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April 2nd, 2008 posting, by Susan Green

Susan Green with child in Ndawana.

So much to say …so little time to say it! I left home on Feb.24, the time has flown by. I will focus on just a few highlights so at least you have an inclination of my adventures for the last while.

Fun & Game… Viewing

I started this trip with a four day holiday in Zimbabwe & Botswana -two beautiful countries. Victoria Falls is truly spectacular- deservedly one of the great natural wonders of the World. What is distressing however is the poverty that is most certainly exacerbated by a rampant inflation rate. Inflation this past year was 100,000%!! I asked my guide how much a loaf of bread was …He said it was $10,000,000 Zimbabwe or $1.00 American. Bread was $6 Million the week previous but, of course, wages do not increase by 40% a week. By the middle of March $1.00 US could be exchanged for $ 25,000,000 Zimbabwe. The elections are at the end of March so we’ll see what if anything changes.
Botswana, by contrast, is a very peaceful stable country that has never been in conflict.

At Chobe Game Lodge, our guide, a talented young woman and the first female guide I had seen, lead our little group to a pride of eight lions -2 adult females, 4 young males and 2 young females. We watched them play, nuzzle, yawn and rough-house with one another just feet away from our vehicle. They switched in an instance to stealth attack positions when a springbok ‘dinner’ was seen in the distance. It was fascinating to watch.

In Johannesburg I met up with Jim and Chris Newton as we were set to meet with Glaxo Smith Kline. My plane was delayed for a day out of Zimbabwe (they had 30 people too many for the flight!) so I missed the meeting but they have agreed to fund our work in Ndawana for a fourth year, normally they only contribute to worthy community projects for 3 years but for us they have made an exception . This is a real tribute to the leadership of the Newtons and especially to the people of Ndawana.

The Dentists are coming!

Dentists visit Ndawana.

The highlight of my trip this year was the arrival of two dental teams consisting of 34 dentists, dental assistants & hygienists. They treated 1007 patients, did 2088 extractions, 484 fillings and 487 cleanings over 14 days. We had unseasonably cold and heavy rains so work was a little challenging but very successful.  The set up was quite ingenious - school desks duct taped together to make surgical beds -bricks under the top end to raise it to a height to allow dentists to work on the patients. Benches were covered in plastic for the hygienists. Hand held flashlights and head lamps were used for lights and even a separate area for sterilizing all the instruments. It was quite an operation! The Community Health workers from the village assisted with translation and hygiene education. They really had their eyes opened realizing that their love of sugar was destroying their teeth. ‘We’re sweetaholics’ said one of our Ndawana health workers.

For the last two years I have been working with Amil Shapka, founder of Kindness in Action (KIA) and Dr. Bill Sharun, my dentist. Kindness in Action has been sending dental teams to developing countries for 15 years but they have never been to the continent of Africa. This will be the first time ever that KIA has been able to work with an NGO and have the hope of putting a prevention program in place. On March 31st we started the training for a UN program called the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses. We will be the first pilot in the whole of the province of Kwa Zulu Natal (KWN). It is our intention to also incorporate dental hygiene, thanks to the generosity of the Stollery Foundation.

I have said this on each of my last four trips but – progress is remarkable.

Health Care

Health has increasingly become our main focus at Edzimkulu.

Thinking back to my first time here in February 2005, the Ndawana team had just been tested for HIV/AIDS as one of our team members fell ill in January and died in February. Two more of the remaining team members were HIV positive. The stigma and denial associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic was prevalent throughout South Africa and our village was no different.

In March of 2006, prior to our first AIDS Awareness Day, maybe 50 people had been tested for HIV/AIDS – now more than 2000 have been tested (50 % of the village, likely the highest test rate in South Africa). Our initial team of six has expanded to more than 30 as we train community health workers to test and counsel village residents for HIV, take sputum samples for TB, and follow up with all the positive patients to ensure they are under proper care and taking their meds.

Our short term death rate has dropped from 5-8 each week to one a month. Now that’s progress!

In May and June of 2007 when I was here last, we expanded our home based care program at the request of the South African government to four other villages, training another 12 young women in Mangeni and Tsawule. The Ndawana health workers continue to mentor these young women as we begin to make a difference in those communities .We had an AIDS awareness day in Mangeni in November and are slowly beginning to reduce the stigma of being tested and treated for HIV/AIDS. There is nothing like communication and community engagement to get people shaken out of complacency.

Just four years ago a mobile health clinic came into the village every very couple of months. Now we are a recognized South African clinic funded in part by the government. We have two full time nurses, eighteen community health workers and a doctor comes once a week. We have over 100 patients receiving Anti Retroviral Treatment (ART) in the village and we’re doing inoculations on well babies. It has been quite a turn around.

Crèche-Preschool

We now have 175 children aged three to six from three different neighborhoods and three teachers from the community in our employ. We had 90 children last year. It is heart warming to see healthier happier children laughing, playing and eager to learn. The kids love the swings that the ‘Boys’ (my son JD and fellow volunteer Joel Brochu) built last June.

Parents are increasingly involved and they are also participating in classes to help them better understand health, nutrition and childcare issues. At a recent parent meeting I was encouraged to hear parents tell other parents to get more involved in helping out because they could see such a positive difference in their children!

Permaculture Gardens

We have over 250 people from the village tending little garden plots no larger than 2’x 4’ all around the community centre. They are growing beets, carrots, spinach, cabbages, onions etc. helping significantly with their health and that of their families. Just completed days before I arrived was a hail house built to protect the more fragile vegetables such as tomatoes from the heavy hail storms we often get here. For the very infirm or elderly we will take seedlings to their homes .One of our particularly ill patients has really taken to gardening –she wins the award for the best garden in the village according to Chris!

We are also planting a memorial garden in the front of the community centre in memory of all those who have succumbed to HIV/AIDS in the village. It is our plan to have a maple tree as the focal point which is a lovely link to Canada.

The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn beautiful reds and yellows as autumn is upon us here. There is crispness in the mornings now reminiscent of our fall weather.

So you see …a lot is happening. Thank you for your continued interest and support. Together we are making a difference.

Be well – stay well,

Susan

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