FC Brings Health Care, Technology to African Rainforest

By STAN FENDLEY
Falls Church Times Staff

The story is compelling.

“A young mother with two children is about to give birth to her third.  She has been in labor since early last night.  Her labor pains have been excruciating, but the baby won’t come.  She is totally exhausted and, as she feels her strength fading, she asks her husband to take her to the clinic, which is 14 miles away.  Her husband and brother load her onto a stretcher and carry her hours over muddy flooded tracks through driving rain to reach the little Kokolopori Health Clinic in Yalokole village.  There, Dr. Pondolo Saidi, a nurse, and a midwife welcome her.”

So reads the account of life in the African rainforest, posted on the website of the Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership.  Dr. Barthelemey Pondolo Saidi is the clinic director in Kokolopori, Democratic Republic of Congo, Falls Church’s sister city.  The Sister-City Partnership recruited Saidi to move to Kokolopori in 2008, and since then Falls Church residents have paid his salary ($5,000 annually) and that of his senior nurse, Nestor Baelongandi ($1,800).

The idea of hiring a doctor for the Kokolopori clinic came from Falls Church resident and nurse-practitioner Maura Constance.  Constance has raised funds for Dr. Saidi’s salary — singlehandedly for the first two years by asking her friends to sponsor her Marine Corps Marathon run, and this year as part of Team Kokolopori at Sister Cities International’s first Race for World Peace

Dr. Saidi has more than 30 years of experience in surgery, public health and general medicine, and he is the only doctor in this community of over 8000 people.  On average, the Kokolopori health clinic treats about 20 patients a day.

An Australian organization, the Indigo Foundation, pays three other medical staff, including a senior nurse who runs a dispensary in Yettee, another Kokolopori village.  All the nurses are learning advanced medical and surgical procedures from the doctor so that they can better help with the overwhelming medical needs in Kokolopori and the surrounding area.

Saidi and the clinic nurses have treated patients suffering from a wide range of maladies, including malnutrition, malaria, parasitic worms, burns and machete wounds. Saidi has performed more than 150 surgeries, for appendicitis, Caesarean sections, hernias, ovarian cysts, tumors and other urgent surgical needs.

His work in Kokolopori has not been without personal burdens for Saidi, whose family lives in a distant part of the Congo.

“I have worked here for the past two years, far from my children, because I love my country and the people need me here,” Saidi says. “People would definitely die if we weren’t here.”

Located in the heart of Africa’s Congo Basin rainforest, Kokolopori has been Falls Church’s sister city since February 2006.  In addition to paying Saidi and his top nurse, Falls Church residents also have sent more than $5,000 worth of medicines and medical supplies, and have paid for a survey to determine the prevalence of malnutrition in Kokolopori. The Falls Church Lions Club donated 400 pairs of used prescription eyeglasses, and the Victorian Society at Falls Church donated a non-electric device for testing vision.  The Falls Church Village Preservation and Improvement Society donated a satellite communications system to allow email and Internet access.    Other ongoing projects of the sister city partnership include installation of solar lighting and a rainwater collection system for the clinic.

The Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership (www.kokolopori-partnership.org) is a  subsidiary of the Bonobo Conservation Initiative (www.bonobo.org), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo.