August has vanished!

It has been a busy month at OVTC with the beginning of the new term, excursions and visitors. 

I had four nights in the ‘back blocks’, up near the Kenyan border, staying at the Parish house at Loliondo.  I was with two colleagues on a recruiting mission. We again did the ‘4 hrs 13 min’ ( in reality 8 hour! ) route through Longido, then skirting Oldoinya Lengai and Lake Natron.  It’s hard yards in the middle seat of a hard sprung Toyota Landcruiser pickup.

Again, both coming and going, we picked up hitch hikers willing to ride in the back of the pick-up to save a dusty walk.  Again we bought rock salt at Ngare Sero near Lake Natron on the return journey.  This time there was no goat and no puncture, and a return to Arusha before dark.

The parish priest at Loliondo and the catechist at Digodigo had been busy out in their respective parishes finding suitable candidates.  They travelled with us giving directions to some very remote villages along marginal ‘roads’ to do the interviews.  Most of the people we met with did fit our criteria - over 15 and living with disability but with the capacity to look after themselves, help with communal cooking and cleaning and learn a trade.  These were given enrolment forms and information brochures. Also information and advice to help them prepare for living independently. Others who came to talk with us did not fit our criteria - too young or with disabilities too severe.  My colleagues are very good at directing these families to where help is available though for families from these remote areas to have the mother away with one child getting specialist treatment while the rest of the family remains at home can be problematic.  It is a testament to the determination of mothers that many of these children survive at all.  We saw several cases of severe cerebral palsy with intellectual as well as physical disability and it must have been down to the fierceness of the mother’s will, still carrying a grown child, who cannot walk, on her back, that these children remain healthy, well fed and cared for.  

In another case a woman in her early 30s, married with two young girls, and paralysed from the waist down was being cared for by her family.  I think it was her sister-in-law who carried her and propped her up to sit so she could help with the cooking tasks.  We were able to take her into Wasso, the largest town in the area, where the hospital provided her with a wheelchair.  She has been given suggestions for exercises to increase her upper body strength.  With her family’s support to look after her children we hope to have her enrolled in next year’s cohort to learn tailoring.

On the Saturday we had a day east of Digodigo near Jema, a small and remote town.  The parish priest insisted we take a ‘picnic’ as he knew there would be no café or hotel to buy food.  We were up early putting together sandwiches of his design - peanut butter, pork, tomato, cucumber and honey - which were quite tasty!  We also had fruit, biscuits and water.  We met with people afflicted with ‘club foot’ (a congenital condition where the ankle is malformed and so walking is difficult), scoliosis (malformation of the spine) and other physical disabilities resulting from accidents but also several children with Down’s Syndrome.  People with Down’s are able to be contributing members of their society as they can walk and there are many simple tasks they can perform.

I have such admiration for everyone involved - my colleagues, the local communities who help us find candidates and the families of the people with disability who care for them, protect them and advocate for them.

If you have Google Earth you can look for the villages we visited

For my 60th birthday 2 weeks ago we had a weekend at Lake Manyara.  You can look at Steve’s blog for pictures of birds and mammals, but here is a rare one of the two of us.

More soon, love Jenny