I would like to share the case of the lovely lady on the left with my homeopathy friends: last Wednesday we accompanied Camilla to one of her clinics. Somehow I knew this case would be special as she is patient nr 304, that is the same as my birthday (30th April) and my unit nr back at home.
She had pains in her whole body, it started a long time ago. She also gained a lot of weight (from 75 to 125kg) suddenly after the premature birth of her child 6yr ago. She also feels coldness through her spine even if it’s hot. Pain in lower back ext to sitting bones. Coldness in spine goes to her whole body, trembling and she has to cover herself, during night and day. Pain in the muscles of the neck back and front to left shoulder around breast and they end in the left armpit causing numbness of the left arm (only with pain). She has high blood pressure, she gets pain in her heart. Also suffers from stomach ulcers. Pain in both knees and swelling of the ankles. Pain in soles when  walking. Menses: severe pains in lower abdomen, thick blood, no clots, normal red. Mind: angry and sad, mostly angry before menses. Also sometimes annoyed by children, at work or by her husband. 5 children. Appetite good. Taste she likes: lemon and pepper but they aggravate the stomach ulcers. Sleep: goes to bed late because of her work, takes alcohol to sleep, is otherwise too restless mentally to sleep. Dreams: working or crying or walking and laughing with other people in a group. Dream of someone cutting flowers. Crying in dreams about family problems. What problems? She got married to man who was already married, got shocked when she heard about it and got bleeding, had premature baby. She is not allowed to have a co-wife in her religion. She doesn’t want to think about it and is still married. Very sad and cries about it. She married at 19, was in love with him, now is not happy having sex with him. She hides and cries, decided to keep quiet about it (not even her mom knows). Fears: that her husband will die, he faints when she tells about her body pains. How is she going to live? 

At this point we are all quite clueless and getting nowhere with our repertorization. Then Camilla asks about fears for the second time. Then the lady tells us that she is afraid of her co-wife, the husband's 1st wife. Why? Because she will always be 2nd to her. Now the light goes on for Camilla and Anna and I still have a blank stare in our faces. A few more confirmatory questions and the case is 'solved'. Female gen: itching, was treated for uti. Perspiration: cold sweat on head at night. Also during the day.

Can you guess the remedy? These are the rubrics Camilla used: back coldness spine, extremities swelling ankles, generals hypertension, generals obesity, mind irritability menses before (*name of the remedy at the end of this blog).
Thanks Camilla for teaching us to have patience and keep asking until we get a clue to the remedy!

On Thursday and Friday we went out on our own again. I drove to the clinic on Friday over very bumpy roads and on the left side of the road, as the English do. We saw a man we prescribed Ars to (arranging his jacket below), a boy who has had diarrhea for 3 years now (!) since he fell out of a tree on his tummy. He was examined at hospital externally, not internally. He reminded us of the boy we saw with Jeremy earlier this week, very weak and malnutritioned as he cannot absorb nutrients properly. We started him on Arnica and he will be back in two weeks again.

At the end of the clinic day we were happy to go back to town and celebrate the beginning of the weekend with a cup of coffee and lemon cake at one of our two favourite coffee places: The Coffee Shop (the other one is Union Cafe). It is the small things here that make you infinitely happy!

After a 2-week training period we were off to clinics on our own. Did we manage to find a good remedy for our patients? Only time will tell during our follow-ups. There is an incredible amount of concentration needed to observe the patient in front of us, listen and ask the right questions, write notes in a good format and repertorize at the same time. So luckily we work in pairs and one of us can keep notes while the other tries to play/fight with RadarOpus. We divided in two groups so our baptism of fire has been quite kind, we had about 6 patients during our first day instead of the 12 patients we'd otherwise had had.

