Our second mobile of the week would be to the Rift Valley Children’s Village (RVCV) in Oldeani, about a 40-minute drive from FAME through some of the most picturesque scenery one could ever imagine, though also along a road infamously known as the “African massage road.” In the dry season, the route once leaving the tarmac is genuinely fun to drive as we travel initially along a ridge through planted fields of wheat and then descend steeply into two valleys having to use the low gears on my Land Rover going down and then up. In the rainy season, though, this can be one of the most treacherous journeys imaginable as all the lovely red clay turns into an incredibly slick muck that offers little hope of stopping when you touch your brakes and, hence, having the low range of the transfer case is entirely essential for safely navigating not only the steep inclines and declines, but also merely staying in the center of the road. Having been victim to such an incident well over ten years ago during the wet season, I continue to carry some of that PTSD with me whenever it begins to rain and I’m heading out into the bush. There is no question that having a Land Rover in this terrain makes a huge difference, and I have successfully traversed these roads in the rain many times since, but not without that apprehension in the background and a bit of a pit in my stomach.
The Rift Valley Children’s Village, which began initially in 2003 as merely a home for street children that India Howell, or Mama India as she is affectionately referred to, and her business partner, Peter Mmassy, adopted (this was not an orphanage), became a reality in 2008 when it was moved to its present location in the Karatu district and the nearby village of Oldeani. Over the years, India and Peter have taken in and adopted well over 100 children that had either been orphaned or abandoned by their families or had simply run away from relatives who had neglected or abused them. What began over twenty years ago as home to these children, has created a family with each child having 100+ siblings. As the children become old enough to go to college, they may move some distance away but always have a home to return to during breaks from school or vacations.
The Tanzanian Children’s Fund (TCF), the larger organization that has funded the Children’s Village over the years, has many other facets that have benefited the larger community of Oldeani. The Rifty Economic Advancement Program (REAP) has empowered community members through microfinance and training that has allowed families to become financially independent rather than only working in the coffee fields as they had done for years. Their educational support, which had originally started with the primary school adjacent to the Children’s Village by hiring additional teachers and partnering with the local community, has now grown to include lunch programs and dormitories at the Oldeani Primary and Secondary Schools as well. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly from our perspective, the TCF provides free medical care not only to the children at the village, but also to the local community of Oldeani, through their health center and Africanus John, their excellent clinical officer, who we had worked with previously at FAME and were thrilled when he was hired by the TCF to lead their health care program and to subsequently develop the incredible clinic we were able to work in today.
Each morning for our mobile clinics, we meet Dr. Annie at the Mushroom Café which sits at the junction of the FAME road and the main tarmac. She is there with both Zai and Zuhura as well as some of the other FAME employees who live in town and it’s easier for them to meet us there rather than travel all the way up to FAME, only to immediately jump in a car and head back down the road. Annie buys us a breakfast of samosas, chapati, mandazi, and whatever other little bites she though we’d like. We ate on the road, first on the tarmac heading in the direction of the crater, then turning off onto the African Massage Road and our beautifully scenic path, all the while with everyone in the car bouncing up and down. We passed one vehicle which is always exciting considering the road is barely wide enough for a single vehicle at many places.
Driving through the gate onto the campus of Rift Valley Children’s Village, one experiences an immediate sense that all the world’s problems have been suddenly lifted from your shoulders and there is now hope in the world. This is a place of unquestioned and absolute safety for everyone who enters. In the past, we had always been greeted by Mama India or Peter at the administration building, though India now lives off campus in Karatu and currently is in the US for fundraising, so Peter’s happy face was there to meet us before we could even get out of the car. After introductions, we all made our way to their new health center adjacent to the village and primary school, at which point Africanus gave everyone a quick introduction to RVCV while I settled down in his office that he generously gives me for every visit so I can sit and work in between the others coming to staff their patients with me. Each of the three teams has their own examination room, including a pediatric room with happily painted walls that we put Leah in as she would be seeing the bulk of the pediatric cases, or alternatively, she would be seeing as few adults as humanly possible.
The support at the clinic is amazing as there is a separate room for triage and vital signs and the charts are separated into adult and pediatric piles. After the patients are seen, they step outside to a window where they are given their medications if they were prescribed any, and if they need to see our social worker for any reason, they will do so. It was a gorgeous day, so patients were sitting on benches and chairs on the grass in the open air in front of the clinic, waiting to be seen, or waiting for rides home on one of the many boda bodas waiting outside or in one of the staff cars that are always shuttling back and forth to Oldeani and Karatu.
Our lunch is perhaps one of the best meals we’re served during our time in Tanzania, save for the occasional dinners we have out at the lodges or at the Galleria, as it’s made by two chefs that do all the cooking for the volunteer and Western staff at the Village. Our interpreters, other than Zai, who is a vegetarian, ate separately with the Tanzanian TCF staff, which I had initially been taken aback by, but turned out to be their preference to eat more familiar food rather than what we were eating. Ironically, though, todays lunch was rice and beans, guacamole, chapati and fruit, a more typical Tanzanian meal one would have a very hard time finding. Regardless, it was incredibly delicious and very much appreciated by the entire team.
In the end, we had seen 33 patients for the day which was a good number and very satisfying. We’d be coming back tomorrow for another pleasant day here and more great patients as Africanus does such a good job with his triaging beforehand. We left from RVCV at an excellent time as we had planned to visit Teddy before heading home. Additionally, as we were heading out of town with people walking everywhere, we had realized that it was Maasai Market Day, which is twice a month, and had decided that if we had time, we’d stop there as well. The Maasai Market in Karatu, which occurs twice a month, on the 7th and the 25th, is one of the largest in the region, and is a place where everyone local does their shopping. You can buy livestock, food, clothing, housewares, hemp rope, baskets, or pretty much anything one could possibly think of wanting. As we pulled into the huge open field where the market takes place, it was dusty and hectic with bijajis, boda bodas, trucks and safari vehicles coming and going. And then there were the pedestrians. I stayed in Turtle while everyone else got out to wander for a bit. Most of the clothing for sale is what is shipped over from the US in huge bales that are 4x4x6 feet and tightly bound until they’re put on the ground, usually on a large tarp, and the bindings are cut with all the clothes falling into a huge pile. If one is lucky, you can find a T-shirt from the loosing Superbowl football team, though searching for one would be like searching for a needle in a haystack, literally.
Our next stop was to Teddy’s home to get fitted for clothing (not me, of course, as I have long ago found that I don’t like the feel of Kitenge). Teddy has been making clothes for my neurology team for the last several years and I have watched her move from a small shop in a rental building, to a small shop in her home, and now to a dedicated shop that she has built outside her home where she works on the clothing and also sells groceries to the neighborhood as so many others do here as well. There are small dukas on virtually every street corner here selling just about everything anyone can imagine selling. We finished up with Teddy and headed home for a quiet evening and readied ourselves for another ride on the African Massage Road tomorrow.