Keep Your Eyes Open

Today, I saw my first green mamba, a snake that, with a well-placed bite, can kill a healthy adult within half an hour, and a child within minutes. The regional coordinator is in town, so we spent the morning visiting various project sites, and on our way to the first one, he suddenly shouts from the front seat of the truck “Cobra! Mamba Verde!” When the car stops, he jumps from the vehicle and fearlessly begins to stride toward a tree covered in craggy dry vines at least 50 feet from the road. Although my first instinct was to run in the opposite direction (as eagerly as So Vasco, our plump cook who for some curious reason propels himself about the acampamento at a whistling jog), curiosity eventually got the better of me and I cautiously crept from the car to get a glimpse of the serpent. It took the regional coordinator verily climbing the exposed roots of the tree, and tossing sticks at the mamba – “Look Mica! Look! There it is! Can you see it yet?” – for me to finally catch site of its green head, and when I did I could not fathom how he possibly saw it, hiding under all that roughage, from the road. He explained simply “We’re bush people!” and left me to gawk. This is not your average project coordinator, a man highly respected within World Vision, and I would be remiss if I didn’t note that his keen sense of snake whereabouts and the reckless abandon with which he approached it didn’t augment my respect for him as well.

Our next stop was to see a conservation farming plot, newly prepared by one of the kids groups I met with for the first time last week. Their choice of location is encouraging; with a well and cows nearby, they will have access to water and fertilizer, giving them a chance to cultivate vegetables and build successful compost heaps, which is unfortunately more than I can say for most of the project sites where we attempt to implement these projects. Water is such a problem here, and with people waiting in line for hours for their turn to pump water simply to drink and cook, filling gallons upon gallons to water a garden simply doesn’t fly in most places.

The kids’ plot is also right next to a rural maternity ward and clinic, and after a brief tour, I felt simultaneously shocked, hopeless, and inspired. With one dedicated nurse (who could easily find a better paying job in a city) and 20 midwives (who are unpaid and walk their patients for many kilometers to get to the ward), the rural operation has seen 27 births so far this month. And it’s only October 13th. After speaking to them at length, learning that the only contribution the government can afford is kerosene for lamps for night births, and that if the midwives want soap to wash their hands they must bring it from home, we entered the ward where two woman lay on cots, swathed in the typical colorful cloths, clearly in a lot of pain from contractions. No water. No food. No privacy. No family. Just two women on cots curled into fetal positions and moaning gently.

Of course I know that this scene pervades Africa, but this was the first time I’ve seen it, and the dedication of the nurse and midwives was enough to break my heart. No one is helping them, and yet they continue to work day and night to ensure that these women don’t have their babies alone on a dirt floor. After careful prodding, I extracted the opinion that the government is doing all it can, at the local and national levels, to improve healthcare, but that their resources are spread very thinly, in accordance with the belief that a larger number of basic facilities is better than a smaller number of well-equipped facilities. It’s hard to argue with that. My mind immediately flitted to all the places I could begin to raise funds for this hospital: friends, family, churches back home. And even if raising money to buy soap, gloves, and gowns is not “sustainable”, it’s hard to care when the need is so immediate and acute. When the effort and heart are there, but the money simply is not.

What would YOU do?