NOT A SUBURB
After 24 hours of travel, your 6 Mountain
Sky travelers arrived in Luanda, Angola on the evening of
October 11, ate dinner, slept a good night and awoke to breakfast
at 7 and departure at 7:30 am for Bom Jesus. We’d been told
that Bom Jesus is a town of 10,000 outside Luanda. I was
thinking suburb. But that’s not the picture. The
road to Bom Jesus took us past a brand spanking new high rise apartment
community outside Luanda that’s mostly vacant now. It was
built by the Chinese, who are heavily invested in
Angola. These might properly be called suburbs, but the
apartments are too expensive for most people to afford and it is a long,
slow drive to the city. So they stand vacant. A
ghost city, they call it.
Bom Jesus is not a suburb. It is a region of scattered
neighborhoods, loosely clustered around a few small convenience
shops. It sits on a hillside overlooking the Kwanza River,
source of the fertile soil deposited in periodic floods, plentiful fish,
sand and limestone for a Chinese cement factory, and water for Coca
Cola, a water bottling plant, and a brewery. The crumbling
remains of a colonial sugar processing plant are still visible.
The River and its marshes are also the breeding ground
for mosquitoes that spread Malaria, and it is the source of
water born diseases. River of life. River of
death.
More substantial homes in Bom Jesus are made of cement block and
corrugated tin, swept neat with clean laundry hung to
dry. Truly poor families live in homes made of mud or old
sugar cane bags stretched on stick frames. And up above the
city are a very few very wealthy homes behind security gates.
FIGHTING MALARIA: PREVENTABLE, TREATABLE AND BEATABLE!
Malaria is the first cause of death in Bom Jesus. And it is
PREVENTABLE; TREATABLE; AND BEATABLE. Our
mission: to help eradicate Malaria as a killer in Bom Jesus.
Before we ever arrived, Africare had trained young adults from the United Methodist Church as health workers, called Activists. They
learned about Malaria: how it is carried, how it can be
prevented, how its symptoms develop over time, how people can be
vaccinated, or treated if they contract the disease. They
learned how to register neighbors to receive anti-Malaria bed nets to
protect family members from mosquitoes while they
sleep. They learned how to teach people to protect
themselves. On October 12 at the kick-off ceremony for the
Imagine No Malaria bed net distribution in Bom Jesus, we presented
certificates to the Activists who had completed their
training. And we went out into neighborhoods with them to
deliver bed nets to families who had registered earlier. It’s
not as easy as handing someone a net. Ahead of time
the Activists went door to door to record how many
people live in each house; how many children and their ages; how many
beds in the house. On October 11 we went back to the families
that were registered and presented their bed nets, ripping open the
bags they came in, taking them out and reminding the family that they
need to air a day before you hang them over the bed. This is
to let the pesticide that will kill mosquitoes dissipate
before use. On October 12 we returned to help families hang
the nets they received the day before.
Many of these families have used bed nets before and know just how to do
it. But nets wear out and need to be replaced. We
were pretty uncomfortable going into the bedrooms of people we had
never met. Yet people were very gracious in opening their
homes and working together to hang the nets.
IT’S ALL ABOUT PARTNERSHIP
Imagine No Malaria depends upon life-giving partnerships. It
took four years to put the partnerships together that led to this net
distribution.
UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) worked with the West Angola
Annual Conference to create and train a Conference Health Board to
oversee net distribution in Bom Jesus, but also to identify other urgent
health needs in Angola, like hypertension, HIV/AIDS and intestinal
worms.
Working together the Angolan Health Ministry and The United Methodist
Church identified Bom Jesus as a town with unusually high rates of
Malaria and a United Methodist Church, the perfect recipe for
collaboration. And the government Health Ministry will
supply the medicines to treat Malaria when it does
occur.
We met three staff of Africare, the NGO (Non-governmental Organization)
that procured the nets and trained the health worker Activists from Bom Jesus who register and educate families, distribute nets and monitor their proper use.
Rocky Mountain Conference funds, raised to honor Bishop Warner and
Minnie Brown, paid for the nets and the cost of training and deploying
the volunteer Activists. Chevron Oil has committed to tracking health statistics as the project unfolds.
