7.12.2009
Long update from a far land
It's been a long time since my last big email update, and welcome to those of you for whom it's my first. I think just because my adventure in Tanzania turned into a pretty normal life--too much work and too little time for travels, the grocery store, TV at home, this person's going away party, that person's birthday drinks. Then last week, one of my staff members died suddenly and everything became terribly abnormal. A young healthy guy, he had been complaining of headache for a few weeks--the doctors treated him for cerebral malaria, but it may have been a bleed in his brain. He never had access to a CT scan.
Sammy was tall and chubby, and the nicest, most earnest person you could meet. Every day when he was done with his work for the day he would ask if there was anything else I needed help with. His shoulders shook when he laughed. With both of his parents deceased, he was the head of his siblings. He had just taken a loan to pay for his sister’s send-off party and her wedding. He was reminding all the staff not to miss the party. But instead of laughing with the MC at his sister’s sendoff, he was in the morgue, and his relatives were talking about buying his coffin and carrying his body home. His sister heard the news when she was in the salon, getting ready for the party. Now she sat with the other women, and cried.
I’m tired of seeing people die for no reason, especially when they’re trying so hard and struggling to make a life for themselves and their families. Like Sammy, and like the HIV-positive people we serve who get to the hospital only to get bad care, and like women who die in childbirth because the hospital is too far or too poorly equipped (a heartbreaking article in the Times). It's overwhelming to think about what Tanzania needs to do to catch up to the West in health care. But the situation is desperate, something my normal easy life here sometimes obscures.
And there are terrible contradictions I live with every day, knowing the sad and desperate situation of Sammy's widow, and still going out at night, splurging on Western food in town--croissants and cheese. I composed most of this email in Zanzibar, on a trip with my friend Kate that we had already planned, and I've had a great series of visitors from the US, including my mom last summer and my dad this year. At the office, we've hired a new driver, and we are busy with summer interns and volunteers. Sadness creeps up, then gets swept away. I am honored and happy to be here, seeing the progress our organization is making. Getting out of bed in the morning is easy because I see the impacts we are having in the villages we serve. But the contradictions get to be a lot to contain in one life.
Sammy was tall and chubby, and the nicest, most earnest person you could meet. Every day when he was done with his work for the day he would ask if there was anything else I needed help with. His shoulders shook when he laughed. With both of his parents deceased, he was the head of his siblings. He had just taken a loan to pay for his sister’s send-off party and her wedding. He was reminding all the staff not to miss the party. But instead of laughing with the MC at his sister’s sendoff, he was in the morgue, and his relatives were talking about buying his coffin and carrying his body home. His sister heard the news when she was in the salon, getting ready for the party. Now she sat with the other women, and cried.
I’m tired of seeing people die for no reason, especially when they’re trying so hard and struggling to make a life for themselves and their families. Like Sammy, and like the HIV-positive people we serve who get to the hospital only to get bad care, and like women who die in childbirth because the hospital is too far or too poorly equipped (a heartbreaking article in the Times). It's overwhelming to think about what Tanzania needs to do to catch up to the West in health care. But the situation is desperate, something my normal easy life here sometimes obscures.
And there are terrible contradictions I live with every day, knowing the sad and desperate situation of Sammy's widow, and still going out at night, splurging on Western food in town--croissants and cheese. I composed most of this email in Zanzibar, on a trip with my friend Kate that we had already planned, and I've had a great series of visitors from the US, including my mom last summer and my dad this year. At the office, we've hired a new driver, and we are busy with summer interns and volunteers. Sadness creeps up, then gets swept away. I am honored and happy to be here, seeing the progress our organization is making. Getting out of bed in the morning is easy because I see the impacts we are having in the villages we serve. But the contradictions get to be a lot to contain in one life.
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