The Road to Lundazi

As part of my “Self induction” I’ve decided to hold semi structured interviews (A euphemism for not bothering to prepare properly) with all of the members of the Alliance that I’m working with, in order to familiarise myself with what they do, what their issues are and how ZAAA can help them. Of the 10 members 7 are in Lusaka and 2 in the Copperbelt (6 hrs away on the bus), all pretty straightforward but Thandizani are miles away, my last stop. Before I get into the trip maybe I should give some background to what I’m up to.
The Zambia AIDS advocacy Alliance is an consortium of 10 NGOs who all have a common advocacy platform; “To mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on women” .The full mission also includes youths(Boys & girls) and children, which only leaves out men, I’m trying to get them to focus their target audience a bit but actually they want to include the elderly now as well, on a budget of £20k I’m not sure how this is going to be achieved. Their primary objective is to “Reduce the burden of care on women” particularly those who are Home Based Carers .
The National Health Service is screwed, it has the budget of a medium sized PCT in the UK and a similar amount of Doctors. This means there’s one doctor for every 18,000 people, in the UK there’s one GP for every 1,800 people, let alone hospital doctors. Therefore, when the AIDs epidemic hit the hospitals simply couldn’t cope. As a result many communities formed volunteer led Home Based Care operations, initially driven by the church. At the start their role was to enable people to die in dignity at home with family and friends but with the arrival of cheap ART they are much more focused on supporting the clients to adhere to their ART regime and prepare them for getting back to a semblance of normal life. The women who do this are “Angels”, they don’t get paid, they often have AIDS themselves, they walk great distances to see patients often in appalling conditions without even an umbrella, operate with little or no equipment or training and to top things off are generally stigmatised by the local community who don’t understand and are scared if HIV/AIDS.
The Zambian culture is such that women do the caring and men are the bread winners, so the burden of this care lies primarily with women. Our primary “ASK” (Advocacy speak) is to get more men involved in Care Giving. This, clearly, increases the number of Care Givers, reduces some of the issues surrounding women to men care giving and has the effect of sensitising men to some of the country’s gender inequalities.
So, back to the trip. The members of ZAAA are a diverse bunch comprising of large national advocacy organisations as well as some small community led Home Based Care organisations, in total we represent over 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and over 2,000 care workers. Thandizani are in the Eastern province and I’m told it’s a nightmare to get there, mainly because of the Chipata to Lundazi rd but more of that later.
It’s 7.30am Monday morning and I’m sat on the 8am bus waiting to leave for Chipata, 5 hrs later at 12.30p we decide to leave. In Zambia the buses only leave when they are full. 8hrs later I arrive in Chipata and walk round to Amanda & Anna’s, local VSOs who are putting me up. I go out for dinner with Amanda who is the current chair of the volunteer committee, from whom I’m taking over, to chat about the role and the issues I’ll face. I’ve somehow managed to become chair by default in what seems like a wholly undemocratic process.
The next day I’m supposed to be picked up at 10am but kick my heels until 2.30pm waiting for Maurice & George ( VSO programme managers who are giving me a lift)nonplussed by the fact that we’re already 4.30hrs late they decide we should go for lunch at the local Indian restaurant, we leave at 3.30pm. The first half of the Chipata to Lundazi rd has had the tarmac ripped up and is now a graded dirt rd. I was unimpressed but the guys were hooting and a hollering about just how much of an improvement it was and getting excited about the fact that they could go at 70kph. As we got half way I began to see what they meant, we hit tarmac. This is like the rd to Basra with the bombed out vehicles removed, I’ve been less shaken up at Alton Towers. In fact it’s so bad that we spend most of the second half o the journey driving by the side of the rd because it’s better than the road?!? It’s only 100miles long and it takes nearly 4 hrs in a Toyota Hilux 4x4 going at pace. A colleague who lives here went by car (2wd) and it took 8hrs.
I’m staying at John & Betty’s tonight (he’s welsh she’s Spanish) a couple we met during our in country induction, they’re good company and great fun. In a fit of unexpected generosity Maurice buys us dinner at the Castle. Which actually is a castle built by a lunatic welsh colonel god knows when, it’s sort of Gaudiesque and I think yer man Charlie would describe it as a carbuncle.
We meet Thandizani the next day, an excellent NGO who offer a pretty comprehensive HIV/AIDS service to the region, in many instances better than the health service. We have a good meeting and I get to visit their Health Clinic which is as good as anything I’ve seen in Zambia, including private hospitals. Maurice & George keep me waiting for an hour and a half after saying they were just off for 10mins.It’s getting too much, so when we get back to Chipata I give them some GIFT feedback but I suspect it’s gone over their heads based on the response, which went along the lines of telling me not to be so English. The next day the bus leaves dead on time, 6am and I’m back in Lusaka by 1pm as Dave would say I must have stored up some good Karma somewhere.