1st Blog Post from Tanzania

1^st Blog Post from Tanzania

January 21, 2011

12:20 pm EST/ 8:20 pm Tanzania time!

     I left Portland, Maine around 1:30 pm by bus to Boston, Mass Logan airport, and caught 6:40 pm flight to Amsterdam on Delta/ KLM. Another snowstorm was due and flights were already being cancelled, so I felt lucky to be able to leave when I did. Flying alongside a mostly full moon, I read a good bit of a gift book, The Power of Half, about a family who downsized their lavish US lifestyle and gave the profits from selling their excess possessions and McMansion to several rural villages Ghana where they built grain mills and wells. 

I arrived in Amsterdam at 8 am (2 am EST). After a 3 hour layover a KLM flight left for an 8.5-hour flight for Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, on which not only was baggage free, but two meals were served, with free beer, wine, Dutch chocolate ice cream, and where multiple food preferences honored -even Gluten-free! The views from 30,000 ft were spectacular going over the Italian Dolomite range, looking down at Sicily, across the Mediterranean, and then flying over the golden immensity of the Sahara Desert for hours, where you could see tracks going from one small enclave to another, radiating like spokes of a wheel, very occasional green irrigated crop circles, and wave-like patterns of sand dunes stretching to the horizon. Then night fell again, and at in the moonlight we landed at Kilimanjaro airport, where the outline of Mt Kilimanjaro was visible in the windy, warm darkness- it was 84 degrees at 10 pm local time! I was met at the airport by Milanz, and we drove to 40 km to Hahnemann house, during which I was speechless with exhaustion. We passed columns of Policemen & women numbering about 1000, in training on the night roadway, marching & jogging in the darkness.

     I woke early to the sounds of roosters and dogs, & birds, but managed a few more hours of sleep, and got up to look out the window at my favorite- pink bougainvillea and smelling amazing fragrances of the local flora. Hahnemann house is a one-story cement block/adobe structure with 4 bedrooms, several WC’s, kitchen, dining & living space, and 2 decks. Vivien a long-term volunteer homeopath here on her 2^nd stint, came by for tea and we went to the local market and vendors for food, where she helped with buying all this fruit (Matunda). 3,500 Tanzanian shillings (Elfu Tatu Mia Tato) Elfu= thousand, Tatu=3, Mia= hundred, Tato=5) This sum,~$2.25 US, bought 4(Nne) ripe tomatoes, 1 (Modja) cuke, 1 (Modja) huge ripe pineapple, 4 (Nne)bananas, 1 (Modja) giant mango, 2 (Mbili) potatoes, 2(Mbili) onions, and a bunch of local greens!

I passed the day trying some Swahili, taking a nap and a walk. The main road (barabara) has many people walking- carrying all sorts of loads on their heads, a few biking, and fewer still Safari type vehicles or small trucks. On the dirt roads a fine red dust coats you entirely when vehicles pass; the warmth of the air gets into you- allowing for only a different pace, and the greenery and scents are lush. At dusk the power went out and Jeremy Sherr, whose brainchild this project is, stopped by with some food and a warm Karibu!

So, as I have been told many times today:

Jambo! -Hello

Hujambo? or Hujambo orHHabari? -How are you?

Sijambo -I’m fine- or Nzuri Sana -Very well

Karibu Tanzania -Welcome to Tanzania

Kwaheri! -Goodbye / See you later…

January 23, 2011

     I was treated to a day with Jeremy and Camilla Sherr and their 3 lovely children. We went dipping in a big waterfall in the lowlands around “the Kili” as Jeremy describes the 18,683 ft peak in the view from many vantage points. He says he has bigger mountains to climb here in Tanzania than Kili, and is happy to tackle these challenges….

January 24, 2011

         We drove into the foothills of Kilimanjaro this morning for a day at a hospital with Jeremy, and an international contingent of local and volunteer homeopaths. The cases showed Jeremy’s ability to cut to the chase, find the essence, and make innovative and his genus epidemicus prescriptions for AIDS. The CD4’s go up in short time periods, he has found, and patients’ quality of life improves immensely.

January 25, 2011

    Today we went to an outlying village about 50 km from our town, where Vivian, who has lived and volunteered in Tanzania for about 6 months, has held twice weekly clinics at her own expense. She provides free care and food for patients, and is a delight to see in her element, where she is vivacious, thorough, and as dedicated to her patients as they are to her. The first client was a young girl who was carried to the clinic a week prior, with such a severe lung infection that the translator felt she would not survive the week. She walked under her own power the long distance to the clinic, had a much reduced cough and no fever a week later. The day was full of follow-ups of people who had endured harrowing decades of familial stigmatization and estrangement due to their disease or marriage to a spouse with AIDS. Though the societal stigma remains, the capacity of these people to cope, resume their lives, and flourish under homeopathic treatment is remarkable. Nothing less than inspirational!

January 26, 2011

    Today was spent with Camilla Sherr at one of her homeopathic clinics sites in town. Once again, the patients come in saying that most everything is very much better or just plain GONE! The numbness they have had in their legs for years, the skin lesions, the fungal infections, the chronic coughs, Headaches, lethargy, and so on. You can’t spend even one day here and have a shred of doubt of the power of this healing method to restore the recuperative power of the immune system of the person, no matter how ill.

January 30, 2011

   I went to Arusha National Park, nearby today with Mel, another HWB volunteer here from Britain. We saw a slew of animals- my first Zebras, baboons, Giraffes, and a crowned crane in the wild, and many more birds- flamingos, ibis, etc. Totally cool watch a giraffe family with it's long legged amble across the road, reaching down to eat treetops, and then gazing up at you with those long lashes!

January 31, 2011

  A second clinic day with Camilla, where again, the patients are doing so well with homeopathic care, mom’s babies, orphans, old folks, and the gamut. A particularly touching case was a young man with HIV who runs a school for AIDS orphans totally on his own, with no funding, just a huge heart, who came in for homeopathic treatment so he can get better fast because so many children need him to help them in his village.