Monday, January 8th:
Hello to all readers, this is Ryan and today, Monday the 8th, was the first day that the group split up into different activities. There were two groups today, a hospital group at Selian hospital and a group that went to hospice home visits.
Hospice home visits were about 30 minutes from our lodge in Arusha and we saw four different families today. The families were very grateful to see us coming to visit them. Hope Ministries sponsored the food bags that we took to each family which contained rice, beans, sunflower oil, bananas, avocados, cucumbers, and oranges.
It was quite saddening to see the condition that these families were living in and the day to day struggles that they were encountering in life. Along with health issues that are not curable, these patients need to try to make money to provide for their families and most are single moms with four or more children to provide for. Family members are also not very supportive it appears because a couple of patients’ daughters sent their children, the grandparent’s grandchildren, to be raised by the grandparents. We had one hospice patient who needed to be seen by doctors for an echocardiogram but was too poor to be able to afford to even get a ride to the hospital. Thus we contacted Mama Gayle to see if Hope Ministries could assist her with the finances and arrangements were made for her to meet Gayle at Selian.
A more positive note to the hospice visits was the welcoming of families into their homes and getting to experience what it is like in a variety of different living conditions in Tanzania. Along with that, team members handed out candy and toys to local children which was very heart warming to see the children’s smiling faces despite the conditions that they live in.
The hospital team had a day full of interesting cases where they learned useful skills such as reading X-Rays and interpreting what is shown. Dr. Ashok taught local Anesthetists different techniques for “putting people to sleep”. There were a lot of patients in need today and many had interesting but sad stories behind their injuries. A 65 year old man was evaluated today that had two broken legs, two broken arms, and damage to his spinal cord. Another sad case that speaks for itself as to just how in-need of help some people are here is the case of a woman that got attacked by a random man with a machete and had both of her arms broken, this happened three years ago.
We are all very grateful and humbled by the opportunity to be here learning first hand what others have to deal with on a day to day basis and just how lucky we are to live the life that we do. Thank
you for reading and check back tomorrow for our next update.
HI this is Gayle. I am so very grateful for this awesome team that God has sent to do his work her in TZ. They are all working hard and all working well as a team. My heart is heavy with emotions on all the sad cases that we have seen and served. I thank all of the donors who have donated to help these poor people who have no money to even travel to the hospital, so we funded their transportation and then brought them to see Dr. Mark at Selian and after seeing them in clinic, we have a full surgery schedule. God bless you all for helping these people. 
