The last time we went to Malawi we flew from Dar to Mbeye. We hadn't realised there was a bus direct (more or less) from Moshi. This time it's going to be bus all the way but I have been remembering my first glimpse of Mbeye from the air; it looked to be a completely black and white landscape or more accurately black and sepia. From the sky it looked like a landscape drawn with pencil on beige yellow paper, as far as we could see in every direction every field carefully cross hatched with parallel lines. I couldn't puzzle it out from the air at all but when we landed and drove by bus into town I understood that what I was seeing was dry, dry, dry yellow grass and black burnt ground all still in last year's ridges line by line by line.


Our next surprise was arriving in the town late on that quiet afternoon and finding a town on hills dressed beautifully in blue Jacaranda trees. I know now that they are Jacaranda trees that I have been admiring since October. I also know that it will now be raining in Mbeye and Mzimba and hopefully that is going to make a difference to out diet while we are there and we might get to eat fruit and vegetables. The last time we were there everyone was waiting seed in hand for the rain to begin.


As we traveled south there were more and more blue trees in bloom and then, astonishingly when we arrived home two and a half weeks later our very own tree lined road in Shanty Town in Moshi turned out to be blue too.


Everything here has been surprising every day. At the moment it is wedding season with four or five weddings driving past each day. Every wedding has a brass band decked out in shirts the same colour as the bridesmaid dresses and riding on the back of an open truck in the wedding procession playing as they go. In the first few months we were here I thought there was one band with an enormous wardrobe of coloured shirts and endless work but now that they drive by every ten minutes I have to admit there must be many of them. When I get married I want a multi coloured band like pastel sweeties. That's my plan.


I know I keep saying that everything here is so colourful but it is true. I knew within a few days of arriving that I would not be doing any drawing. Drawing is a thing of low, white, northern light where line is a gift of the light and a quality of everything you see. Here it is colour and shape and the gift of this light is pattern. Me and Davy are trying to photograph it a little now that we are on holiday and not always hurrying to clinic or home again – maybe we will come up with something.

 In the week before Christmas 2013 these are the things I learnt from Jeremy;


a, Be thrilled when your patient's CD4 count goes up. This should be a no brainer – many of our AIDS patients are on ARV drugs which help for a time and when the ARV stops working and the CD4 count falls again they can be put on a new ARV which might keep the count up for another year or two but at some stage the ARV's run out, the CD4 count plummets and they are in treatment failure and nothing more can be done for them by conventional medicine. So when their CD4 count rises again after they get a homoeopathic remedy it means that their life has literally turned around – well worth being thrilled about. But I, being a bit of a grinch, tend to be disappointed and self critical when someone does not improve instead of being thrilled when they do. Most people do get better on their remedy and it is quite normal to see CD4 counts going up so being thrilled when they do could bring whole days of delight!

Also it is quite difficult to choose a good remedy for someone, it can require intense concentration, observation and insight so a moment of self congratulation when you do get it right can't be so bad for the soul?

b, Keep taking the case until you know what remedy to give. When I first arrived here it was daunting to know that there was a queue of people waiting outside the door and that I had to prescribe fast. I did realise that managing to give 8 people a good remedy is better than giving 16 people a remedy that is chosen in a hurry and may not help, but the pressure of the people waiting and the translator getting tired and fed up is tough. At first I wanted to emulate Jeremy's speed but soon I realised that I should emulate his method instead. Jeremy can prescribe fast because he knows what remedy to give fast but it is never a question of time it is only a question of what remedy? What remedy? So the answer to how long does it take to take a case? Is; don't do anything until you know what to do! It is so simple, it takes time out of the equation and leaves only the engrossing detective work. And in the end it takes less time when you are fully immersed anyway.

c, The remedy Selenium has sex issues; especially weakness after sex, lack of erection and inability to finish. Typifying this it has; dreams, unsuccessful effforts. It is an AIDS remedy partly because AIDS is linked to low incidence of Selenium in the soil of Africa. So for an AIDS patient, where the case has a sexual element and there is weakness, Selenium may be a good remedy.

