During our time in Zambia, we set up a pop up clinic for 4 days. The first 2 days we were at schools in the city and the last 2 days we were in a remote village south of the city. Every day when we got to the clinic, there were already close to a hundred people waiting outside for us. While there are some resources in Zambia, there is a lot of poverty and it can be hard for people to afford healthcare and/or medication, so us being there to provide free healthcare and medicines was a big deal for them. One of the big takeaways I had from the clinic was how grateful every person was. They were so thankful to be getting any form of medical attention, even if that was just a simple assessment and some pain meds. There were a couple of hard moments where people needed more help than we could give them, or we had run out of the medicine they needed. This would lead to some frustration, I had one lady tell me how she walked all the way there from her home to get medicine, but we did not have what she needed and that was hard to communicate. So aside from those hard and understably frustrating moments, the main emotion was grace and gratitude. As a team we all worked really well together and were able to see over 200 people every day. It was cool to see how just a few minutes of care meant the world to them and how something that seems maybe simple to us means everything to them.
