5th Blog Post from Tanzania
March 5, 2011
Tonight I leave to return to the USA and Maine after my time in Tanzania.
I had a fortuitous day today in meeting with Karen from Kilimanjaro Porter’s Assistance Project, where it so happened that two Boston College Students were filming a documentary on conditions for porters on Kilimanjaro, so I got to say my bit about my experience and recommendations for change. Karen is from Boston by way of Denver, and had been here working hard for change for 7 years on a shoestring budget. Slow is hardly the word for getting anything constructive done here, but she is trudging along with a staff of two to improve conditions, and has a container loaded with gear en route to Dar Es Salaam now, but it will cost $10,000 USD to get it 8 hours to the mountain- looks like many must get paid off before any goods get to the porters! But if you feel like another good cause to put on your list of places to donate to instead of holiday gifts, Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project .org is a good one. One of the more memorable evening I spent on the slopes of Kilimanjaro was in the cook tent with a group of young porters and one of the male guides as a translator, where I fielded their many questions about HIV, most were entirely basic, showing me the real need for AIDS education as a part of the solution. The young men were shocked that people in the US actually request HIV testing of their partner, and that condoms were in wide use! Some seeds of change were planted around the table over chai tea, and they agreed to go home to their villages and try to talk to their friends about trying a new, more open attitude. Cultural change is very slow, and must begin with a few young people who are willing to talk openly and take steps to value their own lives.
This week I had first hand experience with the stigma of HIV in the clinic I was supposed to work in a very poor neighborhood of Moshi called Kalolini.
We had three days of patients scheduled but due to the location, in which they had to “run the gauntlet” of walking by their neighbors to get into the clinic room, they cancelled en masse. This put me into an afternoon funk of purposelessness, where I was wondering if I would to work for my last week after the clinic I was supposed to run ended so suddenly. But Jeremy and Camilla stepped up fast, and rerouted me to two other locations for the week. The Kalolini patients were moved for the time being to a more private location nearby. During the rest of the week I did followup visits with some of the patients I had seen a month ago, and nice to see such fast and deep change. One young woman, Anna K, is 13, HIV+, who lives with her grandmother. Her mom died from AIDS when she was young, and her dad is currently dying of the disease. Her dad is too sick to work much as a tailor, and she did not pass the primary school exams due to the upheaval in her family, so she would like to be a tailor’s apprentice. I treated her leg ulcers and long standing grief with a month of daily Ignatia 12C . Her leg ulcer healed, and mood shifted profoundly. When I was in Moshi today I stopped at some tailor shops and asked if she could be an apprentice; one of the young men has a family member who has been helped with HHA, and he volunteered to take her on. So that is a hopeful story, among many I have heard in my time here. A woman with severe syphilitic leg ulcers I mentioned in an earlier post is improving. Another male patient I saw, a Tanzanite miner who is HIV positive and depressed that he would never have a life again after losing his wife to AIDS, and now supporting his 3 children, but unable to work, had a more positive attitude and better energy after a month on Natrum Muriaticum.
After the clinic at Kalolini ended I spent one day in another outlying area of Moshi, where the clinic consisted of two orange tarps strung up in an alleyway between a shell of a house and an open-air butcher shop. One tarp served as a sun shield, and one as a back wall, while a white sheet served as the front ‘door’. The heat in the afternoon and the smell of the fish and butchered meat was the African version of 127 Hours, and when the wind blew, the roof and walls would rise and fall like a balloon. Somehow it reminded me of being in a drumming group-listening to and holding my own beat in the midst of the street sounds; finding the essence of the patient in front of me, and doing it efficiently while the alleyway was filled with all the patients of the day assembled, waiting patiently for their rhythm to be heard.
My last clinic day was doing follow ups in Mwanga, a more remote village in the red volcanic hills about 45 minutes outside Moshi, in the home of Esther and Engelbert. This is more of an expedition than most other clinics, and starts with a stop for petrol, then drive to the village, where another stop is made for Chapattis and the fixings for sweet chai tea for all the patients, the hosts, the translator, driver, and homeopath. Then drive up the hillside and start work, with a chai and chapatti break at lunch with Eater and Englebert, followed by more patients. It is high tea, African style. This clinic is run by Vivien Freund, who is much loved by her patients, and the results over six or more months are improved lives of patients and CD4 numbers rising. A good last day of patients for me in Tanzania, and I hope for another tour before too long!
The warm African night wind is blowing just like it did when I came here two months ago, the snowy summit of Kilimanjaro reflecting in the distant night.
It has been a privilege and a challenge to work in Tanzania, where the welcome is warm, and working conditions are highly challenging. The overt pathology and life situations of patients one sees daily is heart wrenching, and totally incongruous with the first world. I recommend this experience to those who can dedicate a few months to this project, where the extent of the need boggles the imagination. It is an unparalleled opportunity to practice classical homeopathy, immerse oneself in a different culture and practice hakuna matata. What plans are made here are always subject to revision, and the exodus from news, and well as the trappings of civilization are a call for each of us to help for the good of the whole both locally and globally. Hats off to Camilla and Jeremy for their dedication.
Visit www.hha.org for your additional donations or to volunteer in whatever way you see fit.
I’m ending posts to this blog, other than to post a few photographs of my time here. I hope that in time we can make our own book of stories of AIDS sufferers in Africa who have been helped with homeopathy.
Safari Njema!
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