Arusha Day 3

This morning I visited the Selian Hospice and Palliative Care Center, which is right around the corner from my hotel.  I had been encouraged to visit here, and Dr. Mark set up a visit with the staff, and I’m so glad I visited because I really wasn’t looking forward to it.  I mean, who wants to visit a hospice?

Selian Hospice has been in operation for a number of years and served about 100 patients under their palliative card until they partnered with a Denver Hospice and the Arusha Lutheran Medical Center, and grew to minister to about 5,000 patients in 2016, with a paid staff of about 18, and 300 well-trained volunteers.  Many of their patients are HIV/AIDS people, and it’s referred to as one word because the timing between contracting HIV and AIDS is so quick because of lack of preventative medicine.

USAID had been a major funder of this program, but by the end of 2016 there had been deep cuts to USAID because of changes in their funding priorities.  Tragically, with those massive cuts come deep cuts to the Selian programs and outreach, and now they are back to ministering to only several hundred end-of-life patients, and the thousands that they once supported now do not receive any support.

In recent years (as I understand the 50% of what I was being told because of the difficulty in communicating in English) is that cancer is on a big rise, and HIV/AIDS is stable or declining because of the years of education throughout Africa.  Praise God for that, but breast cancer is rampant here, and women are only able to get manual checks because the nearest mammogram machine is a 4 hour drive away in Nairobi.  I asked a couple times about that, and it seems to be true.  The hospital here doesn’t have a mammogram machine and is not able to do much radiation care, as I understand it, and chemo is expensive for those women without insurance, so they most often are not able to afford it.  Tragic stuff.  Brought tears to my eyes as I thought about this.  Wow.  Luckily Dr. Jacobson is involved in developing some medical care nearby at the Kilimanjaro area where they hope to have a mammogram machine.

A large part of what they do is train volunteers in villages to do hospice ministry/care.  Because some of the roads are almost unpassable during the Tanzanian rainy season they train volunteers during the dry season.  Many of these trained volunteers are the village/region Lutheran evangelists, so it’s pretty amazing the work that they do.

Oh, and the third picture here is of the treats they prepared for me.  Coffee was instant, and the banana is a deep fat fried green banana.  There’s only one deep fat fried green banana on the plate there; that’s because they gave me two, and I had to take a picture of it to give my stomach a break before I ate the second one.   Not my fav delicacy, and you can be sure I’m not going to bring a plate of deep fat fried green bananas to the next Zion potluck, but my mama always taught me to eat what’s on your place because there are starving children in Africa, and since I’m in Africa, and since I’ve seen so many starving children, there was no choice but to eat it.

This is a picture of a used water bottle used to keep liquid oral morphine.  Not knowing, I asked if the patient drank the whole thing, and they all had a knee slapping laugh at my expense, and said that no, they drink about a half a teaspoon.  Silly me.

This was the staff I met with.  Wonderful people who are passionate about their work.  The pastor in the middle (I had a tough time getting names…) attended Wartburg Seminary in the US for his training as a hospice chaplain, and had read one of my dad’s books, so that was pretty awesome.

I get picked up to climb Kilimanjaro tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, so this just might be my last post for a while.  Wish me luck, and keep me in your prayers, and I’ll post something as soon as I’m able.

Again, it’s such a blessing to be here and experience Africa in this way.  Amazing and awesome and humbling in so many ways.  And again, thanks to Zion for supporting this, and to the Lilly Endowment Fund for leaders who is funding this entire experience!