Thanksgiving originally began with Michaelmas, at the end
of September. In fact, for the Celts, the entire year began with Michaelmas.
Punctuated by the quarterly pagan festivals of yule, easter, and midsummer, the
Druidic year finally wound up with a thanksgiving for the harvest. Along with
thanksgiving, the end of the Celtic year was traditionally a time for the
settling of debts, the renewing of employment, and, apocryphally, the sacking
of the manager if they had lost to Rangers.
American Thanksgiving, then, as a celebration, had its
roots in the September Celtic harvest festival. The Pilgrim survivors of the
Mayflower in 1621, however, had to wait until the end of November for there to
be enough provender on the table, and enough turkeys stupid enough to wonder
what the business end of a blunderbuss smelt like.
Each year thereafter, the Pilgrims gave thanks.
And so it was that the custom grew up in the New World,
that on a Thursday in late November, entire extended families of turkeys would
gather together in WalMart, having been persuaded that they would thereby be
first in line for Black Friday Christmas bargains. (Thursdays have
since been generally considered by turkeys as unlucky; as have sage,
cranberries, baco-foil, and ovens.)
"I will not wear my scarlet coat ..."
The reason for this educational and historically
insightful introduction is that a recent Thursday was indeed, for many,
Thanksgiving Day, and I was invited to my first ever Thanksgiving dinner. The
setting was the Staff House at Berega Mission Hospital, in rural Morogoro, Tanzania.
Staff House verandah
Several of the surrounding houses are home to some
wonderful American ‘Hands4Africa’ volunteers, who teach at the local village school.
(The selfless determination and drive of Brad Logan, Ruth Mgego, and H4A
supporters, have, in five short years, developed the school exponentially. From
a hut in which the legendary Mama Liz taught six sparky kids, it has become a
set of inspiringly embellished classes catering for more than 130 eager and
successful local village pupils. What joy to see the next generation of
Tanzanians being disabused of a heritage of poverty and ignorance.)
Thanksgiving Day itself, coincidentally, was the last day
of the school year, and so Teachers Lisa, Marianne, Bette and Chris were ready
and eager for a night of shared festivity. Dr. Kristien, Dr. Al and his wife
Engineer Emma made up the rest of the gang, along with my good self, (Loafer
Lozza). The fayre was classic Berega: stone-ground bread, (ie bread made from
ground stones); chopped tomato and onion with amoebic dressing; micro-omelette
from local pygmy chickens; goats-nest soup; marsh cactus wedges; and of course
the traditional 'brown-crunch' - a sort of vegetarian version of dung beetle.
We ate. We drank a little beer. We put the world to
rights. We killed a few cockroaches. (Although somewhat pointlessly. Others
sprang into the breach to take their place, climbing over injured comrades to
sell their lives dearly.) And then we sang. Lisa has a heavenly voice somewhere
between Joni Mitchell and Lady Gaga. She said that my voice was somewhere
between Elvis and Pavarotti, but it turns out she meant geographically,
reminding her of a traumatic bird-watching experience in The Azores.
One telling moment was when each of us had to say
something we were especially grateful for in the last year. Having had a new
granddaughter in May, my special thanks was for offspring. Thinking back, it strikes
me now that the thanksgiving contribution of each of the others was just a
sentence or two, so perhaps I shouldn't have shown quite so many photos of my
youngest granddaughter, Layla Miriam.
("This is Layla lying on a mat. Here she is lying on
a different mat. This one is of her looking quizzical at the mat change. She's
very intelligent, you know. She can tell the difference between presbyopia and
hyperopia, often taking the glasses from my face when I'm not reading. Here's
another one of her not on any mat at all ... " etc)
Layla Miriam not on a mat
At about midnight, Kristien went off to check the
hospital, and so ended a lovely first Thanksgiving. A quick cull of
mini-predators, a sluice of the torso with a moist banana leaf, and I was
deeply asleep.
Somewhere before dawn I was woken by what at first seemed
like singing, coming from the distance and getting louder and louder. As it
passed nearer the house I could hear that it was wailing: a heart-rending,
plaintive, inconsolable wailing, that I knew meant death. I got up, but what
could I do, so I went back to a troubled sleep.
Next morning, Kristien was up before seven, despite her
nocturnal tribulations. She told me that when she arrived at the hospital, she
found them unsuccessfully trying to resuscitate a four-year-old boy, who was
dying of cholera. His brother was also badly dehydrated, and the father less
so, but both still very ill, pooing and vomiting uncontrollably. The wailing,
then, was for the death of the young lad? No, said Kristien, it was for a
pregnant woman at full term, who died at the hospital gates from a ruptured
uterus. Maybe fear of the rain kept her too long at home, or maybe it was fear
of upsetting the traditional birth attendant, or fear of the cost of hospital,
or fear of dying there. Most likely a combination of fears, some well-founded.
