Project MARC

Trip Logbook

May 2006

Sylvia Steinert's 2005 Logbook

Presented below is a selection of six Project MARC expedition reports prepared by Sylvia Steinert and Peter Brouwer in September of 2005. For the complete set of nearly twenty reports, the reader is referred to Peter and Sylvia's own  Seacrest website.

Sylvia and Peter are experienced cruisers who have hosted the website since many years. Their sailing vessel is famous for having the longest Dutch name ever given to a 47ft sloop, namely: "Peer & Sil de Schuymer". Understandably, their nonDutch speaking friends prefer to use the vessels's much shorter nickname "Seacrest".

The Seacrest site is a treasure trove of cruising information for sailors visiting the Mediterranean and many other popular continental as well as transcontinental cruising grounds.

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~ September Team Sails to Outer Islands ~ 

There were 2 teams of volunteers that would be working for Project MARC this month.
Both teams were headed north, to Santo Island. One team would be opening a new mobile clinic. The other team, called the exploratory team, would go inland, to research which facilities were needed in the future and to give primary care to the communities.
The volunteers travelled by sailing boats to Santo, the mobile clinic group aboard the boat "Siome", the exploratory team aboard the catamaran, "Augustina".

For the trip north, we would travel together with the Siome.
Our first stop, en route to Santo, was in the Maskelynes, at the village Sakao.

The Project had planned for us to leave Friday afternoon, at about 4.00 p.m.
However, during the day the wind had consistently picked up speed, the seas were becoming rough, and so, Alan, the skipper of Siome, decided to postpone our departure. We had so many boxes piled one on top of the other in the ship, that Allan didn't think it would be a good thing to be out at sea in these conditions.

Saturday the weather was calm. At 1.30 p.m. we were at the quay with all our luggage, full of camera equipment. We climbed down the quay ladder, stepped into the red dinghy, went across the bay to where Siome was anchored. We were faced with a challenge, a challenge that would keep repeating itself - the challenge was to keep our camera equipment dry, when getting in and out of the dinghy. All our equipment was packed in water-tight bags - but still - there was always the worry that perhaps a freak wave would come, we would make a wrong move, and the bag with equipment would fall into the water.

At 4.00 p.m. the anchor was taken up, and we were on our way. The sails were up before we were out of the bay.
We had lovely weather - calm seas, nice wind.
And then we had a wonderful treat. A school of dolphins joined us. They swam and dived around the bow of the boat. A lovely sight!

We sailed through the night.
Sylvia took the first watch, together with Martha, the co-skipper of the Siome.
Peter took the most difficult watch, from 2.00-5.00 a.m., together with Brian, one of the volunteers.

To enter the channel to the bay of the village, we had to pass close to the reefs. Alan had planned to do this in daylight. His timing was good.
There are no detailed charts of this sea area. Alan had to navigate all on sight. No easy task, we thought.

As we approached the village, we could hear the chanting of the Sunday hymns.

~ Sakao Anchorage & Coral Bay Clinic;
meeting place for people and boats ~ 

In 2000 Project MARC had built a clinic here in Sakao. They had trained 3 villagers to become health care workers.
Each year, Project MARC comes back, to bring new medical supplies, which will last them for the year.
Boxes full of medical supplies were taken off board Siome, and together with the villagers, they were carried up the hill to the clinic.

While on board Siome, we were greeted by many of the locals. Of course, they all knew the skippers of the Siome, from previous years, and so they came in their dug-out sailing canoes to say "hello". One man came on board, since this was his chance to see a real doctor (one of the volunteers) - while he was on board, his son waited patiently for him in the canoe.

Here on the island there is no electricity. On board the electricity supply is limited. Our camera is powered by batteries. And these batteries have to be charged. With foresight we had bought a solar panel while we were at home. We now put it to good use. Sun power is plentiful here. As soon as one battery was low, Peter would connect it to our solar panel, and hours later, the battery was again fully charged.

~ Landing People and Supplies
on Espiritu Santo's Rugged West Coast ~ 

Last year, Project MARC had researched this remote mountain area of Santo and had discovered that there were no medical facilities for the mountain villages.
It was therefore decided to construct a mobile clinic in the United States - to transport all the parts of the clinic by ship to Vanuatu - and then to build the clinic in Lanopo.
During the month of August, this had happened. A group of volunteers had come to Lanopo and like a jigsaw puzzle, they had put all the bits and pieces of the clinic together.
Now, our group of volunteers would actually "open" the clinic, give medical help to the locals, but even more important, they would train the chosen health care workers, so that they could give medical care throughout the year.

But getting to Lanopo, was no easy task.

With a local red boat we were taken off the Siome, then through the surf, we made a landing. We got ashore "dry" but as the morning progressed, so did the surf, and the last group that stepped ashore called it a "wet landing".

This time we had even more boxes - an endless amount - from Siome they were loaded into the red boat - and with everyone's help, they were brought onto shore.

The villagers of Lanopo were here on the beach too, ready to carry the boxes to their village. Young children, women with babies - everyone was willing to help.
We were just amazed how the women took the boxes, and managed to carry one on their head and two on their back - all at the same time, as if it was nothing at all.
The children were fascinated by our video camera - they loved to gather around Peter and look through the little camera screen to see what he was filming.

