Kenya Mission 2010

Is A Kenya Dental Mission In Your Future?

Can you imagine pulling 645 teeth in a week, especially if you are just a freshman in dental school?

Who would have thought that ten years after our initial landing in Kenya for our first dental mission to the legendary Masai tribe that we would be celebrating Kenya Medical Outreach’s 15th mission trip with a KMO alumni cookout at our home in Suwanee, GA and planning our 16th for the summer of 2011?

Why do we fly eight hours to London, nine hours to Nairobi and drive six hours over tarmac and dirt roads to reach the “Forgotten People” of Olmekenyu?

Why do 23 Americans from all walks of life save, sacrifice, do odd jobs, send out letters for support, fundraise, and do whatever it takes to gather the $4000 it takes to go on the mission trip, some year after year after year?

Why would a young Masai man escort his wife 40 kilometers across the border from Tanzania to the remote village of Morijo in Kenya arriving in the dead of night to see the mission team from America?

Why would 2000 people line up outside out hospital clinic in the heat of the African summer on the equator?

Why would our full time missionaries in Kenya wait with Leonard, our patient from Olmekenyu who had his nose eaten away by tuberculosis, for six days in a dank, dark Nairobi hospital while the boy was examined and the diagnosis confirmed?

Well, the questions could go on and on, but the bottom line is that we offer hope to the tens of thousands who live in the land of the Masai Mara and its surrounding environs. We came to a long forgotten area of Kenya over a decade ago and we never left. Many years have passed; many have traveled to this exotic land with us. Typically, one third of our 20-25 Kenya Medical Outreach mission teams are alumni now, one third are our friends from our area (Atlanta, Georgia) who have never been on our mission, and one third are, amazingly, strangers who found out about our trips from either the suwaneedental.com or kenyamo.com web site. They take a leap of faith and sign up with us sight unseen. Our team members have come from California, Florida, Missouri, Boston, Dallas, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Tennessee and beyond.

The makeup of our team is typically this: one dentist (DMD or DDS), maybe two, a few predental students, some high school students, several teachers or housewives, a physician (MD or DO), three nurses (RN or LPN), perhaps a dental hygienist (RDH) and either a nurse practitioner (NP) or a physian’s assistant (PA). Pastors, businessmen and pharmacists may round out the group in any particular year.

What is a typical day like on the mission field? In Olmekenkyu, we built three bunkhouses and have a kitchen / dining hall for serving our team breakfast. The number of patients for dental and medical services builds as the morning dawns and by 8:00 a.m. fifty are in line. We finish our toast, boiled or fried eggs, Kenya tea and by nine o’clock when we begin seeing patients, there are three hundred in the line. We divide into medical, dental, optometry, worming stations. Some of our team hike up the hill to the Olmekenyu Primary School to work with the students, teach, lead Bible Study, or meet with the school administrators about projects we support like water tanks, glass window installations for classrooms or concreting floors.

The dental team is six or seven team members strong. We work with a local dentist, Dr. Daniel from Narok, as our coverage on the mission and we have an ample number of surgical instruments donated by Dr. Arun Nayyar and others to perform extractions, although we have my portable Asceptico dental unit for fillings and scaling. Our system is this: we numb ten patients, extract, numb ten patients, extract, numb ten patients, extract. We go for hours like that, doing mostly simple extractions, sometimes surgical extractions and an occasional filling or ultrasonic scaling. Tea time is honored as our team takes a break at 11:00 a.m. and then lunch at one or two in the afternoon. Our team usually has a designated camp cook and the food is generally outstanding, even when local produce and meats such as chicken, lamb and goat are in the offering.

The experience for non­­-dental folks in the dentistry department is memorable. Getting up-close and personal with the how-to and techniques of exodontia is a certainty. Pulling a tooth is common for lay folks on our mission trips. Dental students become fully capable and competent to handle almost any extraction after being on one of our mission teams. The experience is worth a fortune to any dental student ready to graduate into the real world of private practice; just ask Matt Milner from the Medical University of Mississippi School of Dentistry, Hubert Park from Tufts University School of Dentistry or Caroline Norment from the Medical University of South Carolina School of Dentistry.

