A fellow VSO volunteer here in Tanzania, Helen Poole, is working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Masasi hospital . She has
very little equipment to work with and a lot of sick babies to help (you
can read more about it on her blog: http://helenintanzania.wordpress.com/).
One thing she really needs in order to help these children is hats! Hats help keep the premeture babies warm, as there are no incubators and frequent power cuts!
If you are a knitter, and would like to help, then read the poster below and send your hats to the address shown. This poster is being shared around by many people in the UK, and hopefully will "go viral", as knitting is the new cool thing to do (knitting is the new going out... apparently!), and helping to save babies is worth +10 karma points.
The more hats, the merrier, as there are plenty of babies who need them in Masasi, as well as in Nyangao, Lindi and Mtwara!
It’s coming to the end of rainy season now
and according to the locals it’s been a funny one.
The rains started late and people were
worried about the lack of rain for their crops (since most people survive by
subsistence farming, this is a big problem).
Thankfully the rains came, but they have been very heavy this year, and now there is too much water....
There have been floods all over the country including
Dar es Salaam, Kagera, Arusha and in Morogoro where bridges on the main (only) road to the Capital city, Dodoma were
destroyed as this driver found out
Last week it rained for around 48 hours in
the Nyangao area, and the usually subdued river rose at least 10feet and
swamped the bridge on the road to the west of the village. (Videos courtesy of Mr R from the Hospital)
At the time, I was on the other side of the
bridge visiting Masasi
Hospital, and was
informed by Nyangao colleagues that the road just past the bridge has been destroyed and many peoples
houses in Nyangao had been flooded or completely swept away.
Thankfully the waters receded within a day,
and repairs to the road started straight away and I was able to return to Nyangao
by bus (although before the road was fixed, buses were going up to the bridge,
enterprising locals offered to carry people across for a fee, and buses started
on the other side of the bridge! - even
in difficult situations, Tanzanians seem to find a way to make things work!)
Thankfully nobody was hurt or killed by
these floods in Nyangao, although I did hear reports of people being killed in
a village around 10km from here, as a bridge was swept away.
The Bridge at Nyangao 2 days after the flood.. the river is usually a trickle, 10 feet below the bridge
Part of the road that was swept away
I
was talking to one lady whose house was flooded this time, she said there was
plenty of warning as the flood happened during the daytime, and she had managed
to move all her furniture and belongings out of the house or tie things to the
rafters to protect them from the water so she escaped without damage to her
property, but just had to clean the mud out of her house.
She told me about the great flood that
happened in the 1990s. In that flood,
the water rose quickly and to around 15 feet high and it happened at
night. Many
people died as whole villages were literally swept away, roads were destroyed
and vast swathes of agricultural land were underwater for many weeks. After this flood, many stronger bridges were
built (which is probably why the actual bridge at Nyangao survived!) and many
people relocated away from the flood plains of the river.
When floods happen in any country they are
destructive and disruptive, but the impact to poor people in developing
countries is enormous. In the villages, many
houses are made of mud and wood and are simply swept away by flood waters and people’s
farms are destroyed and animals lost, meaning they have no food to feed them and their families
for the year. In the cities, the drainage
infrastructure cannot cope and houses and business are flooded, people cannot
navigate the city roads and families’ income disappears. Flood waters become contaminated with sewage which
gives rise to disease to exacerbate the problems. If predictions about climate change causing
an increase in extreme weather and flooding are correct then it will be the
poorest people who are hit hardest.
Saying all this… today is a bright, sunny day in Nyangao! (although there is an ominous cloud over
there….)
