The Kellermanns regularly host doctors and medical students interested in working in Africa. Non-medical volunteers are also welcomed.

 

 

Donations in the form of monetary support, medical supplies and equipment are needed. Donations can be mailed to:

 

Trinity Church

PO Box 416

Nevada City, CA

Designate donations to the Uganda Pygmy Fund.

 

For more information, e-mail: batwas@yahoo.com 

or visit the Kellermanns’ Web site: www.pygmies.net  

 

Scott Kellermann, M.D., hangs the quinine drip from a branch of a banana tree and adjusts its flow to a trickle. His patient lies soundlessly in the red dirt, an 85-pound man dying from malaria in the jungle of Uganda. It begins to rain. The warm sprinkle becomes a downpour. Dr. Kellermann sighs and looks around for shelter for his patient. A normal day in his family practice continues.

 

Scott Kellermann, 57, was a family physician for 20 years in Nevada City, Calif. He had a busy and successful solo practice, was the chief of staff at the local hospital, and according to his wife, Carol, was loved and respected by his patients and peers.

 

“In April of 2000, we responded to an ad run by the Episcopal Medical Missions Foundation for a medical needs survey to be conducted in Uganda. We thought it would be an interesting short trip to do on our own,” Carol Kellermann says.

 

The Kellermanns surveyed the medical needs of the Batwa Pygmies, an indigenous group living on the edge of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in southwest Uganda, and their neighbors the Bakiga. Their findings were grim. The average life expectancy of the Batwa Pygmy was 27. Forty percent of the children didn’t survive past the age of 5. Malaria, dysentery, pneumonia, and malnutrition were and continue to be prominent and deadly diseases to this group of Ugandans with little access to medical care.

 

“We felt very drawn to come back and help these people. We loved the Pygmies and the Bakiga. They were like a magnet pulling us toward them,” Carol says.

 

“Besides,” Scott chimes in with a grin, “Africa has the most interesting diseases.”

Three months later, in August of 2000, the Kellermanns sold their house and practice and left California. They “retired” and moved to Africa.

 

The Kellermanns now live in a small two-bedroom concrete house in Kanugu, Uganda. The town of Kanugu is rural and poor. Running water and electricity are unaffordable for most residents. The Kellermanns have the only house in the area with a screen door and windows. They do not have a refrigerator, freezer or shower and only a few rooms in their house have electricity, which is generated by solar power.

 

“The first few months here were really, really hard,” Scott says looking around his sparsely furnished home.

 

“It was a major period of adjustment,” Carol agrees.

 

Life in Kanugu is also difficult because of a lack of paved roads and public transportation. Medical supplies are sold in the capital city of Kampala, a grueling 10-hour trip by car.

 

“We didn’t have a car and hoped to be able to take the bus to get supplies,” Scott says laughing. “We quickly realized that was impossible.”

 

They eventually found and purchased a used Land Rover Defender, outfitted as an ambulance, complete with a blue-cross painted on the door. This Land Rover now serves many purposes: transporting patients and villagers, being a mobile pharmacy and clinic, and functioning as a supply truck, packed with medical and camping equipment, drugs, bottles of water, books on tropical diseases and treatments, and the occasional bunch of fresh bananas. A plastic snake and an East African bird book ride on the dashboard. Avid bird watchers, the Kellermanns excitedly point out and identify birds as they drive from village to village. The plastic snake serves an equally important function, as Scott’s mischievous icebreaker with the local children. The sudden appearance of the snake produces hysterical laughter, high-pitched shrieks and numerous grins.

 

“I would like to be a nurse and work with Dr. Scott,” Sarah Mftiumukizati, a 13-year-old from Kanugu says. “He is a very, very good man and doctor.”

 

A day in the Kellermanns’ family practice is intense, long and emotional. They wake up at sunrise and pack the car. They do the majority of their work in three Pygmy settlements: Kitario, Byumba, and Buhoma. It takes anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours or more to reach these settlements by car, over dirt roads full of potholes.

 

The Pygmy settlements are some of the poorest in the region. Before the Kellermanns arrived, there were no medical facilities or people trained in even basic first aid. Frequently, the sick were, and continue to be, treated by witch doctors and herbal remedies.

 

“Life here is very raw. It’s really on the edges of survival,” Scott says.

Carol and Scott work as a team; Carol collects medical histories and assists with procedures as necessary. A former teacher originally from Houston, Texas, Carol has also established educational programs for the Pygmy children and adults. 

 

Patients walk or ride their bicycles for miles to be seen by the Americans. Some are carried to them in wicker baskets and placed in the dirt. It is not unusual for Scott and Carol to arrive in a village and see multiple people lying on the ground, severely dehydrated, dazed or unconscious.

 

“We need their help here greatly,” says Emmanuel, a Church of Uganda pastor at Byumba. “They are doing very good things here, for the Pygmies and the Bakiga.”