The opportunity to give back to others who have no ability to receive but by the grace of God those dental services we offer is why we do what we do. In the areas we go to, there is no dentist, no physician to see them; there are no instruments, no supplies, no anesthetics, no clinics where people can seek help for even a simple tooth ache. They are left with primitive options by untrained nurses who have inadequate tools for the job. Where we go, we try to train the nurses and give them a set of proper instruments for tooth removal. We show them the techniques for gaining adequate dental anesthesia so that their extractions are painless. It’s the least we can do because we’ll be gone in a few days….until next year.

In Kenya, at the equator, the sun sets at six o’clock, so we try to be completed by then each day. More than once we’ve worked by flashlight in the dark. Each day we may see over 100 dental patients and 200 medical patients in our clinics. Its rewarding as well as tiring. The dinner hour is a time of reflection on the day and talking about what transpired in our individual clinics. Man, the stories we hear - the tales that are told! There is never a dull moment on mission in Africa.

To learn more about Kenya Medical Outreach, Inc. go to www.kenyamo.com or www.suwaneedental.com/kenya/2010.html

Bill Williams, DMD, MAGD

Director, Kenya Medical Outreach, Inc.
Founder, Suwanee Dental Care
Founder, Solstice Dental Advisors

Kenya Team's Triumphant Return

Nineteen of us each max out our limit of two duffle bags of 50 lbs. each plus our carry on knapsacks full of medical and dental supplies, food and a few clothes. The Rift Valley of Kenya, our destination, is 5000 feet above sea level. We were just south of the equator and the weather is cool in the evenings and mornings, perfect in the daytime, much like Atlanta in the spring. This land of the Maasai and Kipsigi tribes is neither jungle nor desert. It is the forested foothills and grasslands of the Maasai Mara and Serengeti Plains of East Africa.

My brother, Brad Williams, a minister, and his wife, Christina, a physician, built a hospital in Olmekenyu, Kenya in 2000. My wife and I took our first dental mission trip there in June 2001. We returned a year later with a team of 30, including two dentists, a physician, four nurses and three dental assistants. Last Saturday night we returned from our eight trip to Kenya. This was the first year my entire family joined us…Sheila my wife, Justin and Tyler, my sons who are 27 and 25. We showed the Jesus film again in a new village.

Our team flies through Amsterdam into Nairobi. Picked up in Toyota Land Cruisers and four-wheel drive minivans by our excellent drivers, we immediately head out into the bush to Olmekenyu where the medical/dental clinic building has been built. The drive begins over good roads, then fair roads, then dirt roads, then muddy roads. Driving in Kenya is hazardous to your timetable. You never know if you will be stuck in the mud or not. This is especially true in rainy season…like now.

We stop off in Narok, the district capital, to pick up Dr. Daniel Chepkeygon, our legal means of practicing dentistry in Kenya without going through much red tape. He is invaluable as far as diagnosis, translation, anesthesia and extractions.

Our first visit to Olmekenyu in 2001, on our first afternoon, we saw 46 patients, working until 8 p.m. with flashlights as the rain clouds darkened the sky by 6 p.m. The next day, we worked two shifts, morning and afternoon, and saw 112 patients, all for extractions. All in all, we saw 252 patients and removed 600 teeth. Daniel diagnosed and anesthetized 90% of them and I extracted 90% of the teeth. Since that year, we have returned annually and found that the community is much healthier and more prosperous. Our doctors, nurses and dentists are making a difference there. They say its but a drop in the bucket, but the bucket is nearly full…now.

From Olmekenyu we usually go to Morijo near the border of Tanzania. This is the isolated land of the Maasai still much like it was 100 years ago. There had never been a dentist visit this area. Our first patient in Morijo, Tabula, had a 10 year-developing osteoma of the maxilla. She had walked over 20 kilometers to see us that day. Her tumor was the size of a small grapefruit on the left side of her face. Not being equipped to do advanced surgery there, we took up a collection among our team and sent her to a mission hospital seven hours away by Land Cruiser. What a blessing it was for us to see her the next year with the first of her two surgeries completed. Half of the tumor had been removed. Many trips to the hospitals in Nairobi later and many years passed before she was able to navigate through the Kenyan medical system and get her second surgery to complete the removal of the tumor and get her needed denture made.

