01/04/2010
Hello from Namibia!
We have been busy! Yesterday, Nicole and Genny spent the morning at FHS again, helping out the overworked teachers. We spent time working one-on-one with kids who were having trouble with counting. There are 3 teachers and between 80-100 kids, depending on the day. They are barely able to keep control of the whole class, let alone have time to work one-on-one with kids who need extra attention. Once the hard work was done, each of the kids made an Easter basket out of a paper plate and pipe cleaner. The teachers brought candy, and each child got two pieces to go in their basket. They were extremely excited to decorate their baskets and write their names on them. School is out next week for the Easter holiday. This might seem like a nice break for the kids, but it means that many of them will go without the two meals they get every day at school. But the teachers will definitely need the week off, after dealing with energetic kids all day. Easter is a huge holiday in Namibia. Everything is closed from Good Friday through Easter Sunday and there are people everywhere preparing for the holiday. We are preparing for our Easter party on Saturday. We’re expecting around 200 children from the local communities. We’ll be doing a huge Easter egg hunt at FHS and serving lunch to all the kids. We’re expecting mass chaos, and looking forward to it! The kids here are wonderful, and we’ve all fallen in love with them. We are excited to do an event that is just for them.
Yesterday afternoon we all went into the community and did a short clinic afternoon. We were there for about 2 hours and checked blood pressure for about 150 people. We handed out sandwiches and played with the kids. It was a good test run for today. Today we went into a different community and did more blood pressure checks. We gave out vitamins and sandwiches. We had prenatal and children’s vitamins, vitamin C and calcium. We had limited supplies, so we gave the calcium and prenatal vitamins just to the women and the vitamin C mostly to the men. We ran out much too fast. It was sad to know that we were only giving one-month supplies of vitamins, and that they would be gone long before we could come back next year with more. We also gave out about 100 shaving razors to the men in the community. We ran out in about 3 minutes and added razors to our long list of things we will definitely bring here in the future. Today we checked around 200 people for high blood pressure and things went much smoother. Between the 200 people checked today, and the 150 checked yesterday, we had around 50 that had high blood pressure. There was one man who tested so high that we had to put him in a taxi and send him to the nearest clinic to get immediate treatment. We were able to provide everyone else with a referral to the clinic. We will be giving the blood pressure medication to one of the doctors from the community hospital, and he will ensure that the medications get to those who were referred, at no cost to them.
We will most likely relax tomorrow, since there is very little going on in the communities. We move from Rivendell into Penduka tomorrow, and have a lot of work to pack everything up and get it organized. We all got a little too comfortable at Rivendell, and have been living like slobs! Tonight many of us hand washed clothes and packed up everything we had lying around to get ready to move tomorrow. Penduka isn’t as nice as Rivendell, or as centrally located, but we all want the experience of living closer to the rural communities of Namibia. It is easy to ignore the poverty that goes on just on the outskirts of the city, when we are surrounded with only the city life. Life in the rural communities is hard. Very often there is little to no running water close by. They live in tin houses, with rocks that hold the roofs in place so they do not blow away. There are communal bathrooms that are essentially latrines with tin walls for privacy. With dirt floors and leaky roofs, it is hard to imagine anyone living every day of their life in this setting. There are fences with barbed wire everywhere in Namibia, except in these communities where the tin houses are side by side, and generally only consist of one or two rooms. At times we feel like the work we are doing is only a single drop in a very large bucket, but we hope the ripple we make will be felt even by those we are not able to directly help. Hopefully our presence shows them that someone does care, even when it feels like their own country and government does not. We tell them all that we hope to come again next year, and every year after that, and that we will not forget them. They shake our hands, and thank us, and walk back to their tin houses, vitamins in hand.
Until next time, say hello to MN for us!
~Annie, Mary, Linda, Queen, Nicole, and Genny
Our Mission
African Community Health Inititiave (ACHI)
Provide basic health care services to those lacking access to such care in both rural Nigeria and urban Namibia.
These services include:
*Overall Physicals (including Fasting Glucose levels, Vitals, HIV/AIDS testing etc..)
*Medication Management and Maintenance programs *Disease Management
*Health Education that addresses disease prevention, hygiene and nutrition
*Consultations and referrals
Mount Sinai
A program started by Katutura State Hospital Nurse Christa Biart-Vega, who works in the ARV (antiretroviral) pediatric clinic, Mount Sinai provides HIV counseling, health education, well baby checks, formula, water and sippy cups for 105 babies and their HIV+ mothers. If the child is tested HIV- after 6 weeks of being breastfed, the hospital or clinic refers them to Christa. At this point it is important to discontinue breastfeeding: replacing breast milk with formula means that the baby will remain HIV-. Unfortunately, due to the lack of funds Christa has to limit the number of mothers and babies in her program because it is a commitment to feed each child for six months. Christa did receive land in Katutura for the clinic, but lacks the funds to begin building. Not only will this building be used to continue the program that Christa has started, she also envisions it as a safe place for moms and their children, as well as a hospice for children with AIDS to peacefully die in instead of out on the streets. Your donations will go towards formula, sippy cups, water and overall costs. More money means more women can enroll in the program and with your help Nurse Christa will finally be able to have a building to go along with her amazing, life saving program!
Family Hope Sanctuary
FHS is a community based program run by Abigail Maposa located in the extremely poor settlements of Hakahana. FHS’s program helps in two ways: first, to empower women, most of whom are HIV+, TB, single mothers who are raising orphans; and second, through its school readiness program. This program reaches children who are not in the school system and provides them with an education and a safe place to stay. More importantly, the heart of FHS is its kitchen: it feeds hundreds of children each day, which for most is the only meal they will get that day. Lacking the most basic necessities of life, all of these kids are grateful for such a meal, and are in dire need of a formal education before it is too late. Your donations will go towards education, food, clothes, shoes, water and other necessities. Amazingly, $20 sends a child to school for a whole year (books and uniforms included)!
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