Donations welcome

Chrissy's well researched articles brought immediately to mind many many stories that I could tell about KIWAKKUKI.  I cannot wait until the web site is fully activated and anyone can find the site to see the wonderful work that this organization comprised primarily of women accomplishes each and ever year.  But, the web page will not tell you about the day to day stories, and they are the ones that make your heart weep or your heart soar.

So I will tell one story that was heart soaring.  One of our great volunteers to KIWAKKUKI is named Sarah.  She stepped into the world of Moshi from Yale University with absolutely no concept of what she would do when she arrived.  "Volunteering for AIDS in Africa" is the buzz word that I now understand is on nearly every college and graduate school application, so just to say this is not to be very unique.  Fortunately, we have had some very unique volunteers, and Sarah is one of them.

Sarah spent 3 months with KIWAKKUKI, basically starting the process of putting a web site that Chrissy has finally completed and just needs to get the final details to post, she also developed an avid following of KIWAKKUKI employees and volunteers who were desperate to learn English so that their skills would be more marketable to help KIWAKKUKI (writing, editing, reading grants, and learning to speak to visitors in English so that they could understand the KIWAKKUKI mission and work in a more accurate way).  I remember seeing little groups clustered not far from the latrine of young people reading phrases, newspapers, and quizzing Sarah back on her knowledge of Kiswahili, the National Language.  Sarah was a natural with this group and they loved her.

When Sarah left KIWAKKUKI and Moshi, we all wished her well, and thought, "Well, she was certainly a nice volunter."  But Sarah went home, talked to her family, her friends, and relatives, and they decided that they wanted to help.  Sarah's mother is a teacher and she and her students collected materials that the children's groups could use.  Sarah's uncle collected things that he thought all children should have!  And Sarah's family agreed to sponsor several children in school.

We were impatient I must say.  The boxes were mailed in April and still had not arrived by the end of September.  But then, the post office notified us that there were some boxes waiting for us, and beloved Ellie, our tea maker and just about everything else, went down to the post office and hauled everything back.  Chrissy and I set to work identifying everything and putting them together in clusters.  Some things were missing (oops TRA needs their cut) but most things were there.  Some were funny--stuff little kids love, some were vastly needed for school and just about everything else.  It was fantastic.

I went to Lui's office (head of orphan department) and reported what Sarah had provided.  WOW!  what luck, there were to be orphan support groups in all the districts for the next month.  What started like an avalanche of materials for children for the next year, turned out to be devoutly divided for these children's groups so that each child would get something.  In one fell swoop, huge boxes of donations were delivered to Moshi Municipality, Moshi Rural, Mwanga, Same, Machame, Hai, and Saa Hii.  Never enough, never enough.  But, what made my heart soar were the stories that came back from these club meetings.

"Wow" some mzungus (European  --also American--Canadian etc) cared about us and sent these boxes on ships?  Wow, how did they find these pens, the papers.  These were the type of words that were used.  And though the boxes went quickly, they did not go without great love and care.

So Sarah, whenever you think of your time in Moshi, know that the children of Kilimanjaro are thinking of you.  And for anyone else out there-even if it seems "trite" now to volunteer in Africa, there are sustainable programs out there, and they are started by Africans, maintained by Africans, and supported by the community.  You can reach out and you can give.

Patricia Bartlett, LCSW, volunteer and Community Advisory Board Liaison for the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center's Collaborative Research efforts with KIWAKKUKI, KCMC and Duke University.

Report from The Citizen

Tanzania: Caring for the Sick Carefully

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The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)

29 December 2007
Posted to the web 31 December 2007

Eric Kalunga
Marangu

In 2000, When Anna was in standard five she had to take care of her parents who fell sick. She was 12 years old and was the oldest female child so it was her duty to take care of the parents. In 2001 the parents died.

Then Anna fell ill herself. At this time she was about to receive confirmation at the church. Reverend Winfred Joseph Mosha of the Lutheran Church there saw that the child was in trouble and thought he recognized her symptoms as of a person suffering from HIV/Aids.

"I talked to her and suggested that she goes to a testing centre," recalls rev. Mosha.

With the little girl they set off for Moshi town to Kiwakkuki, Kilimanjaro women's group against Aids. The NGO offers testing and counselling services as well as information on HIV/Aids accumulated through research.

Anna stayed at the centre and they tested her blood. The results came back positive. she was devastated and could not stop crying.

