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Join Us As a Volunteer
::News Flash::
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Who
is Helped?
Who is Irma Turtle NEWSLETTERS Volunteer Interviews Surviving
the Niger Droughts of 2005, 2006 Interviews with nomads PROGRAMS PROJECT MAPS NIGER MALI ETHIOPIA |
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 Movies range from 2-8megs in size. Dial-up users may only receive 1meg/5min. |
Please watch the following short videos
1.
TurtleWill's Mobile Medical Clinics in Action - 5.7megs
HOW
TURTLEWILL'S MOBILE CLINICS HELP
Interviews with nomads
2.
"A Child Saved" Interview with Chaklane Bidia and son Moussa,
Tuareg nomads Karafo, Niger - 3.5megs
3.
"A Chief Speaks" Interview with Tuareg Chief Moudor Hawey;
Karafo, Niger - 1.2megs
4.
"Tuareg Mothers" Interviews with Fati Koumalin and Azara Ahmed;
Mizene, Niger - 1.1megs
5.
"A Nurse Shares" Interview with Moha Agak,
TurtleWill Mobile Clinics nurse, Mizene, Niger - 10.6megs
6.
"Changes I've seen" Interview with Nurse Ramatou Mohamed,
TurtleWill Mobile Clinics nurse, Niger - 6.9megs
7.
"A Leader Speaks" Interview with Alhousseini Biki,
Director of IFI Association for Tuareg Nomads, Niger - 8.1megs
View
the Volunteer Interviews
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"If you are tired of vacations with fruity pink drinks and dull conversation, if you have a real sense of adventure, reasonable stamina for rough travel in a remote and exotic place, if you are not afraid of hard work, have good common sense and are willing to be part of a team making changes in people's lives, and creating lifelong memories of the true nomadic experience, this is the trip for you." -- Dr. Elizabeth Jack, Niger |
TurtleWill has been running bush clinics since 1999 in Mali, Niger and Ethiopia. We bring in health care professionals, volunteers and medicines and set up an “open air” bush clinic in each remote area. All treatment and medicines are free to the tribal peoples.
Bush clinics are set up in remote areas, generally near a well, which serves as a meeting place for the people in the region. Word gets out very quickly that we have arrived and there are usually 250-400 people to be tended to each day. We use a local interpreter who translates for the patients and the staff. Hours are long as many of the nomads have come from considerable distances. We do our best to see that everyone who comes is seen that same day. Many of our patients are repeats from previous clinics and it is great to visit with old friends as well as help them with their chronic illnesses.
Illnesses treated usually fall into the categories of malaria, upper respiratory infections, eye and ear infections, gastrointestinal and uro-genital infections, diarrhea, skin infections and parasites. Emergencies and conditions that we cannot treat we evacuate to the nearest health facility.
During the bush clinics volunteers who are not Health Care Professionals can help by counting out and labeling dosages, dispensing soaps and cleaning wounds, maintaining patient records, maintaining order among the waiting patients, being “camp photographer” or just relaxing, visiting and getting to know our nomad friends. It may not seem like much, but the help is really needed and greatly appreciated!
Our volunteer programs run usually for 14 days and include several days of bush clinics set up in different locales. However, our volunteer programs are usually more than just bush clinics! As we travel from place to place we are often confronted with the possibility of new projects or the need to oversee the progress of ongoing TurtleWill projects. These are based upon the actual needs of the tribal peoples that we encounter during our visits and can include anything from the founding of a new handicrafts cooperative to the purchase of livestock for an animal loan program, the support of a remote bush school, or the purchase of wheelchairs for polio victims in need.
Volunteers are an integral part of the TurtleWill decision making team. New projects are discussed among everyone and all opinions are valued, including that of our local staff.
We consider these volunteer programs as important cultural and personal adventures and we want all participants to come away with a knowledge of the traditions and customs of the people we are working among. The tribal peoples we visit are our friends and sharing their friendships is an integral part of the experience for our volunteers. Often in the evenings we exchange social visits with the nearby families. Sometimes a surprise festival is put on in our honor.
We hope you will think of this as a working vacation that is personally fulfilling, culturally rewarding, very adventurous and infinitely memorable.
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THE LOGISTICS:
All Programs are personally led and conducted by Irma Turtle.
Because our projects take place in the remote bush and there are usually no nearby hotels, we set up our own camps. This is done by our local expedition staff. We have a cook, continental style meals, table and chairs, tents, a shower and a toilet. Accommodations are tents with foam mattresses for sleeping. We travel in 4WD Toyota landcruisers.
We fly into the capital city and then proceed by vehicle to our bush destinations. Where feasible we try to break up the time between projects with a visit for relaxing, touring and overnight at a hotel in a nearby city.
We hope you will think of this as a working vacation that is personally fulfilling, culturally rewarding, very adventurous and infinitely memorable.
At present Volunteer Programs are limited to a team of 5-6 participants including Irma Turtle.
Costs vary from $4200 - $5000 per participant, not including airfare.