So a death of a mother, and of her baby, and a further
child death, all in a day? Not only, said Kristien. Yet another baby died in
the premature baby room, and yet another again was on the brink when she went
to bed.
I said poignant goodbyes and set off for Dar Es Salaam
without knowing what happened to the father and son. This is a video of what the
terrain looked like along the way, and, between poverty and lack of
infrastructure, you can see why death is so desperately common:
Kristien will have been in the hospital for the best part
of a year when she leaves before Christmas: home to Belgium, and family, and
friends, and winter, and jumpers, and comfort, and showers, and toilets, and
food; and chocolate; and sprouts; and safe refuge from cockroaches, cholera,
and unending tragedy. An amazing woman. Interestingly, when I asked her
how she had coped with so much, it was thanksgiving in a way that kept her
sanity. Ranting about the fickleness of Fate leads to anger; and anger erodes.
It's knowing that sometimes you make a difference that keeps you going.
Sometimes, thankfully; but only sometimes.
But in my Thanksgiving week at Berega, there was indeed
something important to be thankful for. The EMBRACE / Tushikamane project was
officially launched, and the Tushikamane team took the helm.
Team Tushikamane
Chairman is Rev. Isaac Mgego, who is also Director of the
hospital. He is a man of God, and a man of the people, having been the
first person in his village to go beyond primary education. He paid for it
himself by making and selling charcoal, and eventually finished his education
with an MBA. His will visit the project villages weekly, with the Project
Director, Wilbard Mrase. His role will be to help solve high-level issues, and
to make bridges to other initiatives and organisations working to the same end.
Wilbard Mrase is the powerhouse who will teach, drive,
direct, fix, make things happen - and report back monthly the progress and
problems. His day job is to lead the Berega School of Nursing, and his passion
is reduction of maternal death in the community.
Rev. Dr. Alex Gongwe is a charismatic medic living within and serving the
Tunguli and Msamvu communities. Here he is, role-playing with Facilitators
Simon and Esther, showing how not to persuade villagers to improve their
lot:
He is the Project Supervisor, and is the direct boss of
the front-line workers. His role is to equip them with the skills, materials
and understanding they will need for each micro-stage of the journey; to
listen; to trouble-shoot; to fix things; to expect appropriate activity; and to
help turn activity into achievement ... and measurement of achievement. He will
also look for synergies and harmonies, not just between the Facilitators, but
also between Tushikamane and other village-level initiatives.
The Facilitators are Esther Paul, Noadia Mganga, and her
assistant, Simon Jackson. They will be the ones going into the hamlets, meeting
the young women, the pregnant women, the mothers, and the female influencers.
They will begin a chain of events whereby they listen to the women’s voice, and
they muster their collective yearning for things to be different. The vital
ingredient of the process is that the village women themselves probe what might
be the roots of the staggering death rates of mothers and children. The village
women themselves then prioritise which three or four of these they would like, with
the help of the men, to tackle. The Tushikamane team will help them align to
any useful support, initiatives and organisations.
But even with a good idea such as community-participation-with-the-aim-of-reducing-death,
you can’t just pitch up and get on with it. In Africa especially, you need
buy-in at every level, and you need the imprimatur of the powers-that-be. And
so it was that Wilbard and Isaac called an introductory meeting of the entire
superstructure of the Tunguli and Msamvu villages.
Quite incredibly, no fewer than thirty-seven head-men,
leading women, teachers, elders, priests, imams, health workers, NGO workers,
and the like, gathered for what was in effect the local launch of Tushikamane.
Oh yes, and me. A three-hour discussion in Swahili ensued, some of which I did
not follow. (Specifically, the bit after "Good morning Ladies and
Gentlemen ...") It worked. The response of the (mainly male) community leaders
was not just overwhelming support, (deeply encouraging though that was), it was
that they really understood where we were coming from. One by one, they got up
to say so. Change had to come from within. Sustainable change to maternal
mortality had to start with mothers.
They got it.
Tunguli & Msamvu village leaders with the Tushikamane team
Tanzania & Tunguli
As I began to write this from a comfortable hotel in Dar
Es Salaam, the week in Berega seemed almost a little unreal. Just 350 kilometers
away, death is a frequent visitor to every village, and yet here, I had just
had a door-knock from the hotel anti-pest service, offering to spray my
curtains with anti-mosquito. (I asked if they could spray the door with
anti-knock, but they ran out.) Soon, I would be at home with a glass of vino in one
hand, and metaphor in the other, putting the final touches to a blog, from the
comfort of Earlsdon.
Like the Pilgrim Fathers, I feel that I have so much to
be thankful for. Maybe this Christmas, as you peel the baco-foil from the
unlucky bird, you might want to give a thankful thought for how far much of the
world has come since those pioneers … and a wistful one for how far much of it
still has to go.
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