Meeting with the Community

On Friday we invited the Village Health Workers to the clinic. These volunteer workers are the first line of defence in the health care system, visiting homes, encouraging those who are sick to seek help and educating the community in good health practices. Last year it proved difficult to bring them in but this year, knowing the difficulties, it was planned ahead and we had 64 of them attending. They are terribly under-resourced, lacking the basic medications to treat even malaria and not having the funds to travel. Debbie talked to them about primary health care issues and then we arranged to visit some households with them. As part of our outreach we also met with the heads of some of the local councils to hear their concerns and ask for their input to some of our ideas for projects.

On Monday morning Lynda and I went with Daniel to visit two primary schools close to Rambia’s health clinic with more scheduled for the afternoon and other days this week. Last year we visited just one school but this year we wanted to expand this work because it gives us the opportunity to talk to the children about basic hygiene and to learn about their facilities– and of course the children are great fun to be with. They are always over the moon to see the “mzungus” and Lynda has them rolling on the grass as she practices her few words of the local Toro language. She keeps them spellbound as she demonstrates how to wash their hands and talks to them about using the latrines. This is absolutely the kind of work that Lynda is meant to do – and I never wash my hands in the same way again after listening to her.

While these times are great fun I found myself very sad afterwards and can’t quite explain why. It’s probably a combination of factors. For example, we decided not to talk to them about the importance of boiling water because we know that most families can’t afford the fuel – or the time – to do it. We distributed vitamin A vials but had to limit the distribution to the very youngest children – vitamin A deficiency is common here. There was no source of water, clean or otherwise at either school, so children drink from the nearby river. The pit latrines are full and in terrible shape. We know that we’ll continue to see typhoid, gastro-intestinal and other related problems at the clinic until this community and these schools have access to clean water, and proper latrines so that open defecation is a thing of the past. And perhaps the final thing that makes me sad is that we know how to fix these things and the cost, though insurmountable by local standards, is modest by ours.