 

The diseases that Scott’s patients suffer from are varied and developed to stages infrequently seen in the United States. In one average week, Scott saw cases of elephantiasis, infantile tetanus, tuberculosis, hydrocephalus, schistosomiasis, polio, and a variety of sexually transmitted diseases. He treats malaria in Uganda as frequently as he used to treat the common cold or flu in America.

 

“Malaria kills 1 million children in Africa a year,” Scott says.

 

On a January Tuesday in southwest Uganda, a 9-month-old baby died in Scott’s arms of cerebral malaria. The family brought the baby to Scott gasping for breath, anemic, and barely conscious. The nearest hospital was a difficult two-hour drive away.

 

Scott looked at the child in his arms, wrapped in a yellow and green patterned cloth, and considered running an I.V. into the baby’s neck. Within minutes though, his decision was irrelevant. The Pygmy baby was dead.

 

“A 50-cent drug could have saved this child one week ago,” Scott said as he gently pulled the cloth over the baby’s face. He handed the baby to its mother and said a few words of comfort to her in Rikiga, the local language. 

 

“This work can be very hard, very soul-searching,” he said as the mother of the baby began to mourn through loud, wailing song. He watched her, his eyes full with tears.

 

In December of 2001, to provide the Pygmies with an accessible medical facility, Scott and Carol started a clinic at Kitario with the support and help of the Episcopal Diocese in Dallas. The clinic now has one local full-time nurse and nurse’s aid. Both women live at the clinic. They have worked with Scott intensively to elevate their Ugandan medical training to American standards.

 

“I run my clinic like a first-class practice at home,” Scott says adamantly. “What isn’t allowed there isn’t allowed here.”

 

The Kellermanns’ clinic has been a literal lifesaver for the people of that region. According to the Episcopal Medical Missions Foundation based in Austin, Texas, since the Kellermanns’ work began, there has been a significant decline in the death rate of the Batwa Pygmies.

 

Diane Stanton, head of the non-profit group Uganda Project in Dallas, was one of the first people to begin organizing support for the Pygmies through the Episcopal Church. She visited Kitario in 1997 and returned there in October of 2002. She says she saw a noticeable difference in the Pygmy community during her recent trip.

 

“Scott is providing long-term care to the Batwa. They seem healthier and happier than in 1997,” Stanton says. “Their attitude this time was really different; three women came up to me and said, ‘We feel like whole people.’ I really attribute this to the loving and fine care the Kellermanns are giving them.”

 

Stanton’s group also raises money to provide college educations to Ugandan students. She has created a college scholarship fund for the first group of Pygmy students to finish secondary school. These Pygmies will be the first ever to go to college.

 

“In honor of the amazing work they do, we are naming the Pygmy scholarship fund the ‘Kellermann Fund,’” Stanton says.

 

The Kellermanns signed a three-year commitment with the Episcopal Church to live and work in Uganda. They have a year and a half left. However, they plan to stay longer.

 

“The more and more involved we get here, the more interesting it gets,” Carol says. “We’ll never finish all of our projects by then.”

 

The Kellermanns are just beginning their biggest project: the construction of a 45-bed hospital and nurses’ quarters at Buhoma, on the boundaries of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Eventually, they plan to employ two full-time doctors and five nurses, a large staff by Ugandan standards. They also hope to build a home there; their house will include guest quarters for the many international doctors, medical students and others who come to do short-term work with them.

Linneah Wittick, a University of Texas medical student, recently returned from working with Dr. Kellermann in Uganda.  She received rotation credit from UT. She says she saw diseases there that are considered common in Uganda but that physicians in the United States may only see once in a lifetime.

 

“Coming home, I realize that I am blessed to live where I do, but also, I feel the need to scream to everyone I meet to open their eyes and take a look around the world and see the children dying of malnutrition or a disease that could be easily cured with a few pennies worth of drugs.”

 

Two medical students from Tulane are with the Kellermanns now and more medical students are scheduled to visit the Kellermanns in the next year.

 

They will receive rotation credit from their schools. More students are scheduled to visit in the next year.

 

“There is an amazing amount of learning and work that medical students can do here,” Scott says. “You see things here that you will never see in the States.”

 

The Kellermanns are volunteers; they do not get paid nor do they receive regular funding. Their hospital project alone is estimated to cost $60,000. Diane Stanton’s group in Dallas is trying to provide about a third of that money; the Kellermanns are attempting to raise the rest through international donations.

 

Scott and Carol have given up a great deal to work in Uganda. They have two sons, a pregnant daughter-in-law, and one grandchild whom they miss very much. They live frugally off of their retirement savings. Currently, one of their greatest extravagances is popping popcorn over their stove burner at night. They say though, that life in Uganda is worth all of the hardships and sacrifices.

 

“We’ve never had such a sense of purpose or excitement about our work before,” Carol says. “From the minute I got here, I just loved it.

 

Scott, now running a very different practice than the one that he left in America, agrees. “Life here is never dull. Everyday is different and exciting.”