d, Paragraph 31 of the Organon is the paragraph about inimical influences. We were driving up to Kibosho on dirt road through banana farms, the sun was bright and the banana trees very green after the December rain. Roger, sitting in the back of the car, had questions for Jeremy on homoeopathic philosophy which Jeremy answered beautifully then threw a quick test my way – “which paragraph of the Organon?” of course I didn't know. I know now but I also learnt again the symmetry and beauty of homoeopathic philosophy on a beautiful green and sparkling morning, our last day's work before Christmas with no hurry and plenty of time for questions. I suppose I also learnt not to mind failing Jeremy's test, I work in a different way and that's ok. We get to the same place in the end.

A random and eclectic week as always!

We are here for three more weeks but Davy and Jane and I go to Malawi to teach again on the 6^th of January and only get back to Moshi in time for Davy and me to pack and head home to Ireland so the last few weeks before Christmas saw me visiting many of the outreach clinics for the very last time with lots of sadness and many goodbyes. I would like to stay here forever but I also can't wait to get back home and back to work again.

This one is for Melissa; so many people have helped me to get here to Tanzania and helped with money to run the clinics where I work every week and I have to thank you all. People are also very supportive emotionally and tell me I'm doing great work but actually most people would do something to help if they got the chance and you have all given me this chance.

Melissa is part of a sewing group in Cork who gave me money that they raised. Most of the money has been spent on paying clinic organisers* and cars and remedies and translators and the day to day stuff that gets us to that all important point where we can treat people, but last weekend I bought a sewing machine!

Esta has a long story and, as often happens here, lost everything through her illness including her sewing machine but she is well now, a mighty strong woman who appears to be glowing with health. She is a talented tailor and now she has her own machine.

*Clinic organisers are often AIDS sufferers who contact the other AIDS sufferers in their community and let us use their room or their yard or their porch as a clinic for the day. HHA pays them for this work which means that they and their families can eat.

As part of my homesicknessI have been thinking a lot about the people at home who donated money to this cause.  One man came in off the street in Dun Laoghaire last August and gave me enough money to run the out reach clinics for a week.  When he gave me the money I had a very sketchy picture of what it would mean in reality but as another week is nearly over I have a very clear view now. 

I had a very good day today with every single person coming in and telling me they had done well on their remedy.  Our patients can often be quite despairing when they first come to see us because they find it difficult to get help from anywhere for their problems.  So when they get relief from the homoeopathic remedy and their health visibly improves they feel a huge weight of worry lifted.  If you are sick here you might starve.  If you are well you can work.  A day of smiling faces has left me feeling very happy and reflecting with gratitude on Robert's gift. 

Every week has been different here. I turned up for work this morning at the Mkombozi clinic where we would normally see up to 20 kids between the ages of 10 and 13 to find that school is over and no-one there.

This is usually a tough gig, hard to crack the individual cases as well as emotionally wearing; seeing kids without a parent or grandparent or older brother or sister who knows them means it is difficult to get good information and so it is difficult to prescribe. On top of which they all seem to have the same symptoms and some weeks I could swear someone is standing outside the door and briefing them before they come in “this week it's head and abdomen – tell the mzungu you have a pain in your head and abdomen”. So you end up seeing child after child, all more or less the same size and age in the same uniform and with the same symptoms as the child before and none of them very talkative.

Because they are all HIV it is worth our best shot so we do the best we can to decipher the puzzle of each one. It is very easy to remember that Pendo was one of these kids a year ago. They are all more or less healthy – we just need to keep them that way. For people with HIV everything has to be treated; every cough or cold or grief or shock. Having a weakened immune system leaves you vulnerable to small knocks.

But the day turned into a different day today and we struggled back into town through the slidey mud, carrying the big wooden remedy kit between us, to organise a painter to paint a sign for the new centre. Talking to Roger on the way I heard how he would love to go to Kenya to study homoeopathy in the school there and from having worked with him over these past few months I can see that he would make a great and compassionate homoeopath.

The other thing that has coloured this week differently is that there have been attacks from so called skeptics, nasty stuff on the HHA website and on facebook. It is difficult to know how to react to them because they are so far off the mark it is as though they are saying cats while we are saying oranges.

