BOOKS FOR AFRICA

A couple of weeks ago, Anne emailed “The Citizen” a draft article proposing a scheme to raise money to buy school books here in Africa for kids in the four schools she’s working with.  Little did she realise how enthusiastic their response would be; the article was published that week before we had a chance to work out the practicalities of gathering the money!

We’re hugely grateful to Betty Mitchell for agreeing to act as “agent” and co-ordinate money collection.  Details of collecting points will appear in “The Citizen”; so far the Feddinch Medical Practice and Henderson the Jeweller have agreed to have a collecting tin.

ANNE

Work:

Carrying on with the mothers’ meetings this week – 150 at Mofou-sud, 130 at Mandoula, 52 at Membeng and 20 at Boudoum. Guess which school will get the booby prize this time! Last year we worked hard on gender issues; this year we carry on with that but start to look at the governance of the schools e.g. Is it participative? Is it transparent? Is it fair? Is it inclusive? Is corporal punishment still in use? If so, how violent is it? Are the other schools willing to follow Membeng’s lead and ban it? Next stage with the mums starts on Saturday with the arrival of the specialist from Maroua who will help us set up the Associations des Mères to help promote girls’ education especially, both morally and financially. Literacy classes get underway properly next week with the girls who have never been to school and tomorrow and Friday I will take a car load of teachers to Mokolo for two days of in-service training. I will just be an observer, thank goodness. Godam has insisted that we have a preparatory meeting with the girls for the literacy classes to tell them the rules e.g. they must be punctual, regular in attendance and clean!  Goodness, hasn’t he changed?

A huge “Thank you” is due to Fiona and Hamish Leslie for holding a silent auction to raise funds for a well at one of the schools. They raised a magnificent £1,350. Money from Mannofield Church in Aberdeen has resurfaced a blackboard and bought books for Membeng Primary and bought teachers’ books for Mofou-sud. If teachers had books at all, they were the old editions. Any pupils lucky enough to have their own books have the new editions so teachers were  having to borrow from the children to prepare lessons. They are delighted to have their own copies now. Meanwhile at the local college one young woman is trying to teach computing without computers!

Home:

Tuesday is market day and as with last year, nobody wants to work with me. My Tuesdays remain busy though e.g. I hardly need to go to market myself as so many people turn up at the door to sell things and get some money to spend there themselves. This week was no exception – before 7am I had bought a chicken I wanted and a pumpkin I didn’t want. At 8.30 a sack of peanuts and millet arrived – not sure what I will do with the millet as we hate the boules they make with it. By 9am I knew I had 2 punctures and wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. Lydia was unable to work as she had toothache – change of plan for our evening meal. At 1.30 Frédéric Innocent, a young lad from collège brought another b…..  pumpkin. As he grows them himself to help pay for school, what could I do? After delivering the Mannofield books to Mofou-sud, I finally made my way to market to see what was there this week. Exciting stuff! I purchased our first ever régime of bananas. At 6pm Claudia (Thomas’s youngest child) turned up with roasted, salted peanuts. Just as well we like peanuts in this house. A fairly quiet Tuesday really. Didn’t feel the urge to put up Shona’s “No visits, please” sign. I do, however, need a “NO PUMPKINS, PLEASE” sign!

Village life:

Now that most of the millet, peanuts, beans and rice have been harvested, people have started on their cotton – much earlier than last year. Every day the fields around us are changing and the animals are allowed back in to eat up the bits that are left (technical term). It’s a bit like autumn at the moment as leaves are dropping off the trees all the time but here it is because of the heat and the drought, not the cold.

Random facts/thoughts:

• Zidim has been promised electricity by December, January or February, depending on who we talk to.
• First thing in the morning as we walk through the house to the kitchen, cobwebs hit our faces. Yuck.
• I discovered that there is no Fulfulde word for wheel or tyre when Thomas told me the car had a sore foot!
• Managed to convey to him that there was a chicken in the shed which he should kill that day and that I wanted to keep the liver. That speech was greeted with a loud “Yo!” He is always very appreciative of my stumbling attempts at Fulfulde.
• On Sunday, the entire church service was led by women. Worship was bilingual of course in this bilingual country – it was done in Fulfulde translated into Mofou!

