Thursday 4th June. Getting into the swing!

Back to Betio Sports complex, bright and early. Debrief with all the team to streamline our stations better, and customers were soon streaming through the door. As seen yesterday, plenty of onlookers and visitors watching.

Set up again in the sports complex

Young vet nurses!

A tally of 9 female dogs, 2 female cats, 1 male cat, 22 male dogs and 3 pig castrations, so we were pretty pleased with that! We also had opportunity to work with two local paravets and help them to fine tune some of their surgery technique. One guy really was very good so it was great to see what he could do under supervision. We are using an intravenous anaesthetic which is new to most but works very well, but this is something for the local paravets to learn.

Doing some training with one of the paravets.

Once again, locals were extremely grateful for us giving veterinary care and doing desexing on their animals. I had a great chat to one guy who explained that locals like female dogs because they stay around your home and are better guard dogs! His dog was a really gentle beautiful older girl, saggy and baggy with many litters, but obviously well loved. He told me this dog rescued his young daughter out of the water by the wharf by dragging her to safety by her hair. He really loved his dog and I could see why!

We added desexing male piglets to our skills with a new drug combination that worked really well.

"China" the lovely wonder rescue dog with appreciative owner.

We finished our day after freshening up by desexing another cat (a male at least which is easy) before being served a delicious dinner by some Australians working here for a few years. Nice to eat some fresh tuna and to have a proper meal for once! 

Ongoing internet debacles testing my mettle this evening....but this is Kiribati as I know well. 

But we are having fun despite the heat and sweat!

Team PP2015 with the locals!

Wednesday 3rd June. D-Day

Sorry about the delay in posting. Reliving the internet frustrations very, very frequently at the moment and it is not just the operator (i.e. me!!)

Morning fish in Teaoraereke.

Well we can just summarise today as being a very successful first day in a new venue. We set up down in the Betio Sports Complex which is very centrally placed in the centre of the Betio islet, and is essentially bordered by housing. Betio is the site of the Battle of Tarawa in World War II, and has numerous war relics including old bunkers, battle guns and rusting ship and amphibious craft debris. It also apparently has a higher population density than Hong Kong and very few buildings are double storey!

Leesa and Helen with the US Navy (& army) team.

Some highlights: meeting up as a new team after months of planning!, chatting with local children as they watched and waited for their dogs, dogs starting to stream through the doors! Thanks to Hornsby Veterinary Hospital (HVH) in Sydney for their generous donations of surgical instruments and consumables which was put to good use today. And we loved being able to send dogs home with AMRRIC collars. We were delighted at how appreciative local people were at getting their dogs (and 1 pig!) desexed.

In the sports stadium working hard.

We desexed 8 females and 13 males (dogs) and had to turn a few customers away at the end as we had to finish for sports practices after 3pm.

The evening was memorable for our microwaved lean cuisine dinners (night number 3!) taking over 2 hours to be delivered from being heated in the kitchen (the next door supermarket has a freezer full of them and very cheap!), and tackling the ever elusive internet connections. Needless to say in-house wifi, internet café wifi, laptop skype, and internet café skype connections were all hoped for but eluded us. Ho hum, will try again tomorrow…

A bright happy customer with AMRRIC collar!

A part of the family off home.

The problem we are trying to address with our volunteer work.
Dogs cause real community nuisance apart from all the public health issues.

Monday 1st and Tuesday 2nd June. Heat, going round in circles and red-carpet welcome.

The last 2 days has been a blur of trying to get sleep sitting on planes or in airports, adjusting to Kiribati heat and humidity and the many other things that make Kiribati, Kiribati!

We managed to arrive uneventfully after a spectacular view of the narrow strips of Tarawa atoll landmass overshadowed by massive storm clouds. Squeezing everyone into the tiny baggage collection area in stifling heat was memorable, while we peered expectantly at the baggage carts for any signs of our bags. I was a little surprised but relieved see all our luggage. The patient waiting had begun. No point getting impatient and we eventually got through bag inspection (almost last!) and were greeted by a lady waiting with a large van to take us to our hotel in Bairiki. More relief that we had a ride in an airconditioned van!

A very long, slow and at times bumpy ride past many familiar places to one of the largest villages called Bairiki where we were booked to stay at the new hotel, the Tarawa Boutique Hotel. Quite a spacious, new, clean,  mosquito-proof room with airconditioning made us happy!

After a great sleep we were ready to face our first full day. Catching the local bus down to Betio was a good introduction to atoll life for Helen and Leesa. We had organised to meet Brian our navy vet down at the Betio wharf where the ship was expected to dock at 8.30am.

Our morning walk along the old wharf to meet up with Brian and to see the ship.

We should have learnt from the locals to take it easy and relax while we waited.

More lessons on Kiribati time and how little control we actually have over situations in a new country.

I said “expected” to dock at 8.30am. So after walking down the wharf road we met up with navy people who informed us the ship was being cleared by customs. But they were still expecting it to dock at 8.30am. Yes, so we talked and waited and talked and chatted to the locals at the security gate to the wharf eyeing off their little cats that needed desexing. I also got translations for various english words such as “surgery” (te korokoro). No ship. We finally decided to wander back into Betio to Phil’s old workplace to meet a colleague of his. After we had a nice chat, it was at least 10 o’clock before we wandered back along the wharf road to the gate. Still no ship. It was still waiting a long way off port undergoing customs inspection and clearance.

By the time we had done all our walking and waiting we were pooped!

Customer?

Yes the ship had docked and now the long walk to reach it
down the new Betio wharf.

So then we decided to go and wait for Brian back at his hotel in Betio. So we waited some more. Still no ship. Brian eventually arrived back. No ship. So we had lunch. No ship. Then we finally decided to head back to Bairiki on the local bus after a very heavy downpour to retrieve some veterinary gear we left at the Australian High Commission so we would be ready for work tomorrow.

