do with all this? Quite a bit, and not much at all, as it turns out.
I'm responsible for making sure the clinic runs properly and has what it needs to be a functional clinic. So far, this week and the coming one, this will include: building a kitchen attached to the clinic, tearing off the mudded walls and plastering them properly, whitewashing said walls, laying new concrete floor for much of the clinic, arranging for new shelves for the pharmacy, installing a new incinerator for medical waste, building a proper bamboo fence around the clinic, cleaning the well, installing proper well containment, and installing a hand pump. Oh, and building latrines in the village itself.
Yep.
Now, in point of fact, obviously that's a tremendous amount of work. Truthfully, my job on this clinic will mostly consist of being a bit of a 'foreman' for the whole thing. It's unlikely that I'll actually do any of the above list myself. I'll negotiate the contracts (with the help of my local assistant, David), agree on payments, designs, and plans, and be in charge of the project being successfully completed.
I _hope_ that at some point my job will be a bit more than that, if for no other reason than I'd really like to pick up some of these things myself and help out - if only to learn. But for now, I'm going with the system in place. I think its good, really, in that I'll be able to do much more this way, but I don't want to do it like this forever.
Honestly, however, I've only been in the project for a week and don't have a solid idea of how this is really going to work. I likely won't have such a picture until the end of March.

This picture I took as we were passing through a village on the way to Duotiayee. This village is representative of the small-ish villages in the area. It's not tiny, but it's big enough to have actual houses of mud-brick and plastering.
The nationals seem quite fond of MSF. I had a wrong story before, and should correct it: MSF did NOT pull out in 2000/2001. MSF-Holland left the country because all the needs MSF could fill were filled - there simply was nothing to do. Four other MSF sections stayed in Liberia during the ensuing years and conflict. In 2003, MSF-H went back in to address some particular critical care issues, such as medical access here in Nimba county.
As a result of this, MSF has quite the reputation in Liberia - it's the ONLY NGO that did NOT leave during the war. This gives us quite a bit of credibility, both domestically and with other iNGOs in the country and the UN. MSF is well enough liked that when I entered the country, carrying my two bags plus two full duffel bags of gear and parcels for the project teams, a customs official came to make sure I didn't have any trouble getting my bags, clearing customs or immigration, and finding my driver. So where the rest of the passengers on the aircraft spent some time waiting for the stuff and in lines to enter the country, I pretty much just breezed through.
But anyway, the road to Duotiayee is long, twisty, and bumpy. It's actually only about 12 kilometers to the clinic, but it takes an hour to get there. On the way you pass through many small villages where the people are of course very excited to see you, especially if you're in an MSF truck. The picture is just one I took from the back of the TLC at one of many hoardes of children that ran from their huts/houses to wave at us going by and shouting "quigloo, quigloo!" which means "white person, white person!" in Manu (one of the tribal languages in the region). The proper response would be "meetee! meetee!" which means "african, african!".

This picture is from the back of the truck on the same trip, only here we're back in Sanniquellie town, heading back to the compound. The townies are much less excited about our presence, but we still receive a friendly greeting. I'll have much more to write on Sanniquellie town when I get a chance - hopefully tomorrow.

I still have so much to write on, about my first week here, my team, my living conditions, the work I've done so far, challenges I see coming, etc. It seems clear at this point that I'll likely only get a real chance to update this blog on the weekends - we're too busy and the internet is occupied during the week with real work. However, I'm going to do my best to get more photos, maybe a movie, and definitley more of what I'm thinking/feeling/doing up for everyone to read.

So, I'll try to write more tomorrow. For now, I'm off to a football match between national staff and expats. I don't yet know if I'm going to play - I'm not well acclimated to the weather (35C in the shade during the day) and fear that playing soccer may well kill me. But, we'll see.

Ciao for now - all my best from Liberia.