The Work Begins

Habari (how's it going) everyone. After acclimatizing ourselves to the local surroundings, we we're able to get our work underway the last two days. On Wednesday we met with the Upendo (Love) HIV/AIDS support group in Arusha. It is a group of 55 people who meet every week to share and help each other with their various problems. They are based out of a Roman Catholic church which we traveled to in the morning. At first, the group members seemed a little reserved, but as our discussion and conversation with them continued they began smiling and laughing with us. We had thought that our purpose that day was to arrange physical screenings for them but the meeting evolved into much more. We were able to educate them on complications and transmission of HIV (through an interpretator of course, give us a few more weeks to learn :) ) as well as answer a myriad of questions ranging from "How does HIV go from person-to-person?" to "Why is the HIV problem so much worse in Africa?" I believe all our group members were deeply impacted by the strength and resolve of these people considering the trials and tribulations many of them have been through. At the end, we were able to arrange physical screenings for them next week. Here is a picture of us with the group. 
Later that day we went to CCF (Children for Children's Future) Arusha. We have had a relationship with them for many years through Dr. Mhando. This is a place for street kids, orphans, and abused/poverty stricken children. The children are asked or brought in to the centre and stay here 4-6 months. If they show good behaviour (no drinking, smoking, swearing, daily chores etc...) they are then transferred to the larger CCF centre outside of town. These kids have had difficult pasts and many have been physically or sexually abused. We met with the director, Ndonde, and discussed some of the problems with the children and the center. The place relies on generous contributions from outside sources and does not have established funding thus there is a constant need. We decided to begin helping out by doing full medical, dental, and nursing screenings on these kids. Yesterday these were started and the amount of problems we have seen already is huge. Almost all of the children have cavities, some of the kids have 3 or 4 medical problems that on their own would receive immediate medical attention in Canada, and the family/social histories dispose them to many problems in the future. Hopefully our screenings will be able to uncover more and allow us to send them for proper treatment. Today, we will be going back to do more screenings.

However, despite these problems we found the kids and staff very friendly and inviting. Some of us played soccer with them, taught them some English as well as learned some Swahili from them, and just generally had fun being with them. Wherever you go, kids are kids and we saw that through them. On a sidenote, the whole center went crazy (as well as the rest of Arusha) when Ghana beat the US 2-1 in the World Cup. If we've found out anything about Tanzania in the past week, it's that soccer (soka) is king. I have attached a some photos of the dental screenings at CCF, us in our transportation (Dr. Mhando's van) and the street by Dr. Mhando's house. Take care all.

Posted by DavidDudok on June 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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