What are you going to be doing in Freetown?

We are about to go to Sierra Leone and looking forward to it. The team of eleven flies out on Sunday, 28th February and returns a week later to arrive at Heathrow on Monday morning, 8th March. I am the only one to have been in the country before. We have a busy week and believe that the Community Health Care Programme that we shall share could begin to transform the health of the communities taking part. It has done so elsewhere in Africa.

Nelson Mandela was so impressed with the reports he heard that he asked for the programme to be taken to his home village in South Africa.

Linden Boothby

Linden Boothby, the leader of the programme, has recently been to Malawi where a participant wrote, "The workshop was an eye opener. We discovered that we can influence our community to follow preventive measures against most of our killer diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, dysentery just to mention a few. As we were discussing we recognised the need of concentrating on sanitation in our community, and we agreed that sanitation will be our starting point. Our mind set has completely changed towards our community. The fact that we have a role to play in our community cannot be emphasised enough. This workshop was worth attending!"

The Malawi report quotes Chief Chapsinja, ‘The training was timely. I will ensure that my community is practicing good health practices. In our country Chiefs are keys to the community, that is why I personally attended the training. I am convinced that the training is good so I will personally teach my fellow chiefs in their monthly meeting and work closely with the Village Development Committee to ensure that what we have learnt is being put into practice. I want my village to be a model village.’

Teaching taking place in Malawi

Linden was in Tanzania last December. She described her first meeting there. "We started this session carefully feeling our way, being very sensitive to local issues and local culture. “What makes you feel unhappy when you wake in the morning”, we asked and out it all poured! Relationship breakdown, wife beating, unfaithfulness, children dying, female circumcision, child marriages, HIV/AIDS, diarrhoea, alcoholism, malnutrition and so much more. When the group prioritised the issues, it clearly showed that they wanted us to start teaching on Family Matters."

What will we be teaching on? Whatever the groups decides are their priorities, so we don't know till we get there, but we have a team of dedicated people, including many with medical qualifications,  Psychiatrist, General Practitioner, Paediatrician, Nurse, Health Care Assistant and a Health and Social Care Student.
The programme takes  around 4 days to present, after which the leaders and influencers present will have workable ideas to share with their communities.We hope some of the team will return several times in future years to help with the implementation and give extra support. A major thrill for me is that I shall have my younger daughter, Grace, with me for this trip and also my nephew, Samuel Warwick. Sam featured in the last post and is now setting us all a shining example of committment.

Grace (right) with her elder sister, Kate

Friday is the School Sports Day. A major event in the yearly calendar and great fun. There are four houses in competition against each other. I should be impartial, but I think I will be supporting Swindale House.

Swindale House

On the Saturday I hope we shall be visiting parts of Freetown, a market and a Beach. After the service on Sunday in Wellington, it will be time to say farewell as we take the ferry back to Lungi Airport. We hope to report amazing things on our return.