A normal medical day

Firstly let us introduce ourselves properly – my name is Claire, I’m a registered nurse from Brisbane, Australia and I am here with Mathias, Swiss mountain boy and paramedic.  We are the “dreamer” team that is here to take care of all the medical issues that arise 24 hours a day.   It doesn’t mean that we never sleep – we always dream Lariam dreams (side effect of malaria medication).

Aside from the veggie chopping, riding a bike, toilet duty, burning rubbish, filling water tanks, pulling bikes on and off the trucks, we also spend our time patching up the cuts and grazes, gravel rash, inspect all the saddle sores, we talk to everyone about their bowel habits, their need (or lack of in most circumstances) to pee, remind everyone to keep their hands clean, to take off their cycling gloves beore they dig into their lunch, reprimand riders for riding in the middle of the road, stitch up anything we can fix with a needle and thread.

We also run a mobile medical clinic which if you didn’t already know could be mistaken for the lunch truck, a wardrobe, the staffroom, the communications centre, a bedroom, a party house, or an emergency sandstorm shelter!

It’s our job to take care of about 80 people who have decided that they want to ride their bicycle all day everyday, 125+ km, through 49 degree heat, gravel, sand, extreme corrugations, through savannah, desert, grasslands, mountains, villages, big crazy cities, highways, and many other types of roads.

So far everyone is alive and relatively well so we reckon we’re doing a dream job.  Keep on dreaming!

— your medics, Mathias Hediger and Claire Pegler