A nurse's thoughts

I didn’t need much convincing. It started with a random conversation at a ‘hen’s night’ in Brisbane and 6 months later I was boarding an aeroplane headed for Tanzania. Volunteering in Africa was something I have wanted to do since I began nursing in 2001. But if you had have told me then that in 7 years from now I would be part of a team building an eco friendly children’s village for Tanzanian orphans and vulnerable women, hosting health education classes for the community, I would have called you crazy. But here I am, and there you have it. I just hope I can give much of the good fortunes I have had in my life, pay it forward as they say. I don’t accept that geography should dictate a person’s opportunity to life.

I’ve been here nearly 3 months and I’ve been spending most of my time preparing and delivering health lessons to our House Mamas. It is always a surprise to find out what they know and what they don’t know. I am often taken aback by the information that someone (possibly the doctors/nurses in the local clinics) have been providing – and not providing to the community. While malaria is a huge problem, there seems to be a reflex reaction to diagnose most illnesses as malaria, which results in an increasing tolerance of the malaria parasite to treatment and other illnesses not being cured. These are enormous challenges on which I hope to have an impact, however small, during my time here (9 months to go and time is running out!).