Day 1 in the Pare Diocese - Rebecca

NOTE: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) is split into 20 dioceses. Our group visited the Pare Diocese, east of Arusha. We all stayed in the Elephant Motel at night, and we split up into different groups when we visited the different parishes during the day. Rebecca, Tori, and Andrew went in one direction with some supervisors while Louisa and Mai went in another (with other supervisors.)

This is written by Rebecca about our first day visiting the parishes.

On Thursday, we had the opportunity to visit the Makanya community. We met with paster Godson and some of his parish members to learn what they are doing to fight malaria. John Fulli along with Andrew, Tori, Dave and I (Rebecca) started our journey in Arusha and travel close to four hours to the Elephant Motel in Same and after quickly dropping off our bags we were on our way again. After a quick drive we arrived in the Makanya community. We were greeted by a crowd full of children who were excited to see the Mazungus and wanted to have there pictures taken. After settling in the church we saw two skits. 

The first skit was done by the youth group; anyone age 18 to 35 and not married is consider youth here. They presented us with a skit that they give to other community members and other parishes about malaria. Through the skit the group is able to teach people how to use bed nets, superstitions behind bed nets use, highlighted the benefits of using them, showed proper and improper uses and where you can go to get them. The second skit was done by they sunday school class. The children showed what the signs and symptoms of malaria are and what to do about it. They also sang a song about how malaria is bad.

After the skits the assistant paster of the parish gave us a presentation on the work that is being done in the community of Makanya. I want to just high light a few of the things he said. 

There are about 9000 community members and about 210 adults 110 children in him parish, before LMI work was implemented 20% of people used bed nets and now it is up to 98%, before malaria work there were 10+ deaths in a year and last year there were 3 deaths and so far this year none! Women and children are 2/3 of there population and they are the most at risk. Closest clinic is 1.7 miles but there is a dispensary close by where they can get malaria treatment. 

We also had the opportunity to visit the dispensary and we met with the nurse in charge. She had some incredible things to share with us. She said that since the malaria project was implemented all pregnant women have come for their malaria immunizations, not only that but they have come back for both doses. She also said that there has been a decline in the number of women with anemia which is a sign that less people are getting malaria. She said that all of these things are because of the awareness that the LMI project had brought. She said that malaria was the number one thing people came to the clinic for and now it is number three. I am was encouraged by her passion and perseverance. You could tell by the way her face lit up when she talked about the LMI projects and how they were impacting the people of her community. 

It is absolutely beautiful here, mountains on every side of you and so many different kinds of trees (I LOVE the trees)!!  We even saw monkeys running across the road yesterday! The people we have met have been so welcoming and all have told us that they want us to come back and live here. The food is great and there is a lot of it! I feel so blessed to be there and excited to come home and share the stories of the people we have met.