Comments from Our Volunteers
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"Dear Irma, I want to thank you so much for the opportunity to accompany you to Niger for the March 2002 medical mission. It was a truly moving experience for me. "In our lives as contemporary American physicians, we can often lose sight of some of the most incredible basics of healthcare. We are all too often consumed by high-technology... and unceasing battles with insurance providers. Our days can lose the simplicity and poignancy of what medicine can be all about. "Well, I found that again in Niger, sitting out in the dirt and the heat, under a tarp, without walls, electricity or anything other than a stethoscope, some medications, and a "waiting room" truly as big as all outdoors filled with ever-patient Wodabe and Tuareg nomadic families. It is truly rewarding to see what a difference I can make, with the skills I have learned over the years, a couple of reference texts, and the local knowledge of the regional healthcare providers. From sick little babies to the wisest sages of the desert, I always felt I had something to offer. "Now I am full of thoughts for our next medical mission, and must once again give you my great thanks for extending this opportunity to me.” --
Elizabeth Jack, MD Project Physician
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"Performance anxiety plagued me the weeks prior to the March 2003 Niger Volunteer Medical Mission. As a hospital-based specialist, I wondered how I would function without my high-tech surroundings, let alone with no electricity in the harsh desert climate. However these fears were soon melted the first clinic day by the warmth of the hundreds of people who thronged to our tent clinic. "Many had never seen a doctor before. Yet they were welcoming, appreciative without expectations, and simply delighted, often after waiting hours to have their short time in the fancy blue chair visiting with the western doctor. Often they left with an array of prized colorful pills that might provide a small break in their symptoms of chronic malaria, intestinal parasites, nutritional deficiencies, or just the aches and pains of daily hard work. The rare acutely ill person was treated with strong antibiotics or triaged to a hospital far away. "What a unique opportunity this was for me to chat on such a personal level with so many extended families, gaining insight into the rythyms of Wodaabe and Tuareg lives for a few days, not just as a voyeur but as a participant." --
Dr Robin Shanahan, Pediatric Neurologist, CA |
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"Maya's Memories" "Leaving behind a colorful veil of fine desert sand that our three 4WD vehicles spewed, we crossed the dry bush of Niger’s preSaharan Sahel to visit projects of TurtleWill, Irma’s love child. The desert and its nomadic Wodaabe and Tuareg tribes are her passion. Lillian Hoffman and I were caught up in it. She invited us on this working trip. The bush clinics she set up under a provisional tarp. Lil and I counted the pills that Irma and Dr Elizabeth Jack diagnosed and prescribed. Zip locked packages of medicines for the patients waiting patiently in line, children on breasts, children bringing children. In a dusty busy market town we searched for the severely handicapped young boy Irma had espied, destined to crawl between the hundreds of legs a day. When he saw his newly fixed up wheelchair on the roof rack of our car, the boy’s face turned to total disbelief at this miracle gift he could pedal with his hands, his name, Illa Ada, boldly painted on the back..."
As we traveled we encountered a one room straw government school on an empty horizon in danger of burning down, children sitting on the sand where scorpions fall out of the roof. Irma would insist that the men build the new schoolroom with adobe bricks free out of the ground. She would supply desks, chairs, books; or supply lunches at a school too far for the children to go home, or a water well, or goats for the poorest of women...goats to be returned to the project when they had produced two kids the women could keep.
Sometimes we were surprised by a thank you, elegant men on camels, their festive robes flowing as they trotted around their women, singing Tuareg style, to the beat of a calabash drum floating in water, and the high African cry, an archetypal pulse that runs up one’s spine. Wherever we travelled, if they had not met Irma, they had heard of her, as the woman who when she heard Irma was coming to the coop, travelled three days on the rump of a donkey, one child on the breast and a three year old son, to meet Irma and ask for work. She was justly rewarded for her courage. High were our emotions throughout the trip. Perhaps what touched me most was the basketry weaving coop of Tamazalak that we had visited 6 months prior. Not only were we given an excited return welcome, but the women themselves had reached a new momentum. They had new confidence achieved through learning, were becoming less subservient to their men, thrilled by new independence. One woman had bought herself her own goat with the money they had earned weaving baskets, hats and mats. In the desert an own goat is a private bank account, to produce interest.
Traveling with Irma was never dull. Whether in Agadez where Irma sponsored pupils for the much desired driver’s license, or to the typing school where she sponsored young girls learning on an array of vintage type writers, envy of any collector, always we were met with a reverence, for hers is not to change their ways, but by being open to their needs, help preserve it. I was continually amazed at how much one could achieve with so little and how soul honoring it is to make a difference in person. Irma had touched so many lives, as she had touched mine." --
Maya Moltzer |
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"Dear Irma, This is not my first volunteer trip but it was the most rewarding one. Thank you both for the privilege of working right along side of you, of being one with you and your work, and most of all for the chance to meet the people I hoped I would. Now I feel I know a little of their needs and how really rewarding it can be to truly be a part in a one-on-one experience. It can only bring me back." --
Lillian Hoffman |
Toll-Free: (888) 299-1439 Phone: (480) 488-3688 Fax: (480) 488-3406
501 (c ) (3) Tax ID number: 86-1039391
E-Mail: IrmaTurtle@turtlewill.org