My first day at the dental clinic was super good! I met the whole dental team Thursday morning at the reception desk where we gathered up all our supplies for the day. After loading all of our supplies into our two Land Rovers we drove 15 minutes to the Dental Clinic. The scenery here is so familiar to me. I feel like I am in Central America. :) The same flowers and trees that I've seen in Nicaragua or Guatemala. I am wishing the language was the same as in Central America. French is the common language here. And I just have to say my French is non-existent. So,on the ship we have Rosetta Stone! I will be checking that out soon.
Ok, we got to the dental clinic and met the day workers(local volunteers that work as translators and do other volunteer jobs). They are sooo super helpful! They do a pre-screening of  the patients. Then we see the patients after them.
To start out our morning we begin with devotions on the top floor of the clinic. The day workers are very musical so we do some singing as well.The team I am working with is exceptional! I am very impressed. Right now we have one dentist and 4 assistants. More dentists will be coming in soon. I think we are hoping for 5 dentists. We also have one hygienist and a sterilizer. So on Thursday half of us were able to go to a local school nearby for the morning. We taught about 130ish kids how to brush their teeth and floss. The kids were adorable! And quite well behaved!
After teaching at the school we went back to the clinic and started working. Most of the patients we saw needed extractions. And I'm learning that we will be doing mostly extractions. We saw 24 patients and then we were done for the day! We packed up and drove back to the ship.
Life on the ship is very nice! I didn't know how I would like it. But I guessed that I would love the sense of community. And yes, I do! I think I could live in a community like this for a while. :)
Friday at the dental clinic was a little bit of a harder day. But still good! Most of the extractions were very difficult. It seemed like every tooth we went to remove one or two of the  root tips broke and we ended up having to do  surgery to remove the root tips. We removed one UL 3rd molar  that had 4 ROOTS(I've never heard  or seen anything like it!)!! There was a happy hallelujah when it finally came out! :)
Now it's the weekend and I am going out to check out the surroundings with a group of people! I've been offered a chance to eat foofoo? Or is it fufu? No idea.. But that's how you pronounce it anyways. One of the day workers said he would bring me some. It's typical African food I guess.. I'll find out more later! :)