sevistravel: malaria

today, sunday, a boy came up to the farm and asked me if I had time to come with him. He wanted to show me a house which he built some weeks ago. He has learned to be a builder (and was sponsored for this education by the org. I am working for). When we reached the house I realized that I know the woman living there! She was really happy to see me, and showed me the house. It has 3 small (really small) rooms…one for the boys, one for the girls and one for the woman. Then I asked her how many people are living there…she replied 14 – and I could not believe it. The children living there are all orphans (I guess mostly HIV orphans). Some of them I knew from `our` school.

So all children came to greet me, and one boy I know was sick. It turned out that he was very sick, and they asked me if he can go to hospital…or take medicine. The people knew that it was malaria, but there was no money for treatment. So I decided that we have to get medicine for him, I told him to wait and I would come back. Why ever the boy followed us, and quite soon after I reached the nurses place he arrived as well. I bought with my own money the medication. It was 8.500 uganda schillings, equal to just a little bit more then 2 euros. As we measured his temperature we found out it was almost 41 degrees. That indicated to the nurse that he was with the disease already for a long time – and she said that probably if the treatment would not have started today the boy would have died.

Its crazy, just a little over 2 euros…between live and death. Crazy, that at home there is hardly any value…here I go to the restaurant more than 2 times, or buy four beers, or buy some tablets that can safe live!

But its really a problem if I buy it yourself, because as I said this woman has 14 children…if they now always come to me when they are sick I cant handle it, and as well they would tell other people…and many, many people would approach me. So when I brought back the boy on the motorbike (he had not enough power to walk home again) I told his mother a different story how he got the medicine…and I hope they will not start to always approach me when there is need of something (just because I cant solve all the problems).

Millions of people die every year of malaria – which makes the anopheles mosquito the most dangerous animal in the world (forget about the shark). You get malaria from a mosquito bite, and the mosquito transports malaria if it has bitten an infected person before…so it’s a vicious circle (ein wort fuer dich mama!!!).

So this is what happened on my Sunday…and I wonder how it would have been if that boy did not come to show me the house he built some weeks ago…if isiah would still be in school in the following term…

And when speaking about the following term…I have a return ticket to Austria on the 7^th of February, but I will change it, and stay in uganda for some more months! Visitors are welcome here… but it will take more time until I am back!

Hope you are all doing well!! See you

…and a few pictures...really just a few because the internet is so weak!