| Editor’s
Note: Felicitas Samtleben-Spleiss is a Lay Marianist Affiliate who
has served as a nurse and translator in
Iraq, Dafur, Kenya, Tanzania (leper colony) and now in troubled Kinshasa
in the Congo. She had to be accompanied by a guard to visit Maison Chaminade,
where there is a Marianist Community. Fr. Bert Buby shared this update
from Felicitas:
Hello, friends! Greetings from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. You may wonder: From East Africa to West Africa, and then where else? Well, right now I am working with a German NGO – the same I was with in Sudan, etc. – here in Kinshasa. With our Mobile Clinic we offer medical basic treatment in very poor areas of the Congolese capital. We are in the middle of the rainy season. This morning, when we went out to a slum area near the international airport, torrents of rain changed the streets into knee-deep rivers. When we arrived – it was a school and church (evangelical) compound – there were only a few school children running around, soaking wet. Nobody else. On other days, we (two doctors and two nurses, one translator) treat up to 180 and more patients a day. You may have heard in the news about the recent elections, the result was published the other night. Everybody was afraid of revolts in the streets, and the German Embassy sent us SMSs with warnings where to go and which areas to avoid. This means that we are very much restricted to the house where we live – in a basement. Yet there is some luxury: we have good beds with mosquito nets, hot and cold water, a normal toilet and bath with shower, also a fridge and an electric oven. The house is owned by a high-ranked government official, it is still under construction, and around the house there are heaps of dirt, bricks, broken tiles and glass, plastic bags, etc. Guards with guns are posted around the house, and when we want to do a little walk we can only do this under the “protection” and eyes of one of these policemen. We are now in our second week, one more week to go. When we come home from our work in the poor areas we are completely exhausted due to the very high humidity, the noise around us (here people can only shout, or they speak with such a low voice that one has difficulties to understand) and the dirt, not to mention the state of so-called sanitary installations. Kinshasa is situated on the river Congo, on the other side there is
Brazzaville, Peoples Republic of Congo. There is no bridge, no way to
get there. The roads up-country are dirt and mud roads, and it is not
advisable to travel in the country. The criminality rate is high, the
political situation unstable. That means, that within the three weeks
of our stay, there is no chance for us to do any kind of sightseeing,
even not in the capital. Wherever I was with Humedica (NGO), Our doctor does the cooking which is very relaxing for her and creative, and on top of it very delicious. She is a German living in Portugal, so her dishes are a good mixture of both cooking cultures. Our coordinator is a young woman from Lebanon. Nobody envies her for her job, extremely difficult under the present conditions. We laugh a lot together, we start the day with a moment of prayer, one of our pass times after work or on our days off is shopping in the marketplaces. Our working places are in small churches, usually an open shed with corrugated iron roof. With sheets the “cubicles” for the two doctors are separated, a table, two chairs. The “pharmacy” where we give out the pills (we: a local nurse and myself) is sometimes tables, or simply our transportation boxes. The people sit on benches, are registered by a local helper, and the moment the registration starts (in the morning) they almost start fighting. Then they have to wait for hours. Our priority is women with children, sometimes mothers come with 5-6 children for consultation. Most of them need a worm cure, very often they suffer of acute malaria, or otitis media, bronchitis or pneumonia (children). We also see a lot of malnutrition among the children. Grown-ups love to complain about “haemorrhoids” whatever they mean, and in these cases we are very generous with ointment. Another frequent complaint is “heartburn and backache.” Pills help. We also know, when we give too many of the medication or in complete packages they will be sold to others. It often happens that we discover severe diseases needing deeper investigation or operation. These people have no money, which means years of suffering and eventually dying of a disease which could be treated. This makes me think of our health insurance system back home and our continuous complaints about it: we still have the possibility for treatment. In some cases Humedica pays for operations or blood tests, dentists (children), x-rays etc. For the coming Sunday we plan to visit the Marianists here in Kinshasa, Now I wish you joyful weeks in preparation for Christmas and New Year. I don’t want to send you “Season’s Greetings” right now, but greetings and best wishes to all of you from sweating Felicitas, still going strong.
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