Dear friends, as most of you know, I have decided to move to Zanzibar. I hope that some of the pictures I post in this blog will show you why, because there is no way to describe how much I feel at home in this place. Well, actually, in Jambiani to be more specific. Up until now I have only visited Stonetown (the old part of the main city on the West coast of the island) and Jambiani on the East Coast of Zanzibar. It is this last place that took my breath away, blew all my worries away and is calling me to go back asap. Maybe it is the 'hakuna matata' mentality of dealing with the little you have and feeling infinitely happy with it. The world is upside down there (just as HHA's logo): the less you have, the more content you seem to be...

Anyway, some people have been asking where I am going to stay, so I decided to show them in pictures. When I was there end of March before returning to Doha, I met Sabine, a lovely Swiss lady that practices alternative medicine. She is building her own house with a small guesthouse and restaurant, so I took a few pictures to recommend her place to my friends, see below:

So of course when I decided to go back to Jambiani, it was the first place that I had in mind to stay for 3 months while trying to find a job and a more definite place to stay when I move there after the summer. This is what the room looks like that I am renting from her. The best is that it is powered by solar energy!

So now I will just leave you with a few pictures of Jambiani. Please keep your fingers crossed for me that I find a job soon! I am flying 'home' on 3 May.

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.

Habari, good morning! It's 4am and I can't sleep, too excited about making a 3-day trip to the Masai later today :) So I'd better update you on what has been going on lately here.
Last weekend I had a stomach bug so I stayed home, made myself a soup and had a relaxing time. Naomi and Michelle were home so they took good care of me :) Here you see a splendid view of Mt. Kili at sunset.
On Monday we went to a clinic with all the ladies in our project:

After the clinic we went for a meeting at Union Cafe (the Chagga tribe grows a lovely Arabica coffee on the hills of the surrounding mountains and they have formed a cooperative to sell it). HHA offers us the possibility of speaking with a psychologist to prevent a breakdown: 'caring for the carers'.

On Tuesday we went to a clinic near the Pare Mountain, where Roger, our most experienced translator, was born. There were so many patients that we had to split in two groups and it was Lorraine's and Naomi's baptism of fire taking cases (in a chicken hut!) aided by Roger.
Anna and I stayed with Michelle, first inside the guest house, where we were welcomed with a delicious chai (tea) and chapatti, then we moved under a tree because it was too hot inside, until a storm chased us back into the house again...

Every time we go to a clinic we take something to eat for our patients, like bananas or chapatti. Many of them have had to walk a long distance to come to the clinic and have no money to buy three meals a day so you can see the smiles on their faces when we hand them in our 'goods'.
That's it for now, folks. Stay tuned to hear more about our trip to the Masai! If you want to read more, have a look at Naomi's blog. It's time for me to pack my bag. Kwaheri (bye)!

The other day Sophie commented  on my first blog that it looks like I’m on holidays and I had to chuckle. I must admit that, being my first time in sub-Saharan Africa, I was quite relieved to realize this is such a nice area to volunteer for a few months. Jeremy and Camilla Sherr, who run Homeopathy for Health in Africa, put a lot of effort to make it very comfortable for us here.

Last Mon 21 Jan we started a  2-week training before we can help patients on our own (or in pairs). From Mon to Thur we accompanied Jeremy, Camilla and Michelle to a different clinic every day. Our clinics are a room in a hospital, private practice or in someone’s home. We also make home visits for those who are so sick that can’t come see us at the clinics. 

So off we go in our old Land Cruiser in the morning (those back at home will smile at this) driving on paved and unpaved roads taking 7-8 people every time: 5 volunteers, 2 translators and Jeremy or Camilla. Those in the back seat (3rd row) have to watch not to bump their heads all the time on the ceiling.

When we arrive there are plenty of people waiting and many more come during the course of the day so we have to give them numbers at the beginning of the clinic if we want to limit the number of patients we see that day. The first day we saw about 18 patients with Jeremy and Michelle helped by taking 6 more cases outside the clinic under a tree, although she was feeling a bit ill. No need to tell you that by the time we are done around 5pm our brain is totally fried and there is no concentration left for anything… but we still need to cook, charge our laptops, check emails, write blogs ;) and shower before going to be around 9.30-10 and waking up the next day at 6am with the sun. if there is no electricity we sit cosily by candlelight and use our torches. I really admire how Jeremy & Camilla manage the project and a house with 3 kids, travel abroad for teaching, guide volunteers, etc!

We saw great cases in clinic (for the homeopaths: I especially liked cases of Bismuth, Carbo-veg, Opium, Plumbum, Coccus cacti - I have to study lots). If you look at the pictures below starting from upper left going clockwise: 1) Jeremy in clinic with Naomi, Lorraine and me. 2) A patient thanking us after HHA granted her a micro-loan (she is taking care of 11 orphans!), 3) a young lady with long-standing pneumonia (she got carbo-veg), 4) Camilla in clinic, 5) Naomi and me, 6)Michelle taking the case during a home visit (the lady got Opium, look how she's staring at the floor) and 7) one of our patients.

On Friday we had the luxury to follow a whole-day seminar with Jeremy at Melinda's, who has a beautiful place outside of Moshi and cooks fantastic organic food from her own garden. He tought us about how to recognize the most commonly prescribed remedies in AIDS cases. It was a relaxing day and we swam by the pool and had lunch under the trees. A few wild monkeys came close by when they smelled the food. Oh we really needed the break after the intense first week! See pic below...

Dear friends, I arrived safely at Kilimanjaro International Airport on the 19th of January after a 1-hr stop in Dar-as-Salaam. A very friendly taxi driver was there waiting for me to take me to Moshi, 40km from the airport. This is the view from my garden at Hahnemann House, where I am staying with another 4 female volunteers: Michelle from the USA, Lorraine and Naomi from the UK and Anna from Sweden. As you can see, we are at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The house is really nice with a lovely garden around it. I share a room with Naomi. There is a guard and a 'house mother' that cleans and washes our clothes. We have electricity cuts sometimes so we charge our laptops, phones, batteries, cameras, etc (oh my, I hate cables!) whenever we can...

On Sunday 20 Jan we made a trip to a nearby waterfall and swam under it. On the way we played with a two-horned cameleon, heard some stories from our guide Isaac about the local Chagga tribe customs, went into a man-made cave where the Chagga hid from the colonisers, bought some fruit from children and women, had lunch under a canopy of flowers and admired the beautiful nature here. Next time I will tell you more about the clinics we are visiting and the work we are doing here. It's 10pm now, bedtime for me :) lala salama! (good night in Swahili).