Winter Harvest

We’re sailing into December and so ‘tis the season for juicy pineapples, followed by mmmmmmangoes. I will happily trade in turkey and cooked carrots for fresh fruit any day… let me tell you! There are papayas and “apples” (which have nothing to do with our version of the apple) growing in the yard, and coconuts just down the road. The selection of fresh fruit isn’t particularly hard to get used to.

I feel sooooo far from winter and the accompanying holiday season, but am at least diving into the spirit of giving, thanks to the generousity of my family and friends. I have finally started to share the donations that were poured into the Tin of Change, and I feel really honoured to be entrusted with the capacity to do this. In Uganda, my priority was to use the money in a way that would benefit as many people as possible, and was really stoked with the mattress project that we created. I had originally envisioned doing something similar here, but it isn’t feasible here. MSF apparently provided beds and mattresses to the tertiary care hospital here a while back, and most were stolen. Compared to Uganda, many of the needs are the same, but the poverty is greater and the infrastructure is less, so donations that will endure are harder to offer. And as MSF is providing free healthcare and medications, short-term needs are already being addressed. Evidently, I have been a bit stumped about what to do with the donations from the Tin of Change. This can obviously seem baffling, as I am surrounded by poverty and unmet need. But I want to be conscientious with our donations, and not just act like the many NGOs that I so often question and criticize.

So I couldn’t think of long-term donations that could be put in place and would stay in place, and immediate needs are being met within the MSF program. However, a few weeks ago, “the perfect request for help” presented itself as I was hoping it would. A young first-time dad, displaced from Sierra Leone, approached me at one of the health care centres. He doesn’t speak French and he heard there was a “foutay” who spoke English working there. He had his newborn girl with him and asked if he could consult me about a concern he had with her. I brought them into the Kangaroo Care Unit and he removed the blankets over her legs, to reveal her bilateral clubbed feet. He explained that he was told she would need 5-7 weeks of casting, followed by a surgery. Without the treatment, she will never walk. With the treatment, she will scamper, run, jump… The MSF program that we are currently running, pays for acute healthcare related to malaria, malnutrition, and respiratory infections. The program will also pay for emergency treatments such as surgery, if the condition is life-threatening. This baby’s condition is not life-threatening, so the surgery is not covered by MSF.

A beautiful opportunity appears! I decided that MSF can deal with the life-threatening stuff, and our Tin of Change can deal with life-changing stuff. I am abandoning hopes of changing the world for lots of people (which can’t happen in a context of persistent poverty, and in a place that is being systematically raped of its riches by the occidental companies that make your and my life so convenient)…rant rant rant, where was I? So I don’t know how to use the Tin of Change to benefit many people, but I know that by supporting babies and children to have life-changing treatments, the worlds of a few will be mighty brighter. Being in a wheelchair in Guinea is not a peachy reality (the quality of life for those with disabilities here requires an entire blog unto itself), and for about $40, this girl can lead a normal life. And so the non-life-threatening-but-life-changing-surgery project is born! I am open for referrals from within our health care centres, but also encounters that arise when I am out and about.

I get the impression that many Africans struggle with the Western need to prevent death at all cost, and there are some real cultural clashes between the way we perceive and negotiate death. I feel like rather than preventing death, this use of money is more in line with local ideals of maximizing health and enjoying life, but not getting as caught up in “death prevention” as we tend to. In Uganda, I really started to see how the western need to prevent death at all costs was super weird; my time in Guinea reinforces the same notion. It is really normal for most people here to have lost many family members, and likely some children. But they are not feeling sorry for themselves because of it, and they don’t always understand why we feel so sorry for them. I think they would rather all energies be put into just international policies, political structures void of complete corruption, and opportunities for development and employment, rather than using energy to try to save every last human. It is not that life is not valued here, it is just that life within a context of poverty is really hard, and maybe it is better to improve quality of life for fewer, instead of quantity of life at all cost.

Here is a photo of our first beneficiary… she has had a month of casts so far, and will have her surgery before Christmas.