Kiangwe (Kenya) (AFP)

The boat, laden with medicine, rushes shortly before dawn. Moonlight shines its way through the dense mangrove vegetation to the border between Kenya and Somalia, where few dare to venture.

Two hours later, at sunrise, the boat arrives in Kiangwe, one of many isolated coastal villages that can only rely on the monthly visits of this mobile team of Safari Doctors to receive medical services.

Volunteers from this community organization put on their pants, hoist heavy containers filled with medical equipment on their shoulders, and wade through the water, before climbing a small hill to reach a building that will serve as a clinic for a few hours.

Kiangwe and surrounding villages in Lamu County have suffered greatly from the war being waged by the Kenyan government and the Somali Shebab Islamists, who have been withdrawn into the forest near Boni on both sides of the border.

At a distance, between houses made of wood and mud, and roofs made of palm leaves, there is a clinic with closed shutters, which never entered service.

"We have several unoccupied buildings because we have staff who do not want to be posted" in the area, says Umra Omar, 36, who founded Safari Doctors four years ago.

So every month, for a few days, his team visits up to twelve villages, sometimes after a last-minute phone call to verify that security is guaranteed. But four other villages in the area are considered too dangerous to access.

Inside the improvised clinic, the team sets up a triage area, where we take the weight and check the tension of the patients, before they are directed to one of the different consultation areas.

- "No hospital here" -

In one of these spaces, nurses hurry around a woman with a neck size, due to a bullet received a few years ago during an ambush of shebab against the vehicle in which she was traveling.

"I'm the only one who survived (...) the others died on the spot," says Bilai Abdi remembering the attack, which also resulted in shot injuries to one foot.

The nurses urged him to go to Lamu City to get the ball removed. But when they ask her if she can afford this short trip financially, she shakes her head in denial.

Rufia Alio, 55, cut a finger while working on her farm a week before the arrival of the medical team and can finally be treated.

"There is no hospital here, which is a problem, we have pregnant women, we have elderly people who are suffering, there are others who have a fever (...), so when Safari Doctors come, they help by giving us drugs, "he says.

But after they leave, the options are rare. Ms. Omar tells the story of a young man from Kiangwe who transported a villager who suffered an appendicitis crisis on his motorcycle for 24 hours before arriving at a hospital.

The road is dangerous and often the object of shebab attacks. And renting a boat to the city of Lamu can cost up to 200 dollars (180 euros), a fortune for members of these communities.

In an attempt to provide for the needs, Safari Doctors trained people in traditional methods of childbirth, and introduced the youngest to the basics of first aid.

- A marginalized region -

Lamu County has long been one of the poorest, underdeveloped and marginalized regions in Kenya.

Residents say that their situation has worsened since the Kenyan army sent troops into the area in 2015 to hunt the Shebab from Boni Forest, which has become a sanctuary.

The operation was to last only three months, but four years later the shebab are still there.

They, affiliated with al Qaeda, have carried out several deadly attacks in Kenya, including Lamu, since the deployment of Kenyan forces in Somalia in 2011, where they are fighting Islamists in the African Union mission in Somalia. this country (Amisom).

Experts estimate a few hundred shebab numbers still based in Boni Forest.

AFP journalists saw a dozen police officers at the clinic, some in uniform, others in shorts and sandals, holding their rifles between their knees waiting to consult.

© 2019 AFP