Dear Mama Rowena,
It's been a while since I last touched base with you though I know you are well and still love me and the reverse is true. I know you might not have so much time since you have to do the food bank and have to feed the chickens so that you can have more eggs this summer. I will right away dive into what I have to share with you.
Last afternoon I arrived at this Health Facility in the interior of Tanzania, its located on the highway and as we drive in its all quiet & my eyes set on the nice huge trees that host a number of birds.I would lie id i mentioned the species.
We are welcomed by a nurse who leads us to the Medical In-Charge's office where we are told that he's attending to a birthing Mama. We decide to wait & then I lazily move out to interact with the Patients,my first was this boy who is hardly 2 years old and he's feasting on a piece of a doughnut that's oily and bigger than his fist, in the other hand he's holding a bottle of soda.
I look at him closely and realize he's ill and he's here to see the doctor, the mother tells me they arrived in the morning and have been in the queue all this long and when the kid started crying she gave her the soda and the doughnut to arrest the situation.
Later, the doctor comes into office and invites us in but we decide to wait so that he serves the waiting patients, he smiles as we walk out.
As we wait, many things are running in my mind and the questions are so many and the answers seem to be very far.
We walk to the Operating Theatre as part of my mission here, one thing strikes me immediately , it's the screwdriver that has replaced the handle of the surgical light, the handle broke a couple of months ago and they improvised with the screw driver. This just made my day knowing that no surgery will be canceled due to a broken handle. A surgery light is one of the most useful equipment in the Theatre,without it so many mistakes can be made and a patient can depart this world.
So many surgeries take place in this place where am standing and many lives are mended right here in a place that is fit to be a storage room.
As we walk into the sluice room we are informed that the facility in-charge is ready for us, we don't want to waste any minute of his precious time so we rush back to his office.
As I sign in the visitors book (it's a must) I look at him and I realize he is so fatigued.
He welcomes us and narrates to us as, he's the the only available doctor at the facility today and he's been working since 8am, he rotates around all the wards and handles all emergencies.
I look at him and deep down my heart am like " these are the unsung heroes that have traded their lives for others". These are the kind of people that need to be supported in all ways possible.
I wonder how often he gets to sit down with his family to have a family meal, talk about life, laugh and basically live. I love my wife and our Emil so much that any opportunity I get to spend with them is treasured since I don't know if tomorrow I will be around to do it again. An, has come up with a great innovation of marking days off a calendar whenever I travel so our boy knows when Papa Fish will be back home.
Fast forward >> The Doctor tells how the number of patients hardly drops and yet his health facility has few medical supplies and few beds. They are forced to have some patients sleep on the cold floor with their newly born babies because they have less beds nowhere to send them to. Some of the mothers had obstructed deliveries that led to asphyxia thus ending lives of the babies. This hits me hard because it shouldn't be happening in this century. Asphyxia has really wiped out so many babies.
I turned to the Doctor and thanked him for his commitment and love for his fellow countrymen. He smiles and gives me a handshake and goes like " Please help us in any way you can".
Mama Rowena, at this point I was speechless and all I needed was solace to download and think through everything.
We head back into our truck and head off to the next Health Centre, in a distance of about 4kms we come across motor accident where a bus overturned injuring about 14 people, we stop and the onlookers tell us that the casualties have been rushed to the health facility where we were a few minutes ago. At this moment the fatigued doctor's face flashes into my mind and I feel sorry for him and the casualties. I guess as he locked his office door the ambulance siren hit his hearing sense and he had to go to work again at the expense of his family and his life.
My prayer and wish is for things to get better so that our heroes get a life too.
Anyways, I have to leave now but have a great day and please pray for our living heroes. If I had lots of money I would create a program whereby a doctor like this would have a fully paid vacation to just LIVE like me and you.
Blessings,
Hannington
