I'm here!

It's the end of my first work week in Tanzania and I have to keep reminding myself that I've made it. It's been a blur so far, mostly because I got right to work due to the schedule of one of the NGOs whose project I was visiting.

I arrived in Arusha Tuesday night and left Wednesday morning for Singida, a rural region with the main town about a five-hour drive south-west of Arusha. Most people there depend on farming for a livelihood, although it sounds like it's mostly to feed their families: I was told a few times that "My husband doesn't have a job, he's a farmer."

It was a quick re-introduction to how differently people live than the majority of Canadians. One woman close to my age has six children and primary school education. When I told her we were about the same age, she laughed like I was making a hilarious joke. Once I started interviewing, I realized there was more than a Swahili-English language barrier: the words and concepts used in international development have very little meaning to someone with almost no education who likely hasn't travelled outside her region.

I visited several sites for the World Vision Canada project in Singida, which ended at the end of March (the staff have been kept on for a few months to wrap it up). Unsurprisingly, the people I spoke to want it to continue for at least another two years. While the doctors I interviewed have relatively pricey requests like a new operating theatre, other health workers hope for more simple items. One nurse said she'd really like a light for the exam room so they can insert IUDs (a form of long-term birth control) there rather than trying to get into the district's only operating theatre. A community health worker said he'd like some rain gear or even an umbrella because when he visits families during the rainy season, his materials get soaked.

The first visit has me energized and raring to go to the next location. More photos to come next week.

How Canada helps

There's a wide array of development work that Canadian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are doing around the world. They've done it, in some cases, for decades, and will keep doing it no matter what happens to the funding from the Canadian government. 

But it's sometimes hard to conceive of what that work might entail. If you look through the project browser on the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development's website, you'll see that maternal, newborn and child health projects can include anything from helping build clinics or train community health workers to teaching people about healthy foods and how to get them. From what I've seen and heard in interviewing NGO spokespeople over the years, it's also shifted a bit - in 2010/2011, a lot of people were talking up micronutrients and vaccinations to help improve children's health. Now they're talking a lot more about birth registration and other data collection.

All the problems are multi-layered and lead seamlessly to all kinds of other challenges in a way that you can't really have a focused conversation about any one solution because it inevitably segues into something separate but related - like how if a child isn't registered when she's born, how do we know whether she survives to age five? And how do we know whether her country is hitting its targets for decreasing the number of children under five dying?

When she's older, if she doesn't have a birth certificate, there may be a law against child marriage in her country, but without one she can't prove she's too young. If she's married as a young teen and impregnated - very possibly because she's been raped - she's more likely to have complications because her body isn't developed enough to handle the pregnancy. And more likely to have a child with health problems.

Last year, the Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health gave out bags with small samples and leaflets to MPs to explain what kind of work its members are doing through Canada's funding. Some of those samples are in the photo above.

The gloves, soap and plastic sheeting are examples of what you might find in a clean birth kit (this one came from World Vision Canada). They cost less than 50 cents.

The two little red pills, provided by the Micronutrient Initiative, cost four cents to make and are aimed at helping the 190 million children who are vitamin A deficient.

The little foil package provided by SickKids' Centre for Global Child Health contains sprinkles, which are a blend of micronutrients.

The green and red string of beads is from Save the Children and helps community health workers count the number of breaths a child takes in a minute. If he hits the red beads, then the worker knows the child has pneumonia and needs treatment, according to the information provided with the beads.

These are all pretty simple things. There are so many more layers - including education, empowering women and broad health policy - but for pulling a life-saving solution out of a bag, those look pretty good.