New Possibilities

21 October 2009

First off, thank you all so much for your prayers and e-mails. All of your advice and encouragement helps to keep us motivated yet keep things in perspective.

Although our frustrations with St. Elizabeth still linger, we have created a completely new plan, and have regained our excitement. We found a contact through fellow volunteers at the Arusha Center for Women’s and Children’s Development and heard that they periodically go to rural villages to present certain topics and issues. Whitney and I let them know of our interest in possibly joining them to present on the topic of HIV/AIDS and whatever other health related topics that they saw fit. So we went in to meet with a lady named Mama Hindu, who runs the organization, and it turns out that she had big plans for us. Little did we know that she already had big plans for us after the other volunteers told her of our ideas. So we discussed our ideas over a ginger soda (which is offered every time anyone visits her).

Our new goal is to visit 8 villages (some far and some near to Arusha) over the remainder of our time here to convey our message about healthy living and how to prevent disease transmission, especially HIV/AIDS. In a way, it sounds like a small prevention campaign in a very rural setting. After our first visit to each village, we will return and work on ideas and find supplies that are greatly needed, and will then plan a follow-up visit to each. Also, each village on our schedule has a hospital of some kind, probably a one-room hut or a simple awning, that we are going to help out in.

Transportation is a major cost for this project, and the close villages will cost about 65,000 Tanzanian shillings (about 50-55 USD) and the far villages will cost about 95,000 Tsh. Five of the villages are far enough away that we are going to stay there for a week to reduce the transportation costs and make our time the most cost effective. I can't wait to live out in the "bush"; it will be kind of like elk camp. If it works out, some of the money that we received through the spaghetti dinner at our church in Buffalo, WY, and any subsequent donations that we receive will be used to help fund the transportation costs and to take minor medical supplies, such as gauze, needles, and ointments if possible, for these villages.

Part of our plan will involve bringing people in from the villages to get tested or to receive treatment in Arusha, and we are going to try to find some HIV tests that Whit and I can take to the villages to administer ourselves. Working with the villages should only take up 2-3 days per week, so we are still planning on working at St. Elizabeth’s; we hope to gain more of their trust in hopes that they will be able to utilize our skill sets. We also hope to refer some patients to them that we meet in these villages, if possible. We will need a translator to go with us who knows English and Swahili until we feel fluent enough (if we get that far), but apparently we might also have to find a translator who knows both Swahili and the tribal language of the village that we are in because some of the village members don’t even know Swahili. Communication will still be very difficult, but we are getting used to that fact.

This is a great opportunity, but we know that it will not be easy and we are keeping our expectations at a reasonable level. We have realized that progress will be slow, and are just grateful for another opportunity to meet new people.

(The picture is of the school at CWCD that Mama Hindu oversees. A few volunteers in our house teach at this school. The building on the left has most of the classrooms in it, and the building on the right is a library and computer room in progress. It could take them 10 years to finish it since they are strapped for funds.)

Written by Zach