ASSOCIAZIONE RUVUMA

«To be able to do a professional experience in Africa is a dream I have been having since 10 years. In 2008 I decided to start doing something practical to realize this dream. And then it happened! During that year I follow a course in Tropical Medicine in Torino and one year after I finally participate to my first misson in an african hospital in Benin.

Last november 2009 it has been my second african experience. Thanks to the friend and colleague Doctor Carlo Molino, a surgeon from Naples, I had the opportunity to visit for the first time the hospital in Mbweni, during the opening ceremony of the new maternity ward. There I met as well Doctor Giuseppe Travaglini, health director of the hospital and Dr. Rodrigo Rodriquez, the founder of the Ruvuma Association and who has conceived the beautiful project of Mbweni. With both of them I was from the beginning in perfect tune, I realized that we were sharing the same commitment for the achievement of the right to health.

The experience of Mbweni has been very formative, from a professional and human point of view. In particular I realized that in many areas of Africa, maternity and Pediatrics still have many gaps. In fact, when I left, after few days from my arrival in Italy I already wish to go back there to help, but above all to “teach” and train the medical staff who work in the maternity ward. Therefore in april I went back to Mbweni with many protocols and guidelines relative to the specialistic areas of Pediatrics and Neonatology defined by the World Health Organization. Together with local doctors we studied them, adapting of course to the local reality.

I also had the pleasure to place side by side, trying to convey as many notions as possible, a tanzanian colleague, Doctor Rehema, who very soon will become a pediatrician. That of Mbweni has been an experience that I will never forget and that I wish to all my colleague to be able to do it, sooner or later in my life».

Ester Galli, 23 years old «I have always wanted to make an experience in Africa. Here emotions are very different, often there are feelings which you experience and which are contradictory among them. For sure the relationships which one’s establish in this place with women, are very special. They are based mainly on a non-verbal language, since we cannot communicate in Swahili. I will never forget the day I met a young woman who was in pain and very scared since she was about to delivering her baby and in a simple way, calling me “friend” asked me to stay close to her to sleep under a tree all night, just to keep her company. Working in an African hospital is completely different from working in an Italian one. Of course ethics and expertise are the same, yet the culture is so different that does not allow a real hospitalization for patients illnesses and diseases, meaning that a woman waiting a baby cannot receive the same assistance that would get a woman living in any western country. Then often you meet some clinic situations that are serious and that in any other European country could have been avoided. They are two different worlds that meet each other, and that have a lot to teach  and learn one with the other. Relationships among colleagues and patients are true and spontaneous. You never have the feeling that they are false and you are really happy if you see that the other person is fine. Even in Italy often there are good working team where you can also develop friendship, but here is quite different. Every single thing you live during the day is truly lived, and is something that even when you finish your working day you still keep on thinking to it».

Federica Malberti, 22 years old «Since I’m here I have been living many situations from a professional and human point of view that I would never think I could experienced in Italy. What really surprised me is the strenght of these women when they are delivering a baby. And the dignity with wich, in a silent way, they suffer and deal with the strain and pain without asking for nothing. They even are surprised when you stay with them to cure and support taking the place of their husband or a relative. They call you “dada” (in Swahili means sister) and when you are about to leave they ask you to stay with them a little bit more. Words are really limited since they cannot speak English and we cannot speak Swahili, but it makes no difference, relationships are even stronger in this way. It’s very different to work in an African hospital compare to an Italian one. Because of the lack of health assistance most of these people develop serious diseases that could have been prevented. I’m very happy to have the opportunity to work in Mbweni  for so many months since some of the cultural aspects can been understood just after months of listening and observing that reality. Another thing I noticed is the different working environment from a human point of view. Here I felt immediately accepted, everybody always smile at you and ask if everything is ok. You don’t even feel the hierarchy with your boss and a doctor and a cleaner or a nurse are really on the same level. Nobody never raise the voice and everybody is always very polite and always say thanks. Something that we should learn to do it also in Italy. Yet, to understand what I’m saying one’s should try to stay here in Africa for at least few months. Africa is a difficult place to describe. Only living it, and with the willingness to really discover it with humility, you can see all the different facets».

«When I initially started collaborating with Ruvuma, I did fund raising for their hospital in Mbweni, keeping in my mind the thougth that it would just be a small drop in the ocean. I was convinced that poor people were those who didn’t have material assets, because I still didn’t realize that we are the poor, with our conscience soothed by the so named civilization, who are not capable of smiling anymore, just committed to make more wealth and unable to be happy of the simple things of life, like for instance the smile of a child.
All this lasted until I decided to go to Mbweni, where, since the beginning, I felt home. One thousand words would not be enough to describe the emotion I felt when, on the first day of my arrival in Tanzania, a child from the school got closed to me and, in silence, took my hand and smile at me, few minutes after other 10 or 20 children arrived, with the same smiling light in their eyes, that light that only children have and reach the heart of people who look at them.
That part of Africa in which I have been lucky to stay, it appeared to me different from other places of Africa I have previously been as a tourist, maybe because I didnt’ get to know deeply people who live there, in their homes, I didn’t see all ill people who everyday to to the hospital with illnesses and problems of health to me unknown.
When I got back from my first journey, I promised to myself to go back, and in fact after two months only I was already there, and then I keep on going back, everytime staying for longer amount of time.
When I’m in Italy I think often to the hospital and all the projects to improve and enlarge it, in which, by now, I feel totally involved. I think also to all the amazing people I meet evertime who work as volunteer or collaborators there and that from Italy, periodically, go there to work. I have seen them in action in the operating theatre, at day and at night, never complaining.
At this point I feel totally linked to that place and to its people, and I will never stop saying “thank you Mbweni” for all what you gave to me and keep on doing it. And also, thanks to RUVUMA, for the opportunity you gave me to carry out this beautiful experience».