History 4

Settling back into our lives again in Canada was quite a challenge and picking up all the attachments and responsibilities naturally associated with living in the "west" required a great deal of adaptation and stress management. Needless to say, we were very surprised when we received a letter from Dr. Modder at the TRI thanking us for the report but also inviting us to return to Sri Lanka to consult on a project to help develop a new plucking basket. This project would be jointly funded by the TRI and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). We were thrilled with this possibility, not only because we would be able to help the women tea pluckers in Sri Lanka but also it created an opportunity for us to return to Zanzibar to once again work in Jambiani. With this new development, we and the other founding directors decided to incorporate the Hands Across Borders Society in eary 1999, confident that as an NGO we would be able to be of better service to our target communities.

We contacted the Jambiani Community Development Committee informing them that in exchange for room and board, we would be willing to return to Jambiani for four months after we completed our project in Sri Lanka. Eventually, all the arrangements were in place for this to transpire and in the fall of 1999 we set out again for the hill country of "Ceylon".

We had a wonderful two month stay at the TRI and the project was a huge success as we developed a final prototype tea basket that would go on to provide significant health benefits to those hard working women we had come to love and appreciate so much.

Our next stop was Zanzibar and you can imagine our excitement as we stepped off the ferry in Stonetown to a waiting entourage of dignitaries and officials. We made our way once again to Jambiani and before long we had set up our homemade table in the local medical center and began to treat the first of many patients we would touch over the next four months. In fact, we treated over 1,500 patients in just over 12 working weeks with many people coming from outlying villages and other parts of Zanzibar. It came time for us to leave again and it was at this moment that Pat and I did some serious soul searching. We still had many people who wanted to be treated and several who were in need of additional care and it felt like we were, in a sense, abandoning them. This weighed heavily on our heart strings and it was a feeling we were not comfortable with.

We returned to Canada in January, 2000 determined that we would find a way to establish a more permanent setup for health care provision on Zanzibar.

History
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