A Tanzanian Experience
by Several years ago I went to Tanzania as part of a charity providing aid to local communities. I wrote this for all the people who helped me raise the money to allow me to go.
As far as my volunteer work is concerned the experience was harrowing and humbling. My placement turned out to be something of a surprise. I had thought I was going to a township clinic taking blood pressures and doing simple nursing tasks. However I arrived to discover it had been changed to the local rural hospital and for the first time in 20 odd years I found my midwifery skills being put to the test.
To tell you the facilities are primitive would be an exaggeration. Simply there were no facilities. Water is obviously one of the greatest problems with lake water and rainwater from rusting tin tanks the only available source so hygiene was basic or non-existent. There are no drugs, no equipment and the death rate depressingly high. Something like 1 in 4 children die before the age of 3 and the average adult death is 49.
With only 91 beds to cover a population of over 15000 space was a premium. Indeed in the postnatal ward 2 women and 2 babies in one bed was the norm and all other wards would routinely have two, head to toe, in each.
Winfreida Mwashala from my own photo collection
While there I met an amazing woman called Winfreida Mwashala who has opened the first HIV/Aids Hospice and Orphanage in Tanzania, she calls it St Lucia. Until 2 years ago Winfrieda was a nurse at the local hospital and was appalled at the complete lack of community care given to HIV/Aids victims in Tanzania. The subject is almost completely taboo and no one wants to know who is infected and who is not, so to find this Tanzanian woman doing what she does is truly miraculous. She gave up her job and opened her heart and her home to take in local people suffering from the many opportunistic infections such victims suffer. In three tiny bedrooms she has 6 children all under 5, 2 men and 3 women. The children will stay with her for the duration of their short lives but the adults she treats, builds up with good nutrition and takes them back out to the community where she is teaching the wider community that is it possible to care and nurture these people without fear and discrimination. She also does around 6 home visits to various villages in the surrounding district most days and this with little money and the help of 3 other nurses. This is one woman trying to make a difference.
They now have a website if you were interested in finding out more. St. Lucia Hospice and Orphanage.
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