Tales of Tanzania - part IV

As I was kept busy in the tents teaching English, exposure to the patients in the clinic was kept to a bare minimum. Dr. Nigel Camilleri, on the other hand, was constantly kept busy and provided me with this article to make up part four of Tales of Tanzania.

Dr. Camilleri has been involved in voluntary work since 1999, helping out in Palermo, India, Ethiopia and Tanzania. He is a specialist registrar in child and adult psychiatry based in Newcastle. He is also an associate clinical researcher at the Faculty of Medical Sciences Newcastle University.

A few miles outside the dusty traffic filled polluted streets of Dar Es Salem, a typical rickety city in Africa, made up of a hotchpotch of houses, flats, schools, people, animals and almost everything, lies rural slum of Buza. Buza consisted of a few roads neatly lined with humble shacks, palm trees growing out of the sand giving a peaceful easy feeling to all who visited.

This is where, for the second time running the members of the voluntary organisation named FACES chose to open a medical clinic and with the help of the Sisters of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart offer a free medical service and medication to hundreds of the poorest of the poor living there.

The place for this make shift clinic was the Choir room used by the members of the Buza parish. During the first weekend this room was given a facelift. One part of it was converted into four cubicles with curtains hanging down from the ceiling and couches, chairs, tables placed in each one. This was followed by the reception area were tables, chairs and the medicines were neatly stored on benches used as temporary shelves. Improvised plumbing made running water possible.

The team of volunteers working in the clinic consisted of four doctors, a physiotherapist, pharmacist and two medical students. Together with members of the community they would see to queues of people turning up outside. These people were ready to wait for days to be seen. This brought many questions to our mind, why are there so many ill people in this place? Where are the doctors in this country? Why don’t they go to hospital? Where do they get their patience to wait so long from?

On a typical day, the blistering sun beat down on the desert sand, baking the huts and making everyone sweat, the clinic would open its doors and the patients would be greeted by the hard working people in reception. These were responsible for taking the particulars and parameters of the patients whilst they answered to the hundreds of demands shot out from the inpatient doctors. As if this was not enough they tried their hardest to keep the people waiting in some form of queue.

The doctors with the indispensable help of translators tirelessly worked through throngs of patients. The complaints would vary from ‘paining’, which was generalised pain all over the body, to any serious pathology under the sun! It made us stop and wonder how many people have blood pressure shooting through the roof and walk around with a smile and no worry in the world!

Every day, every person had a story to tell and as tiring as the work may have been, it was a learning experience for everyone. Be it the joys of giving birth to fifteen children or the tragedies of a husband dying and the wife finding out only later that it was due to HIV/Aids which is now something she suffers from and to add to that, he has left her penniless. These are memories we will fondly carry with us through our lives.

Every morning I would grab a quick cup of coffee for the road, thinking today would be a day like all the rest. Little did we did we know how each day had a surprise in store for us. Such as a mother walking in with her baby gasping for breath in her hands, and at the same time making feeble attempts to cry but is too weak to do so and the mother in the most calm and accepting of manners waits for him to be seen. Our hearts would pour out to try and help this child whilst at the same time boil up inside with thoughts of why must certain people are made to suffer so much in life. The questions are made to seem so trivial when a few days later, the mother walks in with the same sense of calm but this time a smile showing off pearl white teeth and her baby in her arms having recovered.

During lunch break the volunteers would quickly grab a bit of the local cuisine at a nearby shack called Upendo meaning ‘love. The jovial owner would welcome us into his humble abode offering us to sit on whichever piece of plastic chair was available and offering us the specials of the day which would include rice and bean sauce (wali) or if one wanted to clog his arteries with oil, chicken and ‘chipsi’.

As the equatorial sun starts to set over the dusty hills of Buza and it would start to get difficult to see in the clinic, the frail tired bodies of the volunteers would file out of the clinic hitching a bumpy ride on the dalla dalla (mini-vans) back to their hostel. Whilst the day in the clinic would seem like a roller coaster ride, in contrast; life in the village seemed to go on just as peacefully as any other day. Men selling their wares, fruit stalls displaying bananas, children playing in the sand and the palm trees eclipsing all by standing tall staring into the eyes of the sun.

Being a member of this group I can say that what the people gave us far exceeds what we did for them. Their stories and smiles are lights that will never go extinguished in my heart.

Like small springs that have grown to become beautiful rivers, so do we hope that FACES will eventually be able to provide a year round free service to the poor.

As the Dalai Lama said: “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle and the light of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases from being shared”.