Health matters

We mentioned yesterday the dispensary run by the Sisters here. They treat private patients as well as those unable to pay. Many people choose these private clinics rather than the state hospitals because the service is so much better. Medicine for under 5s is free, but for everyone else they pay.

Francis told us yesterday that he has been diagnosed with malaria. He tells us, like he had been told he has a minor throat infection. He is suffering all the symptoms –fever, aching joints, tiredness – and has the anti-malarial medicine to take over the next few days, something he paid for privately, rather than through the hospital.

Tonight we found him cycling off to the shop for water. Yes, water. He has no clean water in his house and he thinks that the medication he has been prescribed is making him sleepy; therefore he plans to drink water to dilute the medicine to make him less sleepy. Our entreaties to him to rest, fell on deaf ears.

We ate in the local bar – chipsi na mayai na kuku na nyama – with Deo, a local clinical officer, the equivalent to a junior doctor. In his spare time, he is a senior manager with a small NGO organising health education projects around this region. The funding they receive is to promote health awareness around HIV/AIDS but the big killer round here is not AIDS, but malaria. We reflected on how malaria does not hit the headlines like HIV does, unless Cheryl Cole or Didier Drogba gets it; because of course, apart from those rare cases, malaria is pretty much an African problem. It doesn’t cross borders the way HIV does. Draw your own conclusions.

Back to Tanzania and tolerance; we also reflected on how it is impossible to tell a Christian from a Muslim here. Perhaps if you know their name it might give you a clue, but not always. Deo is a Catholic, sings in the choir at Shangani Church. He is engaged to a Muslim. I suggested they invite John “He’s not a Muslim; he’s a good American” McCain to their wedding. Francis is a Catholic and a Makonde (his tribe); the Vice–Principal is a Muslim and a Makonde. The Vice-Principal was keen to tell me proudly, that Francis is not only a committed Christian but also a Makonde.  I need to know more, but it seems at first sight that your tribe is far more important than your religion. In many conflict areas around the world, it’s because your tribe is the same thing as your religion that there is conflict. Not so here.