Bogla &quot;bull (rhymes with lull)-gla&quot;

Dan and I struck out on a day trip to Bogla. Bogla is about 2-2.5 hours north of Tamale close to the border with Burkina (OK - be honest how many people new there was a country called Burkina Faso - we all have to get out of our comfort zone a bit more). The PCG has a presbytery office in the north of Ghana located in Bogla.

The drive up to Bogla was every bit of 2.5 hours. It's a great road, few pot holes, but the reason some of our neighborhoods in Memphis cannot get speed humps to slow the traffic down...is because all those speed humps are between Tamale and Bolgla in every part of the highway where more than 10 people gather/live. These are SERIOUS speed humps like if you don't slow down - you will need to buy a new car! We got to Bogla, picked up the Chairman of the North Presby and headed off to the outskirts of town.

Let me take a minute and talk about towns. The towns I have been in in Ghana, the main roads have asphalt (although some of these roads may have more potholes than asphalt) - the sceondary roads are dirt roads in various condition. In Bogla, the secondary dirt roads are in GREAT condition - probably better than some of the secondary roads in Memphis. I bring this up because traveling in Ghana you have to have a differrent mindset - be open to what's going on, no necessarily what you are seeing. Heading out to the outskirts of Bogla we were on secondary roads passing through tight clusters of houses and businesses and then through areas with fewer strutures more land/fields and huge rocks.

We arrived at the Presbyterian Eye Clinic. This clinic is the destination for medical treatment for the eye for the north of Ghana (see the pictures - you will see why). The clinic sees 200 patients a day (christians, muslims, etc.). The clinic does everything from eye exams to surgerys, i.e. cataracts, etc. It is very clean, organized (see the picture of the Records Room), and they are very forward thinking. Right now, the patients that need to stay over night from a surgery, spend the night in the waiting room. The eye clinic is constructing a new Ward to house these overnight patients. The clinic also has a nurses training center.

The chief doctor was away to the east about 2.5 hours at the Presbyterian Hospital, so we got the tour from Mary the chief nurse.

The clinic is a candidate for a LWW system at some point. Dan Kolbilla needs to feed it into the process. The clinic has access to water they feel is suffcient for washing hands and a few other things, but not sufficient for drinking and providing patient care.

Front of clininc