We have a meeting at the school with the teachers at 8 am, right before the beginning of the first class. Xavier explains to them the philosophy of Kakok Foundation and its charity status. We are not a business and the school is not a business. The Etoile du Matin School was built for the community. We ask them about their work at the school and for any suggestions they might have.
Today is “Dispanse Kakok on wheels”. We are going with the clinic staff to spend the day at Cay A'Leau to tend to the population of this tiny island. Captain Pierrot, a local fishermen, takes 5 of us and plenty of medicament and supplies for a 30 minute ride on his small boat with heavy waves because of strong winds.
Cay A'Leau is somehow chaotic. There are over 100 people, mostly women and children, packed in the small school waiting for us to set up. Surzie is in charge of the pharmacy, Zet does the triage of the patients, and she registers them by writing on a sheet of paper their names, age, health issues, temperature and blood pressure. Marie and I help with the flow of patients and assist Xavier.
We visit 52 patients and the health issues are very similar to the ones we see in Ile a Vache: hypertension, malaria, infections, skin problems, wounds, back aches and here there is a lot of eye problems and cataracts. The island is mostly bare of any trees and it is covered by white sand, so the amount of light is enormous.
The oldest patients we see is an 82 year old woman and the youngest a 19 day-old baby. We distribute lots of medications. We cannot see all patients because our captain needs to leave by 2 pm. Walking back from the Dispanse to the hotel we come across the grandfather of the baby with the convulsion. He says they still do not have any news.
All in all we have seen quite a number of people, mostly children, from PAP living now in Ile a Vache, and even in Cay A'Leau. We heard that around 500,000 people have left PAP.
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