A Helping Hand in Africa

No water or electricity. Apparently it’s regular occurrence. Welcome to Africa. Day one of trying to do some good, volunteering in Zambia.

I was assigned to a medical clinic with a fellow volunteer. We arrived to find the waiting room standing room only, everyone squeezed in, shoulder-to-shoulder. A faint hum of talking & a baby crying. It was airless & hot & only 8am. Our role here was to admit the patients & find their medical records. No threat of computers. Each patient’s medical records are kept in old style school exercise books. No Medicare either. It’s pay as you go with visits around A$2, unless they are exempt. Being under five, over 65 or having TB, HIV/AIDS or similar gets you an exemption. With about one in four being HIV+ or having AIDs, along with a lot of undernourished & sick children, it seemed that more were exempt than paid. You don’t see many over 65.

We went straight to work, taking blood pressure, temperatures & weighing all the patients. It was busy. Many had a haunted, hopeless look in their eyes. You can’t blame them. It’s a hard life here with life expectancy a mere 37. I’m 37. It doesn’t seem possible.

Seeing the children brought in was heartbreaking. There was a little girl who I assumed she was a baby. No, she was two years old & weighed just 5kgs. Here tiny arms & legs were stick thin. Literally. You could see every rib. She was completely undernourished & to top it, HIV+. What chance does she have?

No sooner had she been admitted than I was taken to admit a patient. It was shocking. He was skin & bone with eye’s rolling into the back of his head. I don’t think he knew where he was, or even who he was. His breaths were rapid, rasping & shallow. I struggled to take his BP, his arm too small for the cuff of the blood pressure monitor. I got there eventually. If he had died in front of me I wouldn’t have been surprised. I don't know what was wrong with him, but whatever it was, it had the better of him.

My time in Zambia will be with me forever. You arrive thinking you can make a difference. The reality is, what you can achieve is limited. These people deserve so much more. I felt like just another white person stopping through, before heading home to what would be unimaginable luxuries to these people. I may not have been able to make a difference to them, but it made a difference to me. The appreciation for my life, the things we take for granted. I am safe. I have everything to be grateful for. And always will be.