Ashley Napier, one of the young leaders, has been drawn back to Tanzania three times, inspired by the readiness of young students to pick up computer skills and pass them on to one another. On his very first visit he took over a computer he had built himself and a vast store of information in the compact form of CDs. By the end of this visit he saw the Lubala Computer room up and running, with three PCs (two from personal donations, one from Lincoln College JCR) and two laptops (from Wyndham School), all running Edubuntu Opensource Software. He found enthusiastic support from the Head Master of the school, Noah Mwasaposia, who is very keen to develop the use of computers in his school, and wants to make computer lessons an official part of the schools curriculum.
During Ashley’s two days at Lubala the students started with the basics: learning how to use a mouse, typing a letter and actually navigating through the OS. The teachers, however, some of whom were already familiar with the basics, dived straight into the Encylopedia searching for materials for their lessons. Ashley has no doubt that Lubala will make the most of this new resource and on behalf of CRCL he would like to thank everyone who has donated equipment!
Physiotherapist, Dianne Allan and medical student, Lily Stanley, also joined the party as volunteers. Lily, with all of two years training behind her, was delighted with the welcome she received at a General Hospital in Tukuyu from doctors and medical officers eager both to teach and learn. She returns to Manchester University School of Medicine with the experience of assisting in caesarian operations and in an operation on a gastric ulcer. She admits to feeling terrified on the journey out, wondering what she had let herself in for, but quickly grew in confidence, through the trust and support offered by the medical staff.
Lily arranged for Dianne to visit the hospital to present a talk and demonstration to the doctors and their assistants on techniques . She found most of the staff eager to receive new ideas and the logic of a cheap, possibly even carried-on-by-mother, way of preventing disability and operations did seem appealing to them. She found the biggest hurdle was actually getting all the mothers to even see a nurse at all after a home birth. Another problem is the cost of the tape. What are simple, everyday things to us are major expenses to some folk. She was, indeed, presented with loads of disabled children with club (Talepes) feet which had been neglected at birth and often had some attempt at correction with operations. She finds it a sobering realisation that most of the children she saw would not have been disabled if they had had treatment for their Malaria or had had Polio vaccinations.
She felt fortunate to have "an interested, practical guy" working with her at the school. "His official job is a shoe mender," she explains, "but he was very interested in physiotherapy and orthopaedics which seemed to stem from his personal experiences of Polio and leprosy. His English was pretty good and he interpreted for me which was useful as my language learning skills are painfully slow! We experimented with making some small objects and a mould from my orthotic insoles and I left a book I had bought from the charity 'Practical Action' called Appropriate Paper based Technology. I hope he will carry on."
Though she had some important techniques to teach she also brings back to Egremont some important lessons she learned in Rungwe. "Like many physiotherapists I spend a lot of time nagging patients to improve their postures. Why do so many ladies in Tanzania walk tall without being taught the Alexandra Technique or Yoga or Pilates or Ballet dancing? Answer: They walk for miles with enormous piles of everything on their heads! They are so skilled at this most of the time they need no hands. So if anyone sees people walking down Egremont main street with shopping or handbags on their heads perhaps I have persuaded them it is an excellent way to prevent those poor posture related problems."