IT’S ALL ABOUT CAPACITY BUILDING
Malaria is just one health challenge in a nation with many challenges
and limited capacity to address them. As we tackle the
immediate challenge of Malaria, the partners in this work are also
focused on building the health care capacity of Angola. So,
health care Activists learn about
Malaria. But they can also encourage people with other
ailments to seek care at the government-run clinic in Bom Jesus.
And, part of the Imagine No Malaria campaign is for the church to open a
clinic to complement the work of the government clinic, which reports
that it can serve only about 20% of the need at present.
And once health care Activists have experience working
in neighborhoods to combat Malaria, it isn't difficult to turn
their attention to other critical health issues.
OCTOBER 13.
Margaret Novak and I went with Rita, an interpreter, to one especially
impoverished neighborhood near the river. When we arrived, it
seemed like the whole neighborhood was gathered under a giant, noble
baobab tree at the edge of town. The health care Activists were
under the tree registering families to receive mosquito bed
nets. They were overwhelmed with people. They
struggled to write down the names of the people and their
needs. The people seemed especially desperate. One
woman came with a leg injury from a palm tree falling on
her. Orange tips on the ends of hair of some of the children
gave notice that malnutrition stalked this
neighborhood. Mosquito nets couldn’t help those
problems. But care and attention and prayer didn’t
hurt.
AquaTap: Solar water purification
Iliff intern Brenda Harter searched the internet for articles about
Malaria and Bom Jesus and the United Methodist Church in Angola before
our trip. I was especially interested in an article about a
demonstration solar water purification project in Bom
Jesus. The system was developed by two guys in Vancouver,
British Columbia. In a shipping container they build a solar
powered water filtration system that provides water for 1,000
people. The Angolan government is testing it in Bom Jesus for
possible use in other communities without power. The town
Administrator took us to see it. The local man who maintains
it opened it up and proudly showed us how it works. At the
end he offered us cups to drink the clean, healthy
water. What a great project!
Bishop’s Malaria Log
September 5. County Health Agent prescribes Atovaquone-Proguanil to prevent Malaria.
Begin 2 days before travel take one tablet by mouth each day during stay and for seven days after leaving area
October 9 2 pm Denver – Pill #1
October 10 Uncertain time, en route Denver to Washington D.C – Pill #2
October 11 9 pm Luanda – Pill #3
October 12 Too tired to remember Pill #4
October 13 7 am
Luanda First
mosquito bite on left forearm.
Pill #4
10
pm
Luanda Pill
#5
October 14 10 pm
Luanda Pill
#6
Second
mosquito bite on left forearm and right ear
October 15 7 am
Luanda Mosquito
bite on right forearm
Notes from Robin Ball
Hope – a necessity for mankind. Is there hope for
Angola? After decades of colonialism, decades of war,
exploitation of resources, emigration of intellectuals?
The young adults I have spoken to and watched these past 3 days believe
there is. George came back from Africa University in Zimbabwe
to lead his local church into the community to make disciples of Jesus
Christ. His degree is in theology with a minor in
humanities. He wants to get his master’s in the Peace and
International government program. He believes the church
should be a leader in promoting peace and service.
Addison is a young pastor appointed to a small rural
congregation. He believes that working together can build a
good place for all.
And the many “activists” or volunteers that are becoming community
health workers to save lives through education, mosquito net
distribution and follow up training.
Notes from Mike Dent
I’m thankful to be part of this unique visit to experience first hand to
experience the church’s good work in global health care and look
forward to sharing photos, stories and experiences when I get
back.
Notes from Margaret Novak
Aside from the mission we engaged in, I was impressed with the water
program we visited, where a shipping container was converted into a
water purification system designed by a team in Vancouver, B.C.
I’ve learned how important it is for the church to work in partnerships
in order to do the most good. The partnerships are strong
with Africare’s holistic work in global health was
exciting. This is a non-church, non-governmental organization
doing excellent work and also with the local municipal administration
in Bom Jesus.
Striking to see the disconnect between the affluent congregations of
Luanda and the needs of the very poor in surrounding
areas. Just like home.
I am interested in the solar water purification process. Can someone please contacts me at 256-642-1759 in the USA. Thanks, Ray Crump
ReplyDeleteso does anyone know a good company for getting the iron work gates? like the security gates vancouver? i want one of those
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