Work on the foundations of the new Kimanjo Health Centre is
progressing very well. Yesterday we prayed for rain so that we can get on with
the foundation slab, and our prayers have been answered-at least in part. The
clouds that have been circling for a few days have finally began to descend.
The Health Centre has been nearly a year in the planning.
Our great thanks to the Kimanjo community and the Group Ranches who have worked
with us to bring this to fruition. There have been many hurdles along the way
but it is the challenges that bring communities together in the pursuit of
quality health care. Few things unite impoverished people like the search for
affordable and good health care. (Even President Obama would have felt that
unity within his least well heeled electorate..) In all development projects
there are frustrations to be faced along the way as bureaucratic and
unnecessary hurdles are put in the way
in an attempt to steer projects off course due to other conflicting agendas.
Only patience , stamina, dogged determination and the will of the local community
can keep matters on course until the
winds of change gather momentum . We don’t pretend that the next year will be
easy, but we do know that we are well past the start gate.
Thanks again to the
District Water Office for the assistance they have given us to get all the
right paperwork to sink a new bore hole in Kimanjo to supply water for the
facility. Without the help of our kind friend
the District Water Officer, this would not have gone so smoothly. As we blogged before , the
success of our water projects at Lentille is due in large part to the great
Public Private Partnership that we have developed.
This is a large project that will result in both an in patient and an out patient wing, an
operating theatre and x-ray room,
maternity suite, accommodation for visiting doctors , meeting room etc. On
completion, the facility will become
totally government owned and we very
much hope for close collaboration in its staffing and equipping .
We have now been working in community health care on the
Group Ranches for 4 years: it is as a result of the repeated requests from so
many GR members that we began, one year ago, to plan for a health centre. Good
quality local, affordable health care is
number one on most people’s agenda. As always in our community work it is the
time given over for regular community meetings , coordination, information
sharing and information gathering and generally giving a voice to all groups
that pays dividends in allowing
development to take place in a way that will be valued and made use of by the community.
All of us working in community development have much to
learn but most of that learning will come not from books but from listening to
people on the ground on a daily basis. Living at Lentille we are privileged in
being able to spend more time on the ground than most people, it is up to us to
use that privilege wisely.