And this was just the beginning.
Ahead of us, we only saw mountains.
Through the bush was a small mountain path.
And up this path we had to go.
In the distance, there was a mountain peak on the left, and Lanopo was just beyond the peak.

~ Jungle Mountain Clinic;
"to boldly go...." ~ 

The clinic had been nicknamed the "Jungle Mountain Clinic".
The clinic was a 15 minute hike out of the village.
Project MARC had built the clinic outside of the village, as it not only serviced the people of Lanopo, but also all of the neighbouring mountain villages, as there are no other health care facilities in the whole area. One of our volunteer doctors who had visited one of these villages, had said upon her return, "When we are sick, we take the ambulance to a hospital, these people have to walk 2 hours down a steep mountain path to be able to get some help at the new clinic."

The clinic had been built on a wooded plateau.
To the surprise of the volunteers who had also been there the month before (while building the clinic), the clinic plateau had been completely cleared of the trees, a guesthouse and an outhouse had been built.

The boxes and all the other goods as sleeping cots and batteries were brought up to the clinic.
The women were still busy cleaning the ground, making sure that every little leaf or pebble was cleared away.

We were ready to get the clinic up and running.
The first patients arrived.
A mother with two children, whose bodies were covered with scabies.
The Chief himself wanted to be examined too.
Esther, the health care worker from Sakao, had come with us as well, so that she could be further trained. Deirdre explained to her how to make the medication to treat scabies and let her smell the "potion".
During the next few days Deirdre gave lessons to the new health care workers that had been chosen by the "clinic council". This year she would teach them the basics, next year but also the following years, the Project would return and further train these people.

The clinic had been designed and constructed at the University of Utah in the United States.
It is the intention that this clinic will be built in the future in other villages as well.

~ Providing Urgent Care for Scabies

& Other Community Health Problems ~ 

We were anchored in Lisbourne Bay.
The people in the village Palmel had seen us anchored in their bay, and knew that we were there to give some medical care.

In the afternoon, we took the dinghy to the beach.
As Sally, our volunteer nurse, stepped out of the dinghy, the villagers streamed to the beach. They stood there, looking concerned, and with their eyes you could see them hoping for help.

A young woman had a small baby in her arms.
The baby was put on her purple blanket on the sandy black beach.
Sally & Sandy, our volunteer midwife, were shocked to see her body. The baby was covered with scabies - from her head, over her whole body, down to her feet. She was a beautiful baby. But she was constantly scratching with her little hands; it was like a reflex reaction - scratch, scratch, scratch. It broke out heart to see this.
Sally and Sandy covered the baby's body with scabies medication.
Then Sandy treated the baby's sister also for scabies. This girl had been itching her scabie scars, and because of the dirt under her finger nails, the open scabie wounds had become infected. Sandy explained to the "camera" that the girl wouldn't die from the scabies, but that the infection was so serious, that if it wouldn't be treated, the girl would die.
On board Sally's boat, we had the right type of antibiotic cream to treat the infection, so this was given to the mother & father.
The thought did cross our mind, that perhaps, because we had been here today, we had saved this little girl's life.

A mother with a little boy, also with open wounds, approached Sally. Between the beach shrubs, Sally covered his body with the scabies medication. The lotion burned on the boy's wounds, and it pained us to hear him cry.

We walked along the beach to the village.
There the doctors, James & Adam, treated the men, for ringworm and chest problems.

And then, one for one, the children came to Sally.
They were all covered in scabies.
Scabies is caused by a little insect that nestles under the skin; it lays eggs, and thereby spreads over the whole body. The little insects can "jump" from one body to the next; therefore if someone in the family has it, it spreads to the other members of the family, and slowly spreads through the rest of the community.
If people have lots of water and soap, then you can keep scabies away, but these people have no money for soap.
But with the scabies medication, if all the people in the family, and better yet, in the village are treated, and all their clothes and their mats that they sleep on are also cleaned and treated, then there's a good chance that they can keep the scabies away, at least for some time.

Treating all these scabies children, the afternoon passed quickly.
Slowly it became dark.

Then the head of the village council came to Sandy with a 4 month old baby on his arms. The baby had club feet. Sandy looked at the feet, turned them in her hands, and told us that she would teach the parents some exercises that they would have to do every day, to turn the feet, and that most probably, they would be able to correct the feet.
In the western world, the baby would have had her first operation to correct the club feet at 1 month old.
Perhaps our visit here will make an essential different to this baby's future.

It got darker and darker. The doctors continued to treat the patients. With the beam of our camera lamp, we gave the doctors enough light to examine the patients.

~ Teaching Hygiene to Primary School Children ~ 

During the weekend, on the beach we had met Naomi, the first grade school teacher in the village Palmel.
On Monday, Sandy went to her classroom, to give the children some hygiene lessons.
She explained to the children that because they had no soap, they could use the black sand on the beach to clean their skin. She showed them how to spread the sand over their arms, and told them to then go swimming in the sea.

The school morning lessons were finished.
However, before going home, they said their daily prayer together.

Outside the school, Naomi explained to us that she enjoyed being a teacher, because she thought that education for the children was really important.

And then the children gave us a special treat.
With balloons in their hand, they sang to us a song about "children and education".