LAGOS, Nigeria -- It's no secret that Nigeria is a country in turmoil. Here, in one of the world's top oil producing nations, are the poorest people on the globe.
That is why a team of doctors nurses and staff from San Joaquin Community Hospital came to Lagos. It's part of a global mission for the Bakersfield health care provider.
Dr. Samson Popoola, the chief physician at the Adventist Hospital in the Nigerian capital, welcomed his Kern County colleagues.
"They are doing a lot of things we are unable to do," Popoola said of the Bakersfield doctors and nurses. "They are bringing in their own stuff, coming to suffer with mosquitoes and everything around. It's making us a better world."
As we travel from Nigeria's biggest city to the hospital compound in Ile Ife, it's easy to see the chaos. Wrecked cars and mark the roads thousands travel, shanties built of junk dot the landscape.
It's a place where wealth is worn on your head -- as witnessed by the women balancing their goods on their heads -- and what you care about most can be found on your back, as shown by the mothers with babies strapped behind them.
Among the filth, dilapidated shacks for families who cook what they can to try and feed their own. Then a three-hour bus ride to a hospital compound a place we'll call home.
For the next week the team from Bakersfield will stay in Ile Ife inside the heavily armed gates of the hospital compound. Very few will venture out beyond the gates without an escort primarily because it's unsafe for foreigners.
Dr. Jason Lohr says, "Politically there are challenges. Economically there are still challenges and when people see foreigners moving about they think money and when they think money things potentially could happen."
Dr. Jason Lohr is the medical director at the Adventist Iospital in Ile Ife. It's a hospital that has served this community for over 70 years. With access to healthcare virtually non existent, this hospital has become a well known and trusted place for care.
"Without our hospital providing the care that they provide, people would suffer and would literally die. We see cases every day that if they had stayed home five or ten minutes, they would not be alive."
Within minutes of our arrival, the humanity of this place can be seen and heard. We hear the pain of a son who just lost his mother ... brought here after the car she was travelling in with nine others overturned. Then, an 8-year-old boy is brought back to consciousness after suffering for who knows how long with yellow fever and a woman with an ectopic pregnancy loses her baby, forcing doctors to take her own blood and retransfuse it to save her life.
It's what the team is faced with in just one hour, the first of many challenges.
"It takes a unique person to travel half a way around the world to deal with no air conditioning," said San Joaquin Vice Presidente Jarrod McNaughton. "It's very hot here, no electricity many nights now, water sometimes, you're down to the bare minimum.
"That is how the rest of the world lives," McNaughton said. "So the teammates have to be able to deal with the issues not let the things overwhelm them without letting these external elements get in the way of that."
Our exclusive special report, Bakersfield to Nigeria continues Tuesday as we travel deep into the jungle to meet with local tribesmen. many of whom never have seen a doctor.
We'll show you what the team encounters and the moving moments many of them experience Tuesday on 17 News at 5.
Click here to read part 2 of our Bakersfield to Nigeria special report.