The counsellor asked her which people she would like to inform of her condition.

Anna said she would like her grandmother and the father to know as well as her elder brother who was at the Serengeti National Park at the time.

"When I went to pick her up at Kiwakkuki," says Rev Mosha, "she told me 'father, I have tested and I am infected'".

The ride back home was hard for the two. Anna was grappling with the new reality of her HIV status and resorting to tears while Rev Mosha was thinking of the best way of helping the little girl cope.

Eventually Anna continued with her education. She completed primary school and reverend Mosha took her to his sister in Moshi who was a librarian at Moshi Technical Secondary School. His sister took the girl to the clinic regularly.

The church supplied her with clothes and money for food. She also got help from Kiwakkuki. Anna now lives in Arusha with her grandparents.

Rev Mosha says Anna is just one of the thousands of orphans that are a result of parents who died of HIV/Aids. Aids is a big problem in this area.

"We are in a tourist corridor," he says.

The road that leads up to Mount Kilimanjaro passes through their town. Many tourists pass through here annually.

To cater for these hotels and lodges have sprouted all over Marangu.

Beautiful houses with satellite dishes on their roof tops and signs in front advertising rooms are numerous.

As you walk on this road you are bound to bump into a toutist or two making their way to the mountain or the waterfalls, Kinukamori, also in the same direction.

"People make money from the tourists, from tour guides. So you get a lot of people from other parts of the country coming here to make money," says Rev Mosha. These people come on their own as single men and women to do business.

The money and the availability of alcohol and guest houses combine to make the area conducive for unsafe sex and the spread of HIV/Aids. Ultimately local children suffer indirectly as orphans or directly as people living with the Aids virus. It is not clear how Anna contacted HIV/Aids.

While it might be easy to point a finger at her deceased parents and say that she got the disease while taking care of them, experts disagree.

The leading cause of HIV/Aids is sex taking up more than 90 percent of the cases. Then comes mother to child transimission and then the last category includes blood transfusion, sharing of objects and nursing.

Negligible as it is, nursing of the the Aids victim can lead to an infection. Dafiosa Itemba is the executive coordinator of Kiwakkuki and deals with Aids cases on a day to day basis at the centre.

She vaguely recalls the case of Anna, more than five years ago, but cannot give a lot of details. "We deal with a lot of children here," she says.

However she says that it is possible that the child might have gotten infected through washing and generally taking care of her sick parents.

"It is possible that she did not know that her parents had Aids. If that is so then her grandparents who live with her could be in danger of getting infected as well," she says.

According to data from HelpAge International, 90% of Aids related care is provided at home, often by older women.

Up to two-thirds of people living with Aids are cared for by their parents in their 60s and 70s and over 60% of orphaned children live in households headed by their grandparents in severely affected countries.

"This area is important to study. There is a research gap in this and great care will be needed because we wouldn't like to advocate stigma which we are fighting now," says Itemba.

"Telling people to be careful in their homes could lead to stigma. They will be afraid of touching someone who has diarrhoea for instance," she says.

Antipas Mtalo, a counsellor, agrees that informing people about the full extent of the risks needs to be handled with delicacy to avoid stigma.

He himself has witnessed what can happen when people are misinformed or given too little information and make decions based on that information.

"I was in church once when someone stood up at the pew and told us a story," he says.

The story was of a person who was HIV+. When this person was given food he would not finish all of it and children used to eat what he left. Then the children got infected.

"I was shocked," says Mtalo, "there were about 500 people in the church and they all heard this outrageous claim. Some of the people were doctors that I know but you couldn't go up there and argue with the man. It was in a church."

He says it is this kind of misinformed conclusions that institutions need to be aware of when stepping into area of Aids related care provided at home.

"It is the same case with barber shops. There is a risk involved. If they use razor blades go there with one of your own," he says.

AIDS Climb

Support continues in North Carolina, USA:

Each year, members of the Duke, UNC, and surrounding communities come together to raise money for the fight against AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The inaugural climb was up Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2004. That effort raised $10,000. In 2005, AIDS Climb was brought back to North Carolina as we climbed Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River, and raised $9,000. Last year, similar funds were raised as we tackled Pilot Mountain.

This year, the Climb goes to Hanging Rock on October 27. Take part in AIDS Climb to benefit our partner organizations, including Amani Children's Home, KIWAKKUKI, and Students for Students International.

Visit AIDS Climb for more information.