Diary - Tuesday, March 18, 2008 

Greetings once again from the entire HABS team here in sunny and very warm Jambiani. We hope that you are all well and healthy and that life is awesome!

Well, several weeks have slipped by here since our last update and as usual, there have been lot’s of ongoing activities since we last communicated.

We were sad to see “JB” Jenn Bruce leave us after her time in the Centre. Jenn was a great team member and she did some fantastic treatments during her stay with us. Jenn was also a very energized and positive person who approached everything that she did with tremendous enthusiasm so thank you “Punky” for all of your efforts to help here in Jambiani. We are all very grateful.

Here’s Jenn's input as she reflected on her experience on Zanzibar.

Ninakupenda Jambiani! I’ve been here for over 3 weeks now and I can’t recall having any other better experience in my life. Pat and Alastair have been gracious and welcoming from the first day onward and as the time closes for my stay here, it is difficult to see myself leaving. Personally, it didn’t take long before I was romanticizing the idea of staying here permanently. As a massage therapist, the clinical experience I’ve shared here is unlike anything typically encountered in the west. People suffer so much more here. Pain killers, stretching, homecare, health-care, basic first aid, basic sexual- health education and simple education is very minimal or nonexistent here, much less treatment-oriented massage therapy. There are some forms of traditional massage but not in the medical sense as I know it. The need is so great here for any form of medicine or complimentary therapies.

The women themselves put a whole new spin on the term ‘tight muscles’. A closer comparison would be beef jerky, as they spend the morning, afternoon and/or evenings at low tide harvesting seaweed crouched on their knees and then ferrying it to shore balanced atop their heads for 14 cents a kilo sent to the Philippines. Neck issues are also subsequently common and horrible knee swellings due to osteoarthritis. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought all my clients at home had problems. Complaining will never quite sound the same in Canada again. There are children who have suffered from high fever and are brain damaged, children with dislocations and breaks, cuts, sprains, low back postural imbalances, sciatica galore, swellings from mosquito bites and parasites, carpal tunnel like you’ve never seen it, bacterial infections, hereditary diseases, blindness and the list goes on. I’m not even done here yet! I’ve found that in order to be effective, I’ve had to treat the main problem. Treat the pain, treat the swelling, and give as much advice possible. Thank you Chai! (The translator at the clinic)

If you are a massage therapist or any other medical professional, my only advice would be to not worry so much about the box set of standards commonplace at home. It just doesn’t work here like that; I’ve found it beneficial to be flexible and just do what you can. The ‘when in doubt, refer-out’ saying also is a joke, unless it’s the hospital here or in Dar Es Salaam, unless they have lots of money... where else do they go?

Recently, I began working with an elderly woman who has spent 3 years in a tiny dust-floored room without sunlight after suffering a stroke on her left side. Her legs are as thin as my wrists. Her family believes a witch doctor had cursed her and gave her the stroke. Because of their embarrassment of her affliction, they have not taken her outside in all this time to swim with support or get fresh air. The cultural differences can be vast and while Alastair tries to encourage the family to let her outside, there is not much he can do, but slowly encourage them and educate them. In the meantime, she rarely gets touched, let alone massaged, to relieve bedsores or her pain. Some realities here just break your heart.

There is so much more I could say. It has been a challenge and a pleasure to work with both Pat and Alistair. Their vision of sustainable education, healthcare and community growth here is a template worth admiring and being part of it has been one of the best experiences of my life. I’m humbled and blessed to be here and for that I thank them and encourage anyone capable, however possible, to volunteer in either the Jambiani Wellness Centre or Tourism Institute.

Salaama na Asante Sana,
Jenny E. Bruce RMT

Thank you for that input Jenn. Tutaonana!!

During these past few weeks, we also had to say goodbye to Kim Botwright, our GAP year volunteer teacher from Switzerland. Kim was one of those very special people we all get to meet every so often. Besides doing a great job in the school, Kim brought some very positive energy to the project and she was always willing to “have a go” with just about everything. Kim also developed some very serious culinary skills during her stay and we were all the very grateful beneficiaries of some excellent “creations” by Chef Kim. Thanks so much Kim for all that you did during your visit. We really appreciated your time with us.

Here’s Kim’s contribution to this update.

