A Story..

Imagine starting off feeling flushed. The fever gets worse; it doesn’t go away, you feel weak, you lose your appetite, so weak you can’t even move.

Then imagine falling unconscious, and then waking up in a hospital surrounded by other sick people and strangers and you don’t know what’s happened. You’re miles from home, and for the next two weeks you’ll not be able to see your friends or your family, you won’t be able to go to school, play on your video games or watch your favourite TV shows.

And then imagine your nearest hospital is 3 hours away from where you live and your only transport is a bicycle. Imagine this is all because of one mosquito which bit you while you were sleeping, something that could have been avoided but wasn’t because your family couldn’t afford a bed net.

This is the reality faced by millions of young people, the same age as you, across sub-Saharan Africa and many other parts of the world.

Let me tell you about a young person I met in a town called Ifakara in Tanzania. His name is Antony, a dedicated Chelsea football supporter who loves nothing more than to impersonate his hero Drogba on the pitch. Antony lives 2 hours away from the hospital and had what is diagnosed as severe malaria. One afternoon he was found unconscious having fallen ill from it. When I met him in the hospital we asked him if he has a bed net. To that he replied “no, where I live we don’t have mosquitoes.” When I heard this I was shocked and surprised, and asked him how does he think he got malaria if he lived in an area such as this. He said he didn’t know.

The Development Struggle

Photo Curtosey of Tim Brauhn www.timbrauhn.com

We know humanity has failed; has the humanitarian ‘industry’ also failed?

Today I attended Catholic Mass in Ifakara, south central Tanzania. The congregation was huge and the church was full with many at standing at the back of the hall for the entire 2 hour service. I noted how many young, enthusiastic and vibrant people attended the mass in contrast to the services I have attended at home in London. Young people made up a huge portion of the congregation; is this because of the level of community spirit that exists? The shear poverty that people are in that means church is the only hope? Or is it that most of the population don’t make it to be old enough to be considered old? Probably it is all three.

We attended mass today as a group of 10 from all different faiths – Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh and Theists; our message a simple yet complicated one. People of different faiths working together for positive social action. This could be anything from campaigning on climate change, promoting Fair Trade or doing something about the global fight on poverty. For us it is trying to achieve the Millennium Development Goals with special attention to the eradication of deaths caused due to Malaria.

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