USNS Millinocket (JHSV-3) 

So the bus headed off down the very sodden potholed road, and then instead of heading along the atoll towards Bairiki it headed back down around the Betio loop, another 20 or 30 minutes of bumpy joy. It felt like groundhog day as we watched the same scenery pass us by AGAIN. When we finally left Betio to add insult to injury we could see in the distance that the ship had finally docked!!

More waiting back in Bairiki (getting a phone SIM card), bumping into a few old familiar faces (which was a delight), slight freshen up then we were headded back down to Betio on the local bus for the ship’s welcoming ceremony. A slight hiccup at the security gate…our names weren’t on THE LIST despite Brian’s warm welcome to attend the ceremony. But we were soon allowed to walk down the brand new wharf towards the ship. Red carpet and guard of honour was soon in front of us…really, for us? yes we were all the way from Australia….but no, we skirted that (just after the President of Kiribati, Anote Tong had passed through).

Red carpet welcome....but not for us.

The President Anote Tong, US Ambassador and the chief Navy
 officer for Pacific Partnerships 2015 

But yes, we were welcome to follow and board the ship….this huge piece of engineering…a bit daunting. So up we went and stood at the back and tried to blend in to the metal wall (?) and stay unnoticed as everything looked so official and most people looked very smart and elegant in their navy uniforms and we did not feel likewise!

We got through the speeches, all with the initial worry that we were about to faint in the sun only to realize that the swaying was the ship! In his speech Anote Tong highlighted the international collaboration and friendship between the US, Australia, New Zealand and Kiribati, and even commended the previous dog sterilisation programmes that had taken place on Tarawa that had helped his people. Yay to vet teams!! What a plug! So I chatted to him afterwards and he had had his dog desexed a few years ago!

Our PP2015 vet team, Paige, Brian, Helen, Leesa and
a few others missing. With pallets of gear!

So now we await our patients with great expectation…radio announcements have been aired on local radio and we are hoping we will be kept busy!

Sunday 31st May. Kept on our toes

Well, the last 24 hours have been a foretaste of what is to come. Our plan has been to join the US Navy team who were providing all the medications and gear on Tarawa which was going to make things a little easier in terms of cost and carrying gear. But at the 11th hour, an email from Brian the US Navy vet yesterday afternoon informed us that the pallets with some of the gear had been put on the wrong ship, and there was a long list of stuff he thought we might still need….

At least he gave us 24 hours! But it is a weekend! So Helen and I have phoned and begged favours and generally sounded probably fairly risqué as we have tried to source various veterinary medications including anaesthetic drugs.  So crash course in working out how many bottles of everything you approximately need to desex approximately 300 dogs! So hoping we have done that right. A good contact in Canberra and Mick at Lyppards in Adelaide opening after hours made it possible to pack what we think we need!

Our new vet team at Melbourne Airport plus all our gear!!!

So the unpredictability began before we even set foot on a plane. You had to smile at least. We may end up on Tarawa with a double set of medications but Brian was not able to get any more information from the ship about what they had.  At least it is good for an adrenalin rush (Editors note – 2 days later we now know that some of the injectable anaesthetics we brought were not doubled up and without them the dogs would have had pretty rough, if not impossible anaesthetics!).

So that was an interesting prelude to us all meeting eachother, at least the Australian part of the team. We all met up by around 9pm in Melbourne airport with our departure time delayed to 12.30am. So that together with 6.5 hours waiting in Nadi airport Fiji gave us a fair bit of time to chat and get to know eachhother!

Our view over Tarawa as we flew in the next afternoon.

Tarawa, late afternoon.

Introducing the team

I'm not so nervous this trip as we have done it once and local I-Kiribati people were very enthusiastic and supportive of our efforts last August. We continue to be given significant financial support by the Mardi-Chi Dingo Foundation (Dr Jude Mullolland) which makes it possible for us to get to South Tarawa. But the new unknowns are a new team of people, including collaborating with the U.S. Navy Pacific Partnerships who support infrastructure, health and other projects around the Pacific every few years.

 Jude and nurse Denise were unable to travel with me again on this trip, so we have a new team. I will be joined by vet nurse extraordinaire Leesa, who has 4 years experience assisting Dr. Stephen Cutter (The Ark Animal Hospital, Darwin) with dog management and health programmes in remote central and north west Australia. I met Leesa (and Stephen) on an Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities (AMRRIC) trip in 2013 in the Pilbarra. She comes with a wealth of invaluable experience and calmness which should prove useful!

My veterinary colleague is Helen whom comes highly regarded by AMRRIC. I connected with Helen through a veterinary article describing her very interesting quests around the world seeking adventure and remoteness, so following google and an email she was hooked at the suggestion of somewhere remote where she could utilize her extensive veterinary skills. Helen has been part of the Canberra Mob - Indigenous Dog Health group, which travels twice a year to the Northern Territory to deliver dog desexing and health programmes. She is also a great supporter of AMRRIC and a veterinary practice owner. We look forward to working together!

And if you didn't work it out from previous blogs I am a small animal veterinarian working in Adelaide, but keen to see some changes in dog health and welfare on South Tarawa. My family and I lived on South Tarawa for 12 months in 2012 so had first hand experience of the impact of dog overpopulation on human community well being, as well as the significant animal welfare issues.

And we will join up with a team of 2 veterinarians and 1 or 2 veterinary nurses from the U.S. Navy Pacific Partnerships team. This trip they are supplying all the equipment and medications and have done alot of the on the ground planning. A truly trans-Pacific project. Should be fun!

So we are busy packing necessities like gastrolyte and mozzie repellant and dog worming tablets and once we meet up in Melbourne we will be on our way!