My adventure Tanzania continues to be a character building experience, mostly focused on increasing patience. After I was dropped off by the Diocese driver (which is the most expensive ride I have ever taken), I was handed over to a very nice man named Edward. He picked me up from the bus station and we took the public bus to Moshi and then to Arusha. The bus stations here are an experience in and of itself; there are huge busses with random sayings like “Jesus Loves Me” and “Las Vegas” spray painted across the front and pictures of celebrities from Usher to the Pope pasted on the side, hundreds of men yelling and corralling customers onto their buses, other people hold up scaffolding filled with cheap sunglasses and phone chargers to the bus windows and other people holding up baskets of sodas and peanuts to sell to customers. Overall, the first time it was quite overwhelming, but we made it to Arusha safely and he showed me into this lovely home with his wonderful wife, Evodia.

The village school Edward built with the help of American volunteers

Over the next few days, I hung around Edward while he worked. Edward is a lawyer/farmer/tour guide and although at first I questioned how well he could do all of them as he was spread so thin, he really is making it work somehow.  We have visited his farm twice now, which is located in a village at the foot of Kilimanjaro and populated with the Mesai tribe. The first day we took a tour of his land and then sat around a local shop where the men gather to drink beer, soda and talk about local events and weather. As I began to meet more people I soon realized this is the village where Edward actually grew up and still has family. As such, he began to reveal to me his plan about developing the village. Like most Tanzanians, he is frustrated with the lack of funding from the government for rural education and health care. From this frustration he has developed a plan to bring a school and eventually a hospital to the area. It turns out his farming endeavor is solely to start funding these projects and his tour guide business also helps with this as volunteers can come help do construction, teaching and find funding. His work has already brought a school to the village, which has 4 teachers, 6 classrooms and now educates approximately 150 students per year. The kids that attend primary school there have nowhere else to go to school and would otherwise be left uneducated. Edward also hopes to build a secondary school nearby someday as after they graduate from his school, they have to walk at least 7-10 miles to the nearest secondary school. (Once when I was out there I saw several of these secondary students walking home in the pouring rain and mud at 6:00 pm).

Mesai village shop owners, the one on the right is named "Martin Luther King" :)

Filling her prescriptions

Additionally, the villagers have little to no access to any health care. The nearest “hospital” is where the secondary school is (approximately 7 miles away by dirt road), but really is not well staffed and is more of a clinic than a hospital. Because of this, many of the villagers have to travel for hours to the nearest hospital in Arusha in order to receive proper care . The day before I left for my Kilimanjaro trek, I was with Edward in Arusha, and he informed me that a villager was in the country hospital waiting to be seen by a doctor so he was going to stop by and see what he could do. When we arrived she was part of a line of at least 100 people and was waiting with her mother and twin 4 month old daughters to be seen. Edward worked some magic (I have no idea what kind of strings he pulled) to get her and her babies seen. After she was seen (which consisted of a bare minimal physical exam and a generic antibiotic prescription), they had to start making their way to the village. As Edward and I were planning on going to the village anyway to see the site for his potential hospital, we decided to help escort them back. I was not at all prepared for how hard this task would be. I was in charge of holding one of the 4 month old babies while we walked around Arusha to fill her prescription and find a bus to take us to the village. It turned out there was actually a bus strike that day in Arusha (the drivers were upset because the government was not giving them enough funding to buy fuel), so we had to wait in the dirt parking lot of the bus stand and sit on old tires while we waited for some sort of transportation. Again, Edward somehow worked some magic and after an hour or so we piled into a taxi van (I think it was a private car that just decided to help give rides that day in exchange for cash) along with 10 other people. We barely had room for us and the babies, so unfortunately, we had to leave their grandma behind in Arusha to find her own way back. The van ride out to the village took 2 hours and luckily these 4 month olds were the most happy and content babies I have ever been around. Besides being peed on several times because they had soaked through their kitenge diapers and plastic bags, they were a pleasure to hold and take care of as they either slept or smiled at me the entire time. When we finally arrived to the “main” part of the village, Edward looked and me and said, “okay now we have to take a boda boda to the village.” This meant I had to take a 4 month old in one arm, my purse in the other and get on the back of a motorbike to drive the 7 miles on dirt road throughout the farm fields in order to get these babies and their mom back home. Shockingly, we all arrived to their hut safely and the family was so grateful for our help that they made us hard boiled eggs for lunch. It was truly a crazy day for me, and I can’t believe how cliché but also real my experience of rural Africa has been. For so long I have prayed and schemed and planned to be able to understand the difficulties that women and children face to receive health care and to be able to do something about it, and the opportunity literally plopped itself in my lap unexpectedly in the form of two 4 month old angels.

Waiting at the bus station for a way to get to the village!

Apenge and Abigaili

Potential site for the hospital!

It is because of this exact scenario that Edward wants to build a hospital in the village so that people don’t have to travel to such great lengths to receive care. I really hope that someday this becomes a reality and am even hoping that when I am done with residency I can play in a role in the development!