The trip in 2009 was quite similar to our first trip other than the fact that we are taking 22 in four vehicles versus seven in one Land Cruiser. One difference this year is that we are working in Sakutiek, an area of an orphanage, seeing as many as 1000 children for care in three days. At the end of our trip we ventured much farther north than in previous years to work at OlMaran and the Kuki Gallmann Nature Conservancy. You may remember that she wrote the book, I Dreamed of Africa, and that Kim Basinger played her in the movie.

Here are the results of what we accomplished on our latest trip in 2008 and 2009:

Medical Mission: 2008 - A team of one physician, one nurse practitioner, three nurses and four support personnel triaged, evaluated, and examined 1200 patients. In Olmekenyu, 512 patients were treated and in Morijo, 400. The total number of conditions and diseases diagnosed was 84 with 111 cases of worms, 93 wounds, 78 of otitis media, 52 of bronchitis, 29 of typhoid and 20 cases of scabies topping the list. Interestingly, there were only a few diagnosed cases of HIV and malnutrition did not seem to be a significant problem in the areas we visited. 2009 – One nurse practitioner and two nurses plus one local physician evaluated and treated 1500 patients in three villages.

Dental Mission: 2008 - A team of one dentist, me, Dr. Daniel and one dental student from Nairobi worked for 7 clinic days with our team and examined 485 patients with 699 teeth extracted, 20 teeth filled. This year we had a portable generator to run our halogen headlight for dental loops and a portable dental unit with high and low speed, air-water syringe and oral evacuator. Ah, the advances of modern dentistry on wheels! 2009 – we added two additional dental students this year for half our trip and treated 560 patients completing 860 extractions, 50 fillings, 20 full mouth ultrasonic scalings, 3 lingual frenectomies and 1 root canal.

50% of the teeth were extracted due to caries, 40% due to periodontal disease and 10% due to orthodontic wishes of the patients. It was interesting that the Kipsigi to some degree and the Maasai to a larger degree do not consider a crowded look and especially a “fangy” look to be attractive. They always want the most misaligned tooth removed.

A smile that the Maasai find attractive is that of an open space in the lower front teeth. It is common for two teeth to be removed for cosmetic reasons in their culture. The locals told me that the reason has to do with a common practice from many years ago. When someone would get “lockjaw” they would knock out the two lower central incisors to allow a straw to feed them. It became a status symbol to have those teeth removed. Later, it became a fashion statement.

The ongoing development of Mercy Hospital in Olmekenyu was the highlight of the entire mission. In 2002, the tile was laid on the floor and the pharmacy interior was constructed. Upon our return in June 2004, the cistern was completed; the refrigerator installed to keep medications and vaccines cool, the solar panel/battery system was in operation to keep the refrigerator running. Since our last visit cellular telephone service has come to the town and the hospital. Also this year we have funded two full-time nurse’s positions at the clinic.

As you can tell, it was a very busy time. We did a children's outreach - feeding 300 children in one village and did a Bible study with them: 125 were saved! The Tembea Na Yesu (walk with Christ - a 3 day spiritual retreat) had 56 people in attendance. There were local pastors and community leaders in attendance. It was a wonderful event for them and for those of us who participated by teaching: Brad, Lisa, Hayden, Sheila, myself and leaders from Sotik in Kenya where previous Tembea Na Yesu's have been held. We are partnering with local churches and pastors in one of the villages to help take care of 12 orphans. The pastors are finding homes and overseeing their care and we will provide funds for their school fees, uniform and monthly food allowance for the family who takes them in. If this works well, we will fund more for the following year and try to get pastors in other villages to do the same thing. The funds that are given to towards the orphans.

As we work, we find more needs than can be met. But what we realize is that we made a difference each year for a handful of people. Individuals are healthier; they are alive; they are learning from us as we learn from them. We are making friends that impact our lives as equally as we do theirs. I hope you’ll visit our web sites and meet our friends.

Other web sites about the mission:

KenyaMedicalOutreach.ning.com

Afdd.com/kenya/2009.html

Wbwilliams on Twitter

William B. Williams on Facebook

Donations are tax deductible, are welcomed and can be sent to KMO c/o

Bill Williams, DMD, MAGD

Director: Kenya Medical Outreach, Inc a Georgia registered non-profit charity

200 Johnson Road

Suwanee, GA 30024