Books for Africa Library Project, Inc.Establishing libraries in rural areas of West Africa |
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Dear friends, Greetings! Hilda and I are well and have set up four of the seven libraries scheduled for this year. Next Tuesday we travel to the north to Bole to set up their library. Have I written to you of malaria? It is always at our “back door” here. Malaria is a condition caused by the multiplication of a particular parasite in your bloodstream. The parasite is introduced to your body through the bite of infected mosquitoes. The more bites you get the more parasites you have. These parasites also multiply within your body. The parasite invades one’s red blood cells, lays eggs inside which hatch and then destroy the cell. So the illness that is malaria is a series of symptoms that occur when one’s red blood cells are seriously depleted. Remember that the red blood cells carry oxygen to all the body’s cells so when there are too few red blood cells to do that job, the systems in our bodies start to malfunction. Our stomachs fail to digest the food; we vomit and have diarrhea. Our muscles ached and we lack energy from lack of nourishment. Our heads ache because the cells there aren’t getting enough oxygen. I remember a severe attack of malaria I had in the late 1960s when it hurt me just to put my head down on a pillow. I couldn’t get any relief by lying down. What saved me then was a series of quinine tablets. Gradually the quinine kills off the parasites and your body starts to function again. You can see it is an insidious disease. I think what makes the disease particularly bad is that many of us in malaria infested countries live our lives as the “walking wounded.” Everyone here has some parasites in the blood; it can’t be helped. Our natural antibodies help keep the parasite numbers down. However, whenever our resistance is down through a mild cold, extra hard work or malnutrition, then our antibodies aren’t sufficient to keep