On the way to one of our clinics in the suburbs of Moshi we drive through a stone mason's area. People sit outside their houses at the side of the road and break stones. As far as I can see each person has their supply of stones about the size of a football and then piled all around them in neat pyramids are the results of their work; from the finest of sand piled like a sugar loaf to coarser sand then fine gravel and coarse gravel and two inch stones which we, a world away, would use for drainage. Drainage here is a totally different matter with deep, square, open concrete gullies beside every road that describe an incomprehensible volume of water startling in its absence. Building of these gullies is also done by hand with stone and mortar, each stone cut to fit and then plastered.


I have noticed that they do concrete beautifully here. Floors especially have a very fine finish though may not be exactly level. As I stroll the gentle slope between kitchen and bathroom I am happily reminded of home. Charlie and I built a house together and got the floor dead level thinking that that was how a floor should be but every other house I have lived in over the last 35 years has had a sloping floor.


Further out in the country, glimpsed as we hurtle by on our way to one of the village clinics, I've seen small scale concrete block making going on seemingly in people's front yards. Again the blocks are beautiful, made by hand and clean and fine and pristine.


What this adds up to in terms of homoeopathy is back pain. The stone masons are possibly the worst, sitting all day literally mashing their muscle against rock, but everything has to be carried; from the women with a huge weight of bananas on their heads walking, walking all day every day into town to the men in town with heavily loaded barrows. And as we know from the mountainy banana farmers in Kibosho and the coffee workers in Loyamungo farming is back breaking work.


Trying to treat back pain with homoeopathy is a bit like trying to treat hunger; how can back pain ease without respite from work or hunger ease without food. Nevertheless we give the best choice of remedy that we can hoping that there is a possibility that a person strengthened by their remedy will work easier or old injuries will heal and the accumulation of years will be lessened. Ironically Camilla says that she has more success treating AIDS than she does at treating back pain. She sees people's CD4 counts go up steadily once they start homoeopathic treatment and respond to the remedies.


I treated an elderly man a few weeks ago in Mwanga. He cannot afford to retire and must keep working. He is a stone mason and has no pain in his back while he is working but straightening the back at the end of the day is excruciating. I gave him natrum mur because he has pain from walking but cannot stop for a rest because people might fuss over him. I will let you know how he gets on.