It is a shame because skepticism and homoeopathy go hand in hand in a way. It is only the reaction of the patient to the remedy that proves whether it is the right remedy or not and as you listen to the patient's report only an open and questioning mind will get you accurate information and prevent you jumping to soft conclusions.

As a skeptic I had an interesting week last week – different again – my job was to go on the round with the doctor in the hospital checking on the homoeopathy patients. It was a real eye opener to see people who had had homoeopathy side by side with people who had not; it was so clear that the homoeopathy patients were consistently doing better and recovering faster. I just wish that they could all have homoeopethy.

Ta Da!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MOVBrwyS5U

Archibel tech support at last.  Radar back and only two days lost.  But Davy and I are in melt down and want to come home NOW!

So it is true.  Archibel have let us all down.  Our licenses have expired and we cannot open Radar.  I have to go to work today with no repertory.  A typical day's work here could be between ten and twenty people.  Some of them will have walked for up to three hours to reach the clinic.  A one hour walk would be common.  If I don't prescribe on the spot they will have to walk three hours again to pick up the remedy.  And three hours back again.  There is no postal service here to post the remedy unless you own a PO box which of course our patients do not.


Our patients choose homoeopathy because it works but for some it is their only access to health care.  Hospitals here are good but limited by money - did you know it is possible for a whole country to run out of pain relief drugs?  Think of what that means for people who have been through surgery.  So now they are to be penalised again because the internet here is not wide enough to update our software.

Over the last ten days myself and Jane and Rebecca have tried repeatedly to download the update without success.  We have also been in contact with Archibel over that time over and over again asking to have our licenses extended until we are able to update.  I am stunned that a company claiming to support professional homoeopaths could withdraw an essential tool from us like this. I can't get my head around what they are thinking.  Could it just be a 21st century inability to grasp the concept of a lack of internet?  Making do and stretching resources has become such a way of life for us that I forget there are people living in fat and plenty.

For world AIDS day HHA has gone to the Maasai to treat as many people as possible in one day. I have stayed at home in bed. The sheer amount of work has finally got to me and I am exhausted and have a very sensible vertigo which means I can't get up. Davy headed off with the others early this morning to get some more film of the Maasai people and the HHA mobile clinics in operation.


I blame part of my exhaustion on the making of the news letter which has been a huge task. The news letter is a 15 minute film of Jeremy and Camilla telling the latest comings and goings of HHA and is put together with all the film Davy has taken since he got here. It is a bit like a carefully considered patchwork quilt and hopefully it will be on you tube tomorrow. There is also a six minute version which was even more work. I don't think that the short version is as good as the long version because the long version is newsy and has things to chew on and a news letter should be fat and juicy. The long version is more captivating though the short version was made for people with a short attention span. Watch the long version. I will put the link here as soon as it's up.


Since he arrived in Moshi Davy has taught himself editing from scratch and before that filming from scratch and has loyally traipsed around from clinic to clinic collecting film where he can. There was a real film crew here for a week so we know what a real film crew is like and just how many times a shot might have to be repeated to get it right. Davy is at the bottom of the pecking order here and mostly has to stay out of peoples way. He never gets to tell us where to sit for the best light or composition and he never gets to tell us to “do it again”. Everything you see in the news letter is a first take – some of it is rocky but the story gets told. There was over 60 hours of work in the editing alone and it is very much to his credit that he has stuck it out. He is fifteen after all.


Sometimes we think about the school that he is missing with regret for the subjects that he loved but there are always other things to learn. In January we return to Malawi to see our students there and teach them the next step and Davy will be one of the class again. It was an eye opener last time for him to be in a class of adults where the teacher never shouts at the students or gives them detention or lectures them on their bad behaviour. Strange world.


The other thing that is occupying our thoughts this week is the fact that the software that we all use must be updated and the license renewed by the 2^nd of December which is today. However we do not have sufficient bandwidth here to do that. It is quite possible that none of us will be able to repertorise as of tomorrow and Archibel, makers of RADAR homoeopathic software, will have successfully shut down our whole project!