Lamberene

28 APRIL 2023

Today I headed to the province of Moyen-Ogooue and the river-island town of Lambarene. I took a shared taxi from Marche Banane; a yellow seated, large exhaust-piped vehicle sporting a sun strip with Stephanie printed in large black letters.

A seat cost 8000CFA. The road to Lambarene was tarmacked and smooth. Along the way we passed numerous road side stalls were villagers were selling their produce hunted or gathered from the forests; grapefruit, peanuts, palm wine, plantain and bushmeat - baby crocodiles, rats, squirrels....

We also passed numerous conveys of logging trucks heading towards Libreville port for export. Usually these consisted of three to seven trucks lead and followed up with white pickup trucks. Each load consisted of 12 trunks. A vivid reminder of the rapidly reducing forest area for timber export.

Lambarene has a famous hospital which was founded by 'the great white man from Lambarene'. Albert Schweitzer and his wife Helene originally came to the Andenda Mission station in April 1913 in service of the Paris Evangelical Mission who required a doctor. They worked in the first clinic there until being deported to South France in 1917 for being German in a French occupied country during WW1. They returned in 1924 and established the current extensive hospital working there from 1927 to 1965. Albert was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1956 and used the money to create a leprosy village close by.

Although Albert was know to be quite patronising and condescending towards the local people, he did create a well run hospital which provided good quality health care to people in the area. The hospital is currently part funded by the government and its foundation, treats over 30,000 patients per year, provides maternity care and research into Bilharzia and Malaria.

I stayed in the guest house on the site and met two of the German research team on a 10 day research trip from the partner university in Tubingen. Their main work focusses on the search for appropriate treatments and preventions of the snail transmitted disease - Bilharzi