A dental clinic with a difference

Yesterday, I shared a bit about the Acholi community – a tribal group living in very poor conditions in Kampala but, through their links with John Njendahayo, and therefore the international teams that John and Sophie host, are gradually becoming able to move from unskilled laboring in the nearby quarries to making a living from the paper bead jewellery that they create.

Eradication of poverty through empowerment and sustainable means is a key thread that underlies all of John’s work over here. He himself comes from a very impoverished start,  and his story of how he got to where he is now is in itself an incredible testimony of God at work in John’s life. A subject for a blog another day!

But today we visited a project that exemplifies magnificently how John is putting into practice the sustainability side of things in all he does.

Maya is a rural community near to Kampala,  with no electricity or running water. The people live subsistence lifestyles, and monetary income is very little. Some years back, John was part of a conversation that led to a vision for developing a community health facility in a rural community, and for one reason and another it ended up being in Maya

The project is still being developed, and over the past few years of visiting John, and taking teams out to work with him, I have had the privilege of seeing it grow, and hearing John talk of the increasing number of sustainable elements he is bringing to it.

The overall vision is to have a dental clinic, a medical clinic and a maternal health unit that will not only provide a safe environment for delivery of babies, but also run ante-natal and post-natal clinics, cervical screening, immunization programmes for under-5s etc. A big vision – but who achieved anything worthwhile by dreaming small!

And so far this is what has been achieved: the buildings for the dental and medical clinics have been completed, and the the maternal health unit is built, with a roof on (complete with some really neat bats in the eaves!) although still needing the final finish.

The dental clinic has been treating patients for 4 months now, and progress is being made on the medical clinic front. The maternal health unit obviously will take longer, but some interesting conversations with other stakeholders are already taking place about its use.

But the really impressive side of things is the sustainability of it all. The clinic has solar panels to power the various bits of dental kit, and the water is all rainwater that has been harvested and stored in massive underground tanks. The water is pumped from the main storage tank low down up to the header tank by a pump that runs on a stepping system ie it has two footplates that act like a stepper machine, and as the operator stands on them and steps up and down the water is pumped up to the higher tank. Brilliant – no fuel except human energy to make it function, and I love the idea that the doctors could actually prescribe time on the stepper pump as part of an ‘exercise on prescription’ programme!

So, we have solar energy and rainwater harvesting, and then there is biogas for heating the water for the pressure cook to sterilize the instruments. The biogas comes from the two cows kept in the compound, and the bi-product of the biogas is manure that they use to put on the crops that are being grown in the garden to provide a range of organic fruit and vegetables for the local people.

And as if that wasn’t enough to mean this whole project is impressively sustainable, then let me tell you that the bricks used to construct all the buildings were made in an environmentally friendly way – compressed bricks, that are of an interlocking design, thus only needing the occasional bit of cement, and don’t need to be baked in the making, so getting rid of the need for any firewood etc.

I think you are probably getting the hang of why I was so inspired by this project today, and of John’s vision for sustainable living generally, but here’s a final couple of bits of info on it:

The lad who is in charge of feeding the cows, and keeping guard of the building, gets to milk the cows, and then sell the milk at whatever price he chooses, and keep the money as his wages – an excellent example of empowering the next generation!

And when the medical clinic is open there will be an opportunity for an entrepreneurial cook to start up a café using the vegetables and fruit grown on the land.

So, there you have it – a dental clinic with a difference, in the most positive sense. Health care for all, and delivered in a sustainable way; demonstrating to many just how it is possible to move towards a better way of living that leaves an imperceptible footprint on the world.

In John’s words (or at least my version of what he said): “it’s about living in God’s world in a way that shows we honour God’s gifts to us, rather than abuse them, and in so doing show our love and gratitude to God for all He has done to us”.

Pretty good huh!