Field Update - May 26, 2014

May 26, 2014

 

Hello again everyone! Another short post for today as this week was a lot of office work.

I spent a bit of time last week trying to finalise lists of supplies and medicines that we would like to obtain from donors for MSD and CH Mulamba. We’ve found a few really great sources of supplies, now we just need to figure out what we’d like to try to get from whom and, as usual, raise the required funds.

We spent a good part of the work days this week talking back and forth with the folks at Mwangaza, an organization operating in the Equateur province to provide much needed aid to the displaced refugees that have come over from the Central African Republic. They have asked us to assess and help with the maternal health crisis they are having there and we have been working on putting together grant applications and figuring out the logistics of getting help to them.

Dominique and I looked into getting flights out to there from here using a missionary flight service, but because of the remote area and the lack of demand for flights out there, we would have had to charter the whole plane which was going to cost astronomical amounts so we decided to start looking into alternatives this week. We ended up at the local in-country airline office: CAA. The infrastructure of the office did not give us a huge sense of confidence about the quality of the flights…

 

 

 
 

 

 

[that's K for Kwality...]

But the staff were friendly and helpful and were able to give us a quote that we may be able to work with if we can put this all together.

After our time at the CAA office, I took my first side-saddle ride on a motorcycle back to our house (was wearing a restrictive skirt). I tried to capture the moment on my iphone through the rear-view mirror. You can see my head sorta, and that’s Dominque riding expertly in front.

 

This past week on Friday was the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula so we spent Friday tweeting different tidbits of information on the condition and its causes in order to raise awareness about this avoidable scourge in third world countries.

Well, that’s about it for news this week. Until next time!

Field Update May 19,2014

Its been a great week full of visitors and visits, which always spells “collaboration”.

Some of my Canadian compatriots were out to visit  Panzi from Manitoba this week, hoping to help the Panzi Hospital with its electricity concerns. We had a chance to sit down with them to ask them a bit about some of the power concerns at CH Mulamba and with regard to our future plans in Mwenga.

We also had the head of the Panzi Foundation USA to visit and we had a chance to talk to him about ways we can try to coordinate our fundraising and advocacy efforts in order to maximize the results for the people here. On Friday afternoon we had an impromptu meeting with them outside the hospital while waiting for their vehicle to arrive. A few boys were also there with us and were happy to pose for some pics.

Visitors from Holland were also here to visit CH Mulamba as they have been a large supporter of the work there and wanted to get an idea of what the current needs were and how things were going. So on Saturday, we all went together for another visit to CH Mulamba.

There were eight people on the trip, each with their own reason for visiting Mulamba, but as for Dominique and I, we were there to discuss needs again with the doctors and staff and to explore the possibility of helping the unpaid staff and patients there with their food problems. In fact, when we entered the maternity waiting hall that I spoke about in the last post on Mulamba, the first thing several of the pregnant ladies sitting on the floor said was “we’re hungry!” in Swahili. We spent some time trying to determine whether it might be feasible to use a small plot of land behind the main building to plant food and possibly house chickens for both the staff and patients to be able to take advantage of. It looks like it would be a real benefit to the people there if we could do it, but we need to do some more research and consulting about the idea to find out whether it would really work for Mulamba and whether we would be able to do it.

This week I also got to spend a few days over at the Clinique Juridique in meetings with Yvette, the coordinator over there, about how best to help them in their work of providing legal advice and support to survivors of sexual violence. On Friday I got to attend one of the their conferences/trainings on women’s inheritance/property rights which was great because that was what my project was on in Ghana. They had about 70 people there, leaders from various local regions who were there to learn and discuss about the rights of women to inherit and own property in the face of competing claims from other community members and, at times, their own children and relatives. Here is a picture of Yvette explaining in Swahili the complicated succession laws of the Congo (essentially, when a husband dies and owns property with his wife, the property is divided into 12 shares, 6 of which go to the wife, 3/4s of which go to the children, and the rest of which goes to other close relatives. This can case huge problems for the wife who is trying to raise her family in said property – what with now having to share ownership of it with other relatives as well as her own children).

Here you can see a picture of the head of Clinique Juridique explaining and debating about some of the finer points of law with the participants during the debate period. Unfortunately for me, most of the conference was in Swahili, but that really helped to facilitate the discussion amongst the participants, some of whom were not comfortable participating in French.

This week we also had two meetings with Dr. Imani with regard to the plans for MSD (don’t forget about our fundraising rally going on this month to help equip the MSD team to set up a functioning health clinic in the rural area of Kavumu! Check it  <<here>>) Here is a picture of us delivering the good news to Dr. Imani that we believe we have located a donor for a small amount of solar power to help with the operating room other emergency obstetric procedures at the new clinic (unfortunately I was not quick enough with my camera in order to catch his initial look of surprise and joy!)

Field Update - May 9, 2014

Hello again everyone. Just a quick update today as this week has been much the same as last week work-wise.

It started off in a neat way though, since the most recent class of sexual violence survivors at City of Joy here in Bukavu graduated on Monday and we were invited to the ceremony. The event had an energetic, joyful and victorious feel to it, which was awesome to see for these ladies. There was much drumming, speeches, dramatizations, testimonies and singing – including two rounds of the national anthem. And each lady received a certificate of graduation which they all seemed quite pleased about. It was great to be there.

This week was fraught with internet and power difficulties so it has been difficult to get things done. There were meetings with potential donors, potential shipping companies and past donors, most of which were very encouraging indeed!  But no field visits to tell you about this week.  We’ve been really focused on rallying support for our fundraiser to help Dr. Imani start his rural clinic in Kavumu, including advertising the online donation campaign (https://rally.org/healthincongo) and meeting with Dr. Imani to determine what he already has available for the clinic and what he will need in terms of supplies, medicines and equipment in order to properly provide safe and holistic emergency obstetric care. Please take some time to check out the campaign using the [link] and spread the word in your community.

