African Insights Blog - August 2002:
Miracle – Life Saving Medicine – Soap and Water:
The child in the arms of her father was skin and bones. Her face was hollowed out, her skin shrunken, in a state of dehydration, whimpering in pain and agony. He asked for help, his daughter had been ill with stomach problem, diarrhea for days, she has had this before, but this was the worst it had ever been.
I was in this little clinic by the invitation of a woman bye the name of Anne. She ran this small Kenyan non-governmental agency
along with a school, a training center for
women to prevent HIV infection and orphanage. It was the only clinic
around in this god-forsaken place. This was not an emergency room
as in a modern western Hospital; this was simply a mud hut where desperate
people came who had no money, no hope.
Quietly and caringly Anne went to work, breathing a prayer ever so often, shaking her head in disbelief, sighing, hoping that she could perform another miracle. The girl’s name was Elizabeth and she was five years old. Her parents lived in the slum of Kibera that houses nearly a million desperate people existing on next to nothing, lacking the very basics of life such as water, food and proper shelter, but this slum was home for Elizabeth and others like her. She was moaning in pain and the Anne tried to do all she could with her limited equipment and supplies, with her training as a nurse in England, but it was not enough, it was too late, another child became a statistic for the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
Each year over 800,000 children like Elizabeth die needlessly in Africa, they die before their time, die of something preventable - that could and can be prevented with a simple antidote such as soap and water, the miracle is not some modern medicine, but the washing of hands, sadly, too late for Elizabeth whose lifeless body laid upon the roughhewn table. Her father cried, Anne had tears in her eyes and I felt a deep sense of sadness for the child, for the father, mother, and at the same time an anger at the demon of poverty that kept people such as Elizabeth from the very basic things of life, clean water, food, a bed, schooling and all the other things we take
for granted.
It is estimated that children in this part of the world have at least five bouts of diarrhea per year most often accompanied by under-nutrition and childhood diseases like measles. It is the leading cause of death in children in Africa and all is needed is water and soap a few times a day before eating. 20% of Africa’s children die before the age of six from diarrhea, dehydration, malaria, measles, pneumonia, etc, things that in the west would be a simple thing to deal with and in most cases it is with over the counter drugs and a healing environment of nurture and care where toilets or latrines, food, running water and soap are freely available to prevent a death such as Elizabeth’s. (n Kampala 60% of slum dwellers do not have access to pit latrines or toilets and the result is plastic bags being thrown onto roofs to waste away, children simply go anywhere, disease and childhood illnesses abound. Water like in most slums in Africa costs money and is carried away in plastic jerry cans where mold and mildew can easily grow in. Washing of hands becomes costly, since water costs money. The result is ongoing illnesses in children that could be avoided through the inexpensive use of soap and water.
Some time ago I read about a computer conference where the executive of Cisco Systems spoke of the Third World’s need to be wired for computers, to have access to the Internet. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, who besides being rich has some basic sense, said in reply “they first have to have electricity and their other basic needs met.” (Bill and Melody Gates Foundation does more for Sub-Sahara Africa than the US Government) How right he was; we can come up with another this or that scheme and spend billions on financial aid to Africa that most often never reaches the ones who need it the most, but simply supports a decadent life-style of leaders that fleece their people of the very things they need and deserve.
In a place like Kibera water is a precious commodity, the faucets are a distance from the homes and in many cases they have to b
uy
it for a few shillings. ON
their way there they would pass by the streams
of open sewer that became like rivers during the rainy season. Even Anne’s
clinic and school had no running water and it had to be fetched from a distance.
Yet the local Western’s Women’s Club had donated a small electric refrigerator
for which there was no power and all it was being used to store various
things…What if those ladies had actually visited the slum and seen that
there was no electricity and that there was no running water and the need
was for water and not for a refrigerator that would be used as a storage
cabinet…hmmm.
As I walked out of the clinic at Kibera, which was located at the edge of the slum, I noticed a golf course with an immaculate green lawn, a sprinkler lazily spreading precious water all around. A six or eight foot fence kept the well-dressed golfers safe from the slum dwellers as the caddies pulled the gulf bags around the well watered course. Some wide-eyed children were at the fence looking through to see the rich play this game they did not understand… So near and yet so far…I felt like screaming…jon
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The Children of Africa Section Stories of African Children, Pictures of African Children, Life for children in Africa
You will be glad to have read these two stories.
Life in a Kampala Neighborhood: I spent some months living in an area of Kampala where you will not many a western person. My home, was in a small courtyard where one of the children I became friends with was Axum. An account of what life is like for people in Kampala, Uganda and how children live in tough times.
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