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Dr. Bill Hof, an ophthalmologist in Rogers, does medical missionary work in Africa. Hof is seen here examining a patient at a clinic in Mombasa, a coastal city in Kenya, where he works every year.

ROGERS — Nearly everyone who travels has some horror story about missing a flight and getting stuck in the airport for hours on end.

Dr. Bill Hof, an ophthalmologist in Rogers with the Boozman-Hof Clinic, has one that, well, takes the cake.

"It happened to me last year," explained Hof. "I landed in Nairobi and it must have been about eight o'clock on a Sunday night. And I was due to the flight down to Mombasa that left at 11 p.m. My connections were delayed by a storm in Chicago, so the plane from XNA [the new-ish airport between Bentonville and Rogers] couldn't land in Chicago, so I couldn't make the connecting flight to Switzerland. I was connecting in Zurich at the time. Swissair flies down every other day, so it took me a 48-hour layover to get to Nairobi. So here I am, on Sunday night, and I present myself at the desk to get my boarding pass and they tell me I can't have one, that the flight is fully booked.

"The deal was that they were cutting back on the number of flights, so all the flights were booked for a month … they didn't have a seat to give me, so I went on standby status."

Hof wasn't the only person on standby status that night; a family of five and a businessman were also waiting for an open seat.

"So if someone didn't show up, we could get on the plane, but the family had been there a week since they needed five seats and it ended up that … the African guy and I were able to upgrade to business class and make it down there."

Midnight in Nairobi, hanging out at the airport wasn't the best place to spend a little time.

"Its not like you can go stay at the next Holiday Inn," Hof said. "There are places you don't want to be in Nairobi, like the whole city."

The traveling is all for a good cause though.

Since 2001, Hof has made an annual two-week trip to Mombasa to perform medical missionary work for the Lighthouse for Christ Mission, a group founded in the mid-1960s. Mombasa is a coastal city in Kenya and a mostly European tourist resort famed for its deep-sea fishing.

"Mombasa was in the news, the world news, about four years ago," Hof said. "There was a terrorist attack on a resort hotel a bunch of people (were killed). They also attempted to shoot down some airliners at the airport with some shoulder-fired missiles.

"One time while I was there, a terrorist cell was apprehended attempting to do the same thing as the first one," Hof said. But when asked if he ever felt like he was in danger, "not personally. I've heard some stories, but I personally have not (felt like I was in danger)."

As a resort area dependent on tourism, "[the Kenyans] like us around, we're good for business," he said. "The Kenyans as a group tend to be more friendly to the U.S. The Kenyans also tend to be Christian, but the coastal part is primarily Muslim. The Muslims actually settled the coast 1,000 years ago."



In Africa

"If I work in the general clinic, I see about 125 people a day and I might do 10 cataract surgeries a day," Hof said. "They also have a side part of it, which is a fee-for-service private clinic, which provides medical care for people who can afford to pay for it. In that setting I might see 15 people and do three or four operations."

Hof added that the clinic is not quite self-sustaining and that the funding for it is split nearly equally three different ways with procedures, funds from a German philanthropic organization and the rest coming from private donations, mostly from Americans.

This year though, Hof hasn't made his trip, at least not yet.

"The Lighthouse director just advised me not to come until some of the issues over there were settled," he said, partly because, "the refugees from Somalia come down and they tend to be more radical."

Hof pays close attention to the news from that part of the world.

In normal years, Hof will take some staff or family, but it varies from year-to-year. He will also take medical supplies.

Back in Arkansas

Hof, a California native, attended medical school at UAMS and decided to stay in Arkansas.

"I had a friend up here in Rogers that needed some temporary help," he said, "and I've been here ever since."

At the time, Rogers was a rural community.

"The whole (town had) 18,000 people," Hof said. "There was one stop sign."

Now Rogers and Benton County are booming with a total population pushing a quarter of a million people.

The Boozman-Hof Clinic was built in a "bean field," he said. "At least it was then. This whole area was a little bit residential, but it was mostly country. The town filled in around us."

And as the surest sign of cultural sprawl, a new Starbucks is just down the street from the clinic.

Back then, "I was personally seeing around 400 patients a month, now, it's about double that."

Hoff added the town now has "roughly double the number of doctors."

"And we were taking care of everyone from all around," he said. "Siloam [Springs] didn't have [an ophthalmologist] so were taking care of everyone outside of Fayetteville. We took care of Cassville and Noel [in Missouri]. The area we now take care of, even though we are seeing four times the number of patients, is probably four times smaller."

For more information on the Lighthouse for Christ Mission, visit http://lighthouseforchrist.org.



ie.
November 2006

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