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Carl Hieber's Mission to Tanzania

 St. Mark's member Carl Hieber recently traveled to Central Africa for a dental mission trip. He related that the trip was a wonderful experience which gave him the opportunity to serve the less fortunate in the world and, in turn, serve God.

In November, 2005, I was part of a group of 11 people who traveled to Tanzania in East Central Africa on a dental mission trip. We arrived in Dar es Salaam and set up clinic the first day. This clinic was for our team of 8 who stayed in Dar the first week. The second week they went to a missionary conference in Mwanza.

I was part of a team of 3 people: dentist, dental hygienist and general worker (me). All of the following pictures were taken by me except those of the Serengeti. Our team worked every day from about 8:00 a.m. until dark. Therefore the pictures are mostly where we worked or stayed.

We spent eight days in Dar where we treated mostly people of Indian descent. We did both extractions and restorations as we had electricity about half of the time. When electricity went out, a generator was used for power.

The other six days were spent in Mpirani in the northern part of Tanzania. This area is inhabited by the Digo tribe. There was no electricity so we only did extractions. This was my favorite part of the trip as we lived in the villages with the natives.

In fourteen days our team performed 240 extractions and 134 restorations in addition to other treatments.

I hope you find the pictures interesting and enjoyable. If you have any questions, let me know.

Missions are humbling and rewarding and I look forward to going back to Tanzania in March, 2007.

Carl O. Hieber