A month into our stay in Zambia and although we feel like we’ve been pretty busy, it’s hard to say what we’ve been doing.
Our grant proposal teaching went pretty well (we think), and we got a grant application in last Friday to the President’s Fund for AIDs relief, so fingers crossed!
Learning how the the charity sector works has been a steep learning curve. Here’s a little summary of our experiences and what we’ve learnt:
Charity work in Africa hasn’t been very successful. People are still poor, often hungry and disease is rife. Charitable organisations of all descriptions (wherever you are) have a major problem. That problem, be it disease, homelessness or drug abuse is a very difficult, complex problem. If it was an easy problem – somebody would have fixed it already. It’s often a very expensive problem – otherwise somebody would have paid to have it fixed already.
Healthcare is expensive and complicated – just ask Andrew Lansley.
Addressing Africa’s healthcare problems is ridiculously complicated – plus the country (by international standards) is skint. The majority of the population are subsistence farmers and pay nearly no tax. I don’t really blame the government for not being able to supply good quality healthcare when they don’t have any income. Except that in fact I do blame them. They have had some tax income and plenty of international donations – and half of it disappears in corruption/waste.
In step, the charities. NGO’s, FBO’s NFP’s, call them what you like. They have spent the past decades seeing their money stolen by corrupt politicians and wasted by well-meaning but sometimes clueless charity workers. They are fed up with not seeing results from their money and have decided on a change of approach. They now want professionally written proposals, audited accounts with detailed plans regarding how their money will be spent. They want guarantees of results and they want evidence of those results.
This is in a back drop of Africa – the continent that makes things up as it goes a long.
All these things are probably a good idea – but it does create a lot of work. As a result half of the locally-based charities no longer exist – but at least they are not wasting money......
Making the charity-sector a bit more professional and a bit more accountable is probably a good thing. However, it has raised questions of our own work. We, together with On Call Africa are being trusted to spend the hard earned cash of our friends and family. It’s quite a responsibility.
Whilst we have been frustrated at several weeks of not getting seeing patients or doing any hands-on work, we have been able to use the time to plan a little better the On Call Africa clinic structures and how we can make the impact we have on the communities last as long as possible. Our plan isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good – now we just need to see if it works.....
Matty enjoyed a brief trip home for an interview in the UK this week. It was bit whistle-stop but she returned with cream eggs and pesto – so I think it was worth it. I entertained myself with a few days at Monze Mission Hospital. The hospital was a step up from what we found in Gulu, but only a small step, and a timely reminder of how bad healthcare is for the majority of people here.
We’ve also invested in a car, partly to make getting around a lot easier and a little less scary, but also so we can hopefully get started on clinic’s whilst On Call Africa’s car is still being fixed in the garage. Next week we move down to Livingstone, ready to start work full-time for On Call Africa.
For those of you outside of the catchment area of the Coventry Evening Telegraph – you might not know – but I’m now a local celebrity! : http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2012/02/14/former-coventry-schoolboy-returns-to-africa-on-medical-mercy-mission-to-help-poor-92746-30324428/