On Tuesday Jeremy came with us to the Mkombozi clinic (you see him going in with a big box of remedies on the left), where orphans receive vocational education. Most of them are hiv-positive and their parents died of AIDS. After treating some children (one of them was nearly blind, another one had a hard dry cough and is 'the best' football player in the team so he got Adamas), we did a home visit to a 16year old student that was in critical condition and had stopped attending school 5 months ago. He lives with his mother, who goes off to the fields every day to earn TSh2,000 a day but she has to pay TSh500 for transport so she's only left with TSh1,500 (less than a dollar) to feed her son. This boy had so many ailments and was so malnourished that it was really difficult to repertorize his case. After much work and many sighs Jeremy decided on Bar-i and Podo. He had diarrhea so Anna taught the boy to drink water with half a teaspoon salt and 6 teaspoons sugar added to it to avoid dehydration, but they didn't even have salt in the house. Then we went off to the village and HHA got food for him. In homeopathy we have to take away obstacles to cure and oh my, poverty is such a great obstacle here! So HHA also gives food parcels to very poor families with kids, small donations to elderly people who don't have any family left to take care of them and microloans to women taking care of a lot of orphans who want to start their own business. If you want to contribute to this cause, you can make a donation. A small monthly donation of $5 or $10 makes a huge difference here and it can help the project rely on a budget for the future.

Last weekend (1-2 Feb) we went shopping at Memorial Market in Moshi, where people sell second had clothes, bags, shoes, etc. probably donated from charity shops in the West (!), then we took a dala-dala, a very cheap mini-bus way of transportation in Tanzania that is normally very crowded (the name comes from the price of one 'dollar' = dala) into town to get veggies at another market. On Sunday Anna and I wanted to attend a church service because we thought there would be lots of African singing. So we went to the local Baptist church and had to listen to an American pastor speaking very loudly instead and his wife singing out of tone :) Anyway, after he tried to sell us salvation during the service we had a presentation of the financial statements of the church (including a promised donation to Jewish missionaries?!). Then we had the honour of witnessing a few people getting baptised, including Tracy, who normally comes home and gives us a 1-hr massage and a manicure for TSh30,000 ($20), and we were lucky that the church organised a barbecue to celebrate their second anniversary and had a very nice lunch there.

After the barbecue we came back home and changed rooms, now I'm staying in my own room with toilet and shower, which is very nice. A 'fundi' or so-called 'expert' had come and fixed the hot water in my bathroom, but after six days the joy was over and now I only have cold water. This is something normal in Tanzania, the buildings are old and people don't have the expertise to build a house so sometimes the cold and hot water pipes mix, stop working or there is no pipe going to a sink at all. Then something gets fixed for just a few days and we have to call the fundi again...

I don't have much stuff to personalize my room but here's a couple of pics of gifts friends gave me before embarking on my trip: the elephant broche Missy is waking over my bed and helps keep my bedroom curtain open during the day (thanks Dominika) and the environmental bracelet (thanks Louis) helps me identify my HHA water bottle (gift of Jeremy and Camilla on our arrival).

On Sunday evening Anna and I cooked a lovely soup with dark green veggies, a Swedish 'pizza salad' (made with cabbage) and tzaziki. We try to cook in turns and so far it has worked out well, everybody has different and delicious recipes!

How do I start this blog? There is sooo much to tell and pics to show that it's impossible to condense it to a few paragraphs.
We left on Wed morning towards the Great Rift Valley where a lot of Masai live. I call it 'the Shire' because the place is idyllic...

We stayed for 3 days / 2 nights with the Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM), who educate the local population about AIDS and human rights. Sister Levina
accompanied us to the various clinics. There were so many Masai that needed help that we split in 5 groups: one by the parochy, three in Masai villages and one doing home visits. Below you see some Masai ladies waiting at Michelle's clinic. I went to do home visits with Camilla, Anna, sister Levina and Etna. Etna is a Masai lady that has been living for 20 years in the US, so she was the perfect translator for us!

There are so many stories I could tell you, like the children who are vomiting 10cm-long worms (they got Cina), or the hugely fat woman with elephantitis who got Bufo. I could not believe the resemblance with the substance! (Bufo is a remedy made from a toad. Camilla warned me not to take a picture of her, she'd get furious!). Or about Elias, the kid who lives in extreme poverty and is the most beautiful, happiest soul around (see pic below, he got Californium). Camilla brought clothes, food and a 'solar bag' for his family so they can desinfect water in it with solar energy. Or about this wonderful Sepia lady below... And some of the Masai men are really handsome! And they  know it: see this one
posing here on the left. And I love the colours they wear!

We are going back in two weeks to visit the Masai community again. We will then probably be teaching some basic homeopathy to sister Levina and other MMM sisters. I would really like to thank them for their hospitality. We must be doing some good work together because this is what the sky looked like after we got back home... And God was pleased.