Diary - Sunday, March 7, 2004 

Well, good evening everyone. As all-ways, we hope this next update finds you all well and totally enjoying your moments wherever you may be. I have to say things are very quiet on the home front since Alva and Jabeen left yesterday. They will be spending a couple of days in Dar Es Salaam with Jabeen's relatives before heading out tomorrow to Arusha where they will be picked up by their driver/guide for a five day safari. I'm sure they'll have a great trip. What a wonderful pair they are, and we and all the patients who were fortunate enough to be looked after by them, are grateful for the time they chose to spend with us. See you again na keribu tena :-)

It's hard to believe but we are heading into our final few weeks here before Pat and I head out once again for Victoria and hopefully some successful fundraising activities. We so much want to keep the momentum going here and we will do our best to ensure that this project continues to grow and evolve as it is now. We are rapidly filling up our volunteer positions for 2005 so we are absolutely delighted with the response we are receiving from literally all over the world. The project had some excellent exposure recently thanks to the good folks who publish the Canadian Chiropractor Journal. This has always been one of my favorite Chiropractic publications so we are very grateful to have been given this opportunity. Many thanks so Dr Stan Marcus for his contribution to the final draft and to all those involved at the publishing level who made this happen.

I am still waiting to hear from the folks at the Ministry of Health regarding the implementation of Medical services at the center. If you spend enough time here, you get quite used to the speed at which things get done or should I say lack of speed. Sometimes, our "need for speed" rears its ugly head, but mostly we keep things in check. :-) It can be a bit frustrating at times though, especially when other people are relying on you for help. Ni maisha… that's life!

On the clinical side of things, I continue to be amazed at the spectrum of humanity that we are fortunate to meet in our humble little office here in Jambiani. The other day I met a young 14 year old girl from the northern part of Zanzibar who had been brought down to our clinic by her relatives. She needed help to get into the treatment room, as she was unable to walk by herself. It turned out that she was being treated for tuberculosis and in the course of our examination I determined that she probably had a dislocated hip quite possibly secondary to the TB. In addition, she had an ulcer on her lower leg that was about 5 inches long that had been quite crudely covered with a small bit of gauze bandage. I must say I was quite alarmed when I first looked at this ulcer as I could clearly see quite a bit of her tibia (shin bone) at the base of this wound! This is an obvious example of how beneficial it would be to also have some medical expertise on site so that we could collaborate with individuals such as this who are having extreme health problems. What impressed me the most about this little girl was the fact that she did not complain once even though I'm certain she was in considerable discomfort. I will be arranging for her to have a consultation with our friend Dr Rashid Said, the head orthopedic surgeon at Mnazi Moja hospital with hopes that he will be able to help her in some way to recover. Of course I was also able to adjust her spine and pelvis and hopefully she will be able to return for additional Chiropractic care after her consultation and treatments with Dr Said. It's at times like this that one really gets a perspective on disease and how much variability there is amongst individuals in the manner in which they cope with their health problems.

So what have we got lined up for the next few weeks? Well, besides manning the center, I'll be repainting the house, clinic and window grills and hopefully implementing all of the necessary administrative procedures required to help Dr Preece and Janie get their ball rolling here in Jambiani. Pat has coordinated her first deaf and hard of hearing class here at the clinic. This program is promising to be a real success and she will be bringing that up to full speed before we leave at the end of May. Of course we'll be welcoming Grant and Barbara, making sure they're settled in comfortably and at ease with the daily flow of things. We feel this trip has been one of consolidation and fine-tuning of what we have done to date. We are now very confident with our procedures here locally and having welcomed 9 volunteers (11 by the time we leave) since we opened on January 20th last year, we feel that things are really on track and that we have an awesome thing evolving here. Thank you everyone for your support and help in making this such a success. We only wish you could all venture down to Zanzibar to have a first hand experience. I'm hoping some of you will. :-)

Anyhow, I'll sign off for now. As I said before, we do hope you are all healthy and happy and we look forward to bringing you more news in a couple of weeks or so.

Take care and fond regards from,
Ali Baba and Patima