An update from Alastair

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Once again time has slipped by on us at an enormous rate and this update is certainly long over due and as to be expected we have lots of news to report In one way I have an excuse for being a tad slow off the mark with my portion of this update.

On May 2^nd, I decided to fix a couple of thatch tiles on the roof of the Wellness Centre. This involved setting up my trusty extension ladder in front of the Centre and on top of a covered concrete pad that serves as our waiting room. No real drama up until this point as I have used this ladder numerous times over the years to do my usual maintenance jobs. However, this time the ladder was on top of a very smooth surface versus the usual rougher outdoor areas that I normally work on. We are indeed creatures of habit and my habit of using this ladder did not include using any type of support for the legs as in the past they functioned well, stabilized by sandy or rocky surfaces. Not so this time and my “lack of awareness” in this particular situation saw the ladder slip with me on it and down I came from about three meters falling heavily onto the concrete floor. I’m certain this event only lasted a few seconds but during those few moments I realized that I did not want to land on my back or side but wanted to come down vertically like a cat. I managed to pull that one off except I fractured my ankle when I made initial contact with the floor. I’m not too clear on what happened after that but I ended up also breaking a rib, a blood vessel in my lung and as well I sustained a compression fracture of my L1 vertebra. Ouch!!!!!

So I went to bed for two weeks, didn’t have a bowel movement for 8 days and took loads of painkillers, something I rarely do but appreciated so much during the initial intense phase of this experience. In this part of the world, they refer to these sorts of events as “mitihani” or examinations and usually “mitihani ya Mungu” or examinations of God. I would certainly prefer a gentler form of examination but alas, this was not the case. I came quite close to injuring my spinal cord and potential paralysis so I have mustered up a huge amount of gratitude and acquired an increased reservoir of compassion as a result. Life can change in an instant and so it seems each day is a gift, a gift worth acknowledging …every day J Almost five months later now and I am back to running and being capable of doing most of the things I could do before the “spill”.  Be careful on ladders folks  🙂

Fortunately for the people of Zanzibar Dr Emma Lockwood was here with us and so the clinic was able to continue to serve the community during most of my down time. As I said in our last update, Emma was a recent graduate but she held her own in the center with very little help from me and did a great job of looking after patients and generally keeping the boat afloat. J Thank you Emma!!!

I have been back in the clinic since June and it is really quite a joy to be able to adjust again and with a somewhat renewed perspective on life.

I also wanted to take a moment here to thank our past line up of volunteers at the JTTI. Pat will certainly have more to add to this but we have really been fortunate to have met Danny and Fabi and Basil. Danny was born in Australia and Fabi is from Sao Paulo in Brazil. More like gypsies, Danny and Fabi have been leading overland tours for the last year or so and decided to donate three months of their time end expertise to the project here. Basil is from Germany and he too has given up three months of his time before enrolling in Medical school later this year. It has been such a pleasure to have these three with us and we will surely do miss them as they left us at the start of September. Volunteering is generally a thankless undertaking and despite that these guys have been so genuine, proactive and culturally sensitive, traits that go a long way in this type of environment. So thank you for all the super energy and great things that you have contributed to our project and our community. Karibuni tena!!!

We have had a couple of last minute cancellations from practitioners so it looks like I’ll be solo in the clinic until January when we will be welcoming Dr.Madison Snevily, a Chiropractor from the US who will be working with us for about six weeks. We are looking forward to meeting Madison soon now.

Otherwise, life really is amazing and we are still excited to be here doing our thing. Onward and upward. 🙂