Benin Mission, 24th June – 2nd July 2017.

This mission was due to the friendship between Pepe Pascual and Fr Martin, chaplain at the 11 October Hospital, who told Pepe and Teresa about the existence of this religious order in charge of the hospital, and of its need of surgeons.

The members of the mission agreed to meet at 16 hours in the T4 terminal of Madrid. The first to arrive were the founders, Teresa, Pepe and Faustino. Then came Alba, a 23 years old, then myself, Carmen, an entrepreneur in charge of logistic tasks. We began by packing up the large bags of surgical material. Soon came Lupe, an Ibiza surgeon, and then Andrea, last year resident at Pamplona. There was some problem with our bags and with the wine I insisted on bringing with me against the rules. Everything was settled, always with Faustino’s help, and we boarded the plane. We flew to Casablanca. On arrival we were surprised that there were two hours difference with Spain when we had told there was only one as in Benin. They had advanced an extra hour because of Ramadan.

At last we boarded the plane to Cotonou: 6 hours with a stop in Lomé. In Cotonou we recovered that lost  hour. It was about 4 in the morning, and Fr Martín was there to receive us. After greeting us he left us with Sister Rufine who took us in a hospital van to Dangbo, which is the village where the hospital is placed. The road was fatal, but the driver was experienced. We arrived at Dangbo about 6 o’clock and we went directly to the house we were to stay in, which most likely was the house of some rich man as there was air conditioning in all the rooms. We distributed the rooms, 3 for 7, put up the mosquito nets, placed our belongings and decided to go to the Sister’s house for breakfast. From there we went to the hospital, which is by the side, to put the material in order and then to go home to rest and take a shower before lunch. At noon we took lunch with the nuns (who, by the way, are great cooks and are very neatly dressed in blue according to the local style).

We started at 13:30. There were 60 patients to be evaluated, most of them for hernias and mostly very large, with also very large lipomas. We divided ourselves into 2 groups and made a list of patients with their diagnoses and a list of all the interventions programmed from Monday to Friday, trying to keep Friday evening free for some excursion. The consult tokk up the whole evening, and we went back to the Sisters house for supper. Then straight home as we were dead tired.

This was the routine each day from Monday: At 7’30 we met and went walking to the sister’s house for a “petit dejeneur”, and then to the hospital where we first saw the patients operated on the previous day and then began to work on the new ones. The operations took place in an air conditioned theater with two beds separated by a curtain. If you were lucky and the light did not fail or very complicated cases came, we could handle between 11 and 14 each day.

We got into our rhythm and all went well. We still had time to go to the “Majestic” (the only bar available) for a beer before supper. The atmosphere was totally African: Food stands everywhere, motorcycles running at full speed, and all men and women dressed in thos colourfull cloths that are a joy to see.

When the Sisters could lend us their van we went to our hotel for supper, which was wonderful for us as it had wifi and we established contact with family and friends. The walking trips to the village, the driving in the van and the conversation at home were moments of joy which could be fantastic. We were very happy and this was going to affect all our life.

51 patients with 57 procedures was the final score.