Chapter Four
Africa
Across the heart of Tanzania, and the years that followed it into Zimbabwe and Zambia — the missions that carried a lifetime of work in Ecuador to the other side of the world.
The Soul of the Work
The Other Side of the World
It began with a connection — first contact, in 2016, with the Saint Bernardine Dispensary in Tanzania. A year later, in the dry heat of July and August, Dr. Quiñones made his first mission to Africa, to the village of Ushetu.
He did not go alone. His family went with him — his son, his brother, the volunteers who would return again and again. What follows is that first mission, and the return that came two years later.
A Dispensary, and a Promise Kept
The first mission to Africa grew from a single connection made in 2016 — with the Saint Bernardine Dispensary in Tanzania. In July and August of 2017, that connection became a journey: Dr. Quiñones and his team arrived in Ushetu, a rural community in the country's west, to open a clinic where there was none.
Word Travels
They Came From Across the District
By the time the team arrived, families had already gathered — walking in from the surrounding villages, waiting beneath the trees as the light went gold.
Seen, One by One
There is a particular patience to a mission clinic: the line that forms before dawn and does not shorten all day. Children waited with their mothers, their grandmothers, their older brothers and sisters — each of them, eventually, seen.
The Examination
Beneath a Tree, a Pediatrician at Work
No examination room — only shade, a steady pair of hands, and the same care he had given children for forty years.
The Airway
Dr. Quiñones is a pediatric intensivist and pulmonologist — a specialist, above all, in the breath and the airway of a child. Even here, with a headlamp and a folding chair for an examination table, that is the work: looking carefully into a small throat, listening to a small chest.
Alongside him worked the religious sisters of the community, who held the smallest patients and steadied the youngest through the day.
The Airway Exam
With the Sisters
Eye Level
Down in the Dust, Where the Child Is
Kneeling beside a small patient in a red cap — the posture of someone who has spent a lifetime meeting children where they are.
The Ones Who Came With Him
This was never one man's work. His son, Victor Quiñones — an artist, who paints the Africa he has seen — was there among the children, camera turned around, laughing. His brother, Pablo Quiñones, an extraordinary volunteer though not a physician, worked in the field laboratory the team set up to process samples on site.
Victor & the Children
The Field Laboratory
And When Surgery Was Needed
The mission was not only a clinic. When a child needed surgery, the team operated — in a small theatre, with what they had carried with them. Much of it was made possible by Rulon International, a recurring partner across these missions; the team's gratitude was worn, quite literally, on their backs.
Thank You, Rulon
The Theatre They Built From What They Carried
A surgical team at work in Ushetu — the shirt says it plainly: thank you, Rulon International.
Rosaries, and the Rhythm of the Village
Between consultations there were other small graces — rosaries handed out among the children, and the ordinary, enduring life of the village carrying on around the clinic: the grain mill, the dust, the long afternoons.
The Rosaries
The Village
After Dark
The Walk Home, in the Last of the Light
When the clinic finally closed, the children did not leave. Victor walked with them into the dark — the quietest photograph of the whole mission.
Back Across the Serengeti
In August of 2019, the team returned — this time to three medical centers: Arusha in the north, Shirati Hospital near Lake Victoria, and once again Ushetu. Between them lay the Serengeti, which they crossed on the way.
More of the family came this time. The mission had become something they did together.
Between Clinics
Beneath the Baobab
A thousand years old, perhaps — the kind of tree the whole landscape seems to gather around.
A Welcome Down Every Corridor
At the schools, the welcome was overwhelming — corridors of children in uniform, waving, calling out, crowding in for a photograph. For a doctor who has spent his life among children, there are few better sounds.
The Welcome
Down the Corridor
A Laboratory, and a Screen
As in Ushetu, the team brought the means to diagnose on site — a field laboratory, a microscope, a laptop — again supported by Rulon International. Good medicine in a remote place is not only compassion; it is the quiet machinery that lets compassion be precise.
The Laboratory
Diagnosing on Site, Far From Anywhere
A microscope, a laptop, and the results read in the same hour they were taken.
The Crossing
At the Edge of the Serengeti
Between the clinics of the north and the west, the road ran through the great park — and the team paused, the way anyone would.
Two missions, of five. The road went on — into Zimbabwe, and into Zambia.
Still to Come
The Missions That Followed
This chapter will grow to hold all of it — the journeys that carried this work south through Zimbabwe and Zambia, as more photographs and stories are added.