TGII! (Thank God it’s Ijuma)

Ijuma in Swahili means Friday. The week revolves around Friday and each day after is related to Friday. For example: Friday one is Saturday, Friday two is Sunday, Friday three is Monday and so on (i.e. Jumamosa, jumapili, jumatatu…), except Thursday which is alhamisi. During the week, I went to Bambi district for a field visit accompanied by Raya and Mwantatu from UWZ, Abdul and Amina from Mnazi Moja Hospital’s Physiotherapy Unit, Saidi from the Zanzibar Mental hospital, an eye specialist and a volunteer physiotherapist. For the first time, I got to ride in UWZ’s own private dala dala (how fancy!). We got to a village in Bambi and went into a large, unfurnished hall with concrete floors. There were a number of people inside the hall, mostly children with their parents. They had been informed that we were coming, so they were waiting for us in the hall. The goal for the day was to screen disabled children, diagnose their disability, and recommend what action was needed in order to improve their lives. This could be in the form of hospital visits, equipment recommendation, or exercises they could do themselves.

Patient check-up in Bambi



Waiting patiently in line

  Raya introduced herself to the group and explained the purpose of the outreach field visit. UWZ conducts such visits about four times a year, so I was excited to be a part of it.  In turn, we all introduced ourselves to the group after which the children were split up into smaller groups based on type of disability: physical, visual and mental. I joined the physical disability group and throughout the day we saw a number of patients, learned about the history of their disabilities and gave recommendations as to what should be done next. Given I have no medical background; I wasn’t much help when it came to recommendations for the patients. We saw children with one leg shorter than the other, restricted mobility, protruding bones, among others. Most children were given follow up appointments at the hospital in town – this is a positive sign given that the younger the child, the more effective physiotherapy treatment will be, and in some cases, the patient is completely treatable. Some abnormalities are even avoidable given the right child birth methodologies. Needless to say, some of these abnormalities are not even seen in North America because they are immediately identified and treated at birth. 

The local newspaper says that “over 30% of all children under five in sub-Saharan Africa are suffering from stunted growth due to chronic malnutrition.” I was under the impression that my neighbour, Masoud, was seven years old, when in fact he was nine. Children are too short for their age due to long term insufficient nutrient intake and frequent infections. “This impedes physical growth and leads to irreversible cognitive damage, hampering the children’s learning abilities. Stunted girls will then have small and low birth weight babies.” Further, more than one million children under five die every year with malnutrition being the direct or indirect cause. This is the harsh reality of the children of Africa. So the goal shouldn’t only be to reduce child mortality, but to aid in the nutrition of the babies that do survive as this is the future of Africa.

On another note, we spent a relaxing day in Stone town, shopping in the narrow alleys and discovering nooks and crannies we’d never seen before. We even got caught in the rain. This time of year is short rain season in Zanzibar. It will rain like cats and dogs for about 10-15 minutes, and then all of a sudden it will stop and the sun will come out as if nothing ever happened. This happens about two or three times a day. The only problem is that because there is no drainage system the streets get really flooded. When some of the water dries up, the streets get muddy. It doesn’t help that we have a make shift skylight in our living room, in the form of a large hole in our ceiling. I can’t even imagine what it will be like during rainy season when it has known to rain for two or three months, sometimes two days at a time without stopping. Good thing we’ll be gone by then.

Hole in our ceiling, i.e. skylight

Children playing in the flooded street

Early in the morning one day, we went shopping for meat and chicken – for the very first time. We were feeling adventurous and we’d heard the meat is freshest in the morning. So we made a trip to the market. The cows were hanging from hooks in the stands and the butcher was cutting little pieces for customers – it was not a pretty sight. We found the first meat guy we saw and bought ourselves some meat. It was a proud moment. Celine took it a step further and bought some octopus from the fish market which she cooked in our very own kitchen. Way to go!

Picking out the best meat

Octopus...ready to cook!