That’s about it for the news this week. 

Field Update - May 1, 2014

Hello everyone! Its Labour Day here in the DRC so I thought I’d take the time to write up a short field update.

This week we took a trip out to Kavumu with Dr. Imani from Médecins au Service des Démunis (MSD) to see the site of his future rural clinic. You might remember my pictures from his current clinic here in Bukavu a couple weeks ago – well, he’s hoping to pack it up soon to move out to Kavumu to serve the population there as there is a lot more need there for a medical centre .

The trek out to Kavumu did not take very long and we were able to go out and come back in the space of an afternoon. Because of the various road conditions, the trek involved both driving and walking, as per usual.

This is us standing in front of the building behind the main clinic building on the property

The clinic will be located in this house. It still needs a lot of work to be ready to receive patients, but Dr. Imani and his team are resourceful and dedicated and have a vision for how they want the space to work for the services they want to provide here.

We also went around to the back of the building to see the place where the latrines and such will be located...

Once the clinic is ready I don’t think Dr. Imani will have any trouble whatsoever with finding patients. He is already very popular in this area. It took us quite a while to get back to where we had left the vehicle because so many of the folks we met wanted to stop to talk with the Doctor.

This week I also spent a good amount of time in the office learning about human-centered design (for designing solutions to problems for people living on less than $2 per day) and helping Dominique to brainstorm ways to support the work in Mulamba, where we were last week. Here is sample of the fruit of our labours:

There’s more we’ve been doing this week (fundraising, trudging through the 501c3 forms, meetings, etc.) but since I don’t have any pictures of those things for this week, I won’t go into detail. Suffice it to say that it has been another interesting and productive week for Channel in the DRC.

Until next week!  

Update from the Field - April 28, 2014

Well, this has certainly been a busy week!

It started with my first “field trip” to Centre Hospitalier Mulamba. It took us about 2 hours to get there from Bukavu. We were going there to speak to the chief of staff there, Dr. Bienvenu, about the needs of the Centre and our hopes to significantly increase the quality of healthcare that they are able to offer to the people there.

This is the Centre

This is their pharmacy

This is the operating room.

"We Care Solar" provided a solar suitcase to the Centre last year through Channel Initiative and we were able to see how the Centre is using it to provide much needed power for the laboratory, surgeries and procedures.

He also showed us the Fetal Doppler the Centre had been provided with through Channel Initiative. The Fetal Doppler allows the doctors at the Centre to better monitor the health of mothers and babies during pregnancy and allows doctors and mothers to hear the heartbeat of the baby.

This is a picture of him explaining to us that the Centre is in urgent need of a proper blood bank refrigerator
so that they can keep adequate quantities of blood on hand for transfusions. As you can see, they basically only have this one regular fridge at the Centre currently that they stuff random packs of blood into (blood donated by the doctors themselves, whenever it is needed...). A real blood fridge will be one of the major needs that I will be focusing on for the next little while.

Here is a picture of him showing us how much of the Cytotec (Misoprostol) they have left at the Centre (this is an essential medicine for health centres as it is a drug used in various maternal health situations/complications). This drug was given to the Centre last year by "Life for African Mothers" through Channel Initiative.

Another huge challenge at the centre is the sheer number of women who come there for help compared to the small number of beds available. The Centre staff try to encourage the local women to come in early during pregnancy so that they can avoid the risk of running into delivery complications en route, but that means that there are dozens of women arriving days or weeks before their delivery date. The Centre simply doesn't have the space to accommodate them all so they used to sleep on the yard outside of the Centre. Recently the Centre received funding to construct this second building in the back in order to house them, but as you can see in this picture [Since the original post, I have removed this picture at the request of my supervisor], they have no beds so the women sit on the concrete all day or on one of the old mattresses while they wait for their delivery. As such, finding beds and bedding is another huge need I am working on.


The road on the way to the centre and back was pretty…“varied”. I tried to get some shots of the terrain, but its really hard to get an accurate picture of what it was like.

At a couple of points we stopped and some of the folks in our vehicle took advantage of the “drive-through” markets. Here you can see an onion transaction being negotiated from the front passenger seat.

Later on this week we also had a chance to visit colleagues over at “City of Joy”/“Cite de la Joie” which is a community for women survivors of gender violence in Bukavu. Here is a picture of their beautiful facility. [Since the original post, I have removed these 2 pictures at the request of my supervisor]

Out back they also raise chickens. The City raises/harvests all the food it needs to run and provide for the women staying there. Dominique took the second picture of me in front of these chickens right before the security guard arrived to remind us brusquely that no pictures were allowed...

Near the end of the week we were able to catch the end of one of the morning worship meetings at the Panzi Hospital. I have never caught any of what is being said at the meeting because I do not speak Swahili, but I love the singing at the end – especially when I can recognize some of the tunes of the old familiar English hymns (translated to Swahili with beautiful Congolese harmonics of course!)

And the week ended with a meeting at Maison Dorcas where we were able to collaborate with several representatives of various programs and services at Panzi Hospital to try and make the “one-stop centre” a reality in Mulamba and elsewhere in South Kivu in the future (unforunately, the meeting got a little heated at times -- there's a lot of strong personalities in this group)

[Since the original post, I have removed these 2 pictures at the request of my supervisor]

Well, that is about it for this past week. I will end off with a picture of beautiful Bukavu where we live and work.

I have another post that I'd like to put up more about my after-work-hours life here. Hopefully by the end of this week!

Until then!