Utah Guard members provide aid to Moroccan villagers during African Lion 2012

By Army National Guard Sgt. Nicolas A. Cloward

Utah National Guard

AGADIR, Morocco (4/23/12) – Soldiers from the Utah State Medical Command, Utah Army National Guard, worked alongside Moroccan military medical personnel April 13, providing medical aid for as many people as they could during African Lion 2012, an annual partnership training exercise between U.S. forces and the Royal Moroccan Military.

Throngs of Moroccan villagers gathered around the Humanitarian Civil Assistance site in Sidi Moussa, Morocco and pathways to the examination rooms were crowded with parents eagerly trying to receive medical aid for them and their children.

Army Sgt. Robert W. Carpenter, a combat medic for MEDCOM, said MEDCOM arrived on site early in the morning and began setting up each individual clinic. The HCA site provided several clinics such as general medicine, dermatology, respiratory, pediatric, gynecology, ear, nose and throat, Ophthalmology and dental.

Because of the large number of Moroccans seeking medical aid, the HCA crew was only able to provide care in one of the areas per person – medical, dental or ophthalmology. Once the villagers got into the clinic the crew was faced with another problem – language.

Carpenter said a major obstacle was the language barrier. In Morocco, the three main languages are French, Arabic and Berber. Berber is a common language spoken among the small villages of Morocco and has three dialects. Each one is so unique that people that speak one dialect may have a difficult time understanding one of the other dialects.

Luckily, interpreters from the 300th Military Intelligence Brigade, Royal Moroccan Military and Peace Corps were available to help bridge the language gap between the villagers and physicians. Many times, information about a patient’s condition would have to be translated through several people before getting back to the care provider, Carpenter said.

Army 1st Lt. Emily S. Smith, a physician assistant for MEDCOM, worked in the pediatric clinic and said she understood first-hand the value of overcoming the language barriers. “If it weren’t for the interpreters, we wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what we did.”

Despite the overwhelming demand of health care needs and the labyrinth of linguistic daisy chains, the service members and volunteers of the HCA were able to provide medical care for more than 1,000 in a single days work.

“There’s still just so much work to be done,” Carpenter said.