Swaying palms, soft sandbanks, clean air, clean water, clean sheets and croissants – volunteering in Jambiani is not too much of a hardship! In fact it was best summed up by Pat herself on my first night here, “Why on earth make volunteers suffer?!” Certainly in terms of its aesthetic location the ‘Jambiani Tourism Institute’ resides on what may potentially be considered one of East Africa’s most stunning beaches. Aestheticism however is by no means the beginning, middle or end to why volunteering here with Pat and Alistair is a real delight.

The school opened its doors to students last October. It aims to certify and train the locals for positions in management in the tourism industry. This innovative idea speaks volumes about the appropriate approach HABS employs when seeking to serve the community here. The school lays focus on the values of self-sustainment and future development. A real emphasis is placed on a long term partnership between the NGO and the community rather than a quick but fairly placebo-like interval of good-will. Moreover, for incoming volunteers the welcoming nature of the environment makes one really feel as if one is part of this flourishing inter-cultural relationship.

My actual volunteer work at the school consisted of a range of three classes, namely ‘Beginner English’, ‘IT skills’, and ‘Touch-typing’. Enthusiasm was by no means in short supply. Perversely the trouble lay more often in getting the students out rather than into class! Their efforts within classes were, for the most part, best described as ‘quietly determined’. Especially with the beginner classes there seemed to be an initial fear spawned from nerves toward the English language, particularly concerning its oral aspect. Needless to say watching this dissolve as the weeks progressed was a fantastic experience. I am quite sure that by my departure date Pat had had quite enough of me bouncing into the office in order to eulogize about my students’ latest creative sentence or phrase!

With such innovative ideas built upon solid ethics, the quirkiest community around, good-humored and generous co-coordinators and its own ‘field-training’ restaurant just around the corner, it seems hardly necessary to say just how bright the road ahead is looking for this NGO. Volunteering for them has not only been a pleasure but moreover a thoroughly educational and rewarding experience.

Thank you Kim!!

On the clinical front, we have been very busy especially now that we have Todd Howard and his “Dynamic Duo” of Trish Julseth and Kim Kasatkin onboard. Todd is the president of Pacific Rim College in Victoria, BC, a school teaching all aspects of TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine and Trish and Kim are students here on a work experience placement. These guys have been with us now for close to two weeks and will be staying until the end of March at which point they will be making their way to do some volunteer work in a refugee camp in Uganda. I really can’t say enough about them. They have been working very hard to provide as many people as possible with the opportunity to receive this specialized form of care. It really has been a lot of fun working with them in the Centre. They are dedicated, compassionate and very funny too. They say humour is the best medicine and we certainly have been laughing a lot lately. Hopefully we’ll be able to include some of their thoughts and impressions in our next post.

We have also just recently welcomed Anita Joseph who hails from Princeton, New Jersey. Anita will be teaching in the school as part of her GAP year and will be enrolling in the Economics program at Harvard University in the autumn. Also Claire Low from Dundee, Scotland will be with us helping out with the teaching schedules too. Claire is taking a one year sabbatical from her former teaching job in Scotland and will also be with us until the end of this current semester. So a big welcome to Anita and Claire. Needless to say, Pat and her school programs have been attracting some very bright individuals and we are grateful that Anita and Claire have taken this time to help out. Hopefully we’ll hear from both of them in our next update.

Also arriving near the end of this month will be Caitlin Kinner who comes to us from Queensland, Australia. Caitlin is a TCM practitioner as well so we are very lucky in that she will be able to provide some continuity to the treatments already initiated by Todd and Co. We are really looking forward to meeting her soon.

On the domestic front, we have been experiencing some challenges with our local water supply. The original water supply system was built many years ago when the population of Jambiani was much smaller. With the addition of many new hotels and almost triple the population, the present system is being tested to the max. Recently, the main pump failed and the village was without water for almost one week. We had to resort to buying water but for the villagers, it meant grueling journeys to wells situated quite far from the village and return trips with pails of water balanced on their heads. We treated a lot of people with neck problems during that week.

Situations like this, although not common, reinforce to us just how valuable a resource water is and how reliant we are on it for so many things. When it’s not available at the turn of a tap we get to experience what is the norm for so many people in this world. We have to be grateful for our good fortune.

We still have lots of odd jobs to finish around the school and there is the constant maintenance simmering in the background that keeps us from getting too complacent or bored, with “nothing to do”.

Anyhow, life is good and we are all well and happy with how things are evolving here in Jambiani. It’s good, it’s positive and it is truly an experience of “Hands Across Borders” as our team of volunteers becomes more cosmopolitan and diversified.

Until the next time, all good your way and much love from all of us here on Zanzibar.