Economic Develoment and Health Care

Ray asked me to blog for him today...
Because of Him,
Randy




Yesterday we drove over 2 hours into the mountains to a village where Cheetah will be involved on project #2. The Village of Bomalang'ombe is a very remote village of about 5000 people. Cheetah will be working again with food value chain issues but with different products and in slightly different ways than in Ilambilole where Project #1 will be taking place. Both are highly productive villages as a whole, as well as very proud villages. This was very evident in the way they took care of themselves, their homes, shops, & village.
There are two Doctors on our team. One is an Anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic. The other worked with the first for 10 years at Mayo and now operates a consulting business. He also operates a clinic in the remote mountains of SW Kenya west of Nairobi. I have visited two dispensaries in these two villages with the doctors to photograph and record their visit. As we have visited these remote mini-clinic the Doctors have discussed HIV-AIDS education, they have looked at everything from the number if instruments to patient protocol to try and discover how they best assist the clinics. We were amazed at the quality of the first which even had a liquid oxygen cooled freezer that had a very good supply of vaccines.
We were also amazed at the second clinic, but for very different reasons. Being so very remote and difficult to get to makes for its own sets of challenges.
Yesterday as we spoke with the nurse in Bomalang'ombe one doctor asked her how many of the mothers that deliver babies each month are infected with HIV-AIDS. She said of he 15-20 she sees deliver each month, 70-80%! She shared with us that they have discovered that often times the middlemen that come to town to buy products pay for sex and are to cause for much of the spreading of this disease. I later discovered from Ray as we discussed the day that the going rate is in the village is about 500TSH. (Tanzanian Schillings) that works out to about $.35! Yes, that is 35 CENTS. The decimal point is correct. It was very interesting discussion that developed as we began to work through the issues of economic development when the workforce could possibly not be viable within a short period of time.
This expanded into confirmation of why our church is supporting Cheetah in the first place. It is. Not about all the "Benjamins". It is a holistic approach to adding value with what is ready in place from the perspective of the village. It must be a perceived value on the part of the people generated by the ideas of the villagers themselves.
I am being reminded of the intertwined complexity of the issues. Please pray for wisdom for all involved.
This fact alone spoke volumes to me of the fact that this is
Because of Him,
Randy

(Sent from my Verizon Wireless CrackBerry)