Hamish

Firstly, a huge thanks to the Rotary Club of St Andrews.  They have generously donated money which enabled the hospital to buy suction pumps for use in theatre.  When we arrived here, the existing machine was on its last legs and it finally died several months ago.  Without this equipment, operating on a belly full of blood or pus is no joke, so the arrival of the new machine has been very welcome.  In addition to a powered pump the money also allowed us to buy a foot operated one to have as stand by – a good back up given the frequent problems with power here.  The attached photo shows theatre with the new pump on the floor to my left, ready for action.  (Anne says this photo is too gory for general viewing……..!)

Anne Poppelaars arrived back on 2^nd November and started back at work on 5^th.  It was great to meet the new arrival, Laura, and a huge relief to me to have a colleague once more.  I have added a photo of Laura in the arms of Oumarou, who tries to teach us Fulfulde, with Anne alongside.  Seems the hospital is planning to keep Dr Djemba on, which is a bit of a surprise given that the admin staff have been gathering the evidence of his lack of commitment.  Now that the Médecin Chef is back, he is deposed and has lost his consulting room.  He indicated he didn’t want to use the room that was suggested for him and would like to use a room which is in the theatre block.  No chance of that; Anne Poppelaars spotted his ruse – this room is as far away as possible from the action so a good place to hide!  More importantly, it’s used for counselling of HIV positive patients as it’s away from the area where patients gather and so confidentiality can be maintained.  As such, there’s no chance of it being used by someone else.

We’ve heard about the difficulties travelling from some of the outlying villages and decided to visit one, Gamboura, which is about 50 Km from Zidim.  The Baptist Mission has a medical centre there, manned by nurses, and we often get patients referred by them.  The road was impassable during the rainy season, but it’s not much better now!  The attached photo shows me standing in one of the deep trenches on the road.  We eventually gave up as we didn’t want to be driving in the dark, but now we have a real appreciation of just how difficult it can be for patients to get to hospital.

One of the big challenges of medicine here is the complete lack of reliability of supplies.  Quinine, the main drug used to treat severe malaria, has been in short supply right at the peak of the malaria season.  Drugs to treat TB are running low and we have had to treat patients on a week to week basis rather than giving them two months supply.  This means they have to keep coming back to the hospital for their medicines – a huge problem given the distances many of them have to travel.  Drugs for AIDS patients also ran out – we got no supplies of some of the drugs during August, September and most of October.  Fortunately, we had built up a bit of a stock here in Zidim so were able to avoid any of our patients having to interrupt treatment, but it was close.  These problems are national and recently there were protests at the office of the Minister of Health in Yaoundé.  Not sure if that helped but at least the AIDS drugs seem to be moving again.  We’re sure that corruption is at the root of the problem; corruption is a way of life here and everybody just accepts it.  Having said that, so far we’ve found if we say we work for an NGO (VSO) which doesn’t condone corruption officials seem to accept that we won’t be paying a bribe!

As I’ve said before, safety is not a priority here.  This week, we got another motorcycle accident victim with a fractured skull.  He arrived deeply unconscious, but had been driving in the dark (on lousy dirt roads) without a helmet and having had a few bottles of beer.  Drink driving is accepted; they even park their motos inside the bars – well saves them having to walk!  The patient’s pals thought it was all a huge joke (well, they were all very “relaxed” too) until I pointed out there was every likelihood their chum would die.  Fortunately I was wrong, although his recovery is far from complete.

Finally, they ran out of beer in Zidim last week.  The locals drank the bars dry celebrating the election of Barack Obama as President of USA.  Clearly the Africans are expecting a lot of him.