A couple of weeks ago we organized a malaria clinic for refugees from Burundi.
























It was held at Catholic Charities on N. Salina Street. The Clinic was unusual because treatment was ordered by the CDC. The urgent nature of the situation led University Hospital to organize a mobile clinic which got everyone out of their usual routine. We saw 50 patients in a couple of hours by cutting through most of the usual bureaucratic red tape. Dr. Cronkright, our boss for the summer was amazed at how much for efficiently we were able to take care of this situation than in a normal clinic setting where even the organization of space prevents one translator from attending to more than one person at a time. In this setting we saw entire families at the same time, the translator could be called from table to table when he was needed--which was constantly as we only had two people who could go between Kirundi and English. Most of these Burundians, unlike Rwandans, do not speak French either, which made it very difficult to find translators.

We had lots of French speakers, but of the 50 refugees only 6 spoke any French.

This little girl is from Somalia, I think. She was at the Catholic Charities building participating in another program. The features of people form Northern Africa are slightly different. They remind me of my friend Woinam who was born in Ethiopia. According to the people working for refugee services in the City many more refugees from Africa will be arriving in the fall and winter. I think I'd rather arrive in the summer. From Africa to snow is too much to expect.