Hospital Visits

Russ and I just returned from an extraordinary five-day excursion to the Southern Highlands with Tumaini faculty...oh, how I wish I could have taken all of you along! Like the Masai village experience (which Russ promised to explain in another entry), this one too is almost indescribable. The difference is that while the Masai involved basically one location, one group of people, and one tribal experience, this one involved many. The scenery of the Livingstone Mountains , the Rift Valley, and Lake Nyaso are breathtaking...there was never a moment that wasn't shrouded in magical beauty. That's the positive point. The negative was that with the sort of road system (if one can call it that) in Tanzania , it was almost always trecherous, and in truth, I feel quite lucky to still be alive. We were following paths along the mountains both on foot and by car where a miscalulation of half of inch plunges one to certain death. One day we trekked to a special place where Kinga tribal executions used to take place by throwing the accused off the path...and it was no different than any other place we walked.

There were contrasts beyond my prior imaginings, one of the greatest being medical treatment. One morning we were taken to a "traditional hospital" in the mountains. To reach it we had a two kilometer hike through forest/cliff paths. It was a carved out place under a rock overhang. There we were introduced to two Kinga midwives, still practicing, perhaps a hundred years experience between the two. Each had served a 7-year apprenticeship in order to be qualified. They explained in Kinga--translated first into Swahili, then English for us--how they delivered babies using aloe vera juice as their antiseptic/lubrication, water boiled over their twin fires, rags and twigs for tying, and various natural herbs. The most modern instrument they have is a clean razor blade for umbilical cords, provided by the Lutheran missionaries in the region. They demonstrated birth and delivery, including turning breach babies in the birth canal. An extra layer to our experience was that these two women had to overcome/violate about a hundred cultural inhibitions to do this for us (there were men in the group...and white folks).

Two hours later, after walking out of the forest and driving through the mountains, we had a tour of a modern hospital facility run by the Catholics that rivals anything in the States. The two are less than twenty miles apart.