week 5, small setbacks

On Sunday 20^th Isa and Iago left Moshi. Now we are less volunteers in the health team, and we are going to miss them, as everything was going well and fast with all of us working together. From now on me, Ángela, will be the one in charge of the blog.

Luis will be the new Project coordinator from Moshi, although we keep in contact with Iago, who will be helping us in the distance.

The week from the 21^th to the 25^th of July Luis, Miranda and Parra had a lot of work, mostly office work. They were doing reports of the medical caravan and the deworming campaign. This work, although not very motivating, is essential to make the field work as productive as possible. With all this information, we will be able, in the future, to design projects focused on improving the main and more prevalent health problems.

Gasto and me spent the week in the dispensary, with the doctor and the laboratory technician, Veronika. The doctor is a woman with a lot of experience, who receives us every morning with a big smile, and answers all our questions. Even thought, and maybe because the low availability of material means and specific tests, and the lack of physical exploration, the diagnoses are not precise, and make overtreatment a big problem in our opinion. Veronika is a lovely woman, keen on collaborating with us, who is in charge of the laboratory and the Home Based Care, of which we will talk more soon.

Jaime had this week the seminar about nutrition with the mamas. Usually we do the seminars this way: on Tuesdays and Fridays we give the seminars to the Hope Group (10 mamas) with the help ofMwalimu Zara, who translates from English into Swahili. On Saturdays, the whole mamas group meet, and Hope Group are in charge of giving the seminar in swahili.

But Jaime had some trouble with his seminar schedule. On Tuesday there was a funeral in Msitu and the seminar was cancelled. On Friday we had a disgusting surprise when going to Msitu, so he had not time. Finally Jaime had to give the whole seminar on Saturday, with 50 mamas together. What a challenge! The good part is that he had time to draw some really nice posters for the mamas and meet some local nutrition experts who helped him make the seminar practical and useful.

So, what happened on Friday? It was a curious thing. A group of TATU volunteers were going to Msitu by dala-dala (Tanzanian minibus), and the dala-dala didn’t stop at the usual place, it went directly to Msitu police station. The police officer was there and wanted to see all our passports and visas. Obviously, we didn’t have the papers there, so we were retained for four hours until Albane came with all the documents. This small incident made us thought about some issues. Everyone in Msitu, including the police officer, knows about TATU, and they are aware of our work. And we do that with our best intentions. What happens then? Is someone being damaged because of our work? Or is just that some people have interests that confront TATU Project values? I don’t know.

What we know is that many local people went on Friday to the police station to know how we were and to encourage us. Some of them were there until the police officer let us go. And the mamas group send a support message to the NGO. Thanks to these things, we are more confident about what we are doing. Some people may be uncomfortable with our presence, but many others are happy that some musungus (white people in Swahili) have decided to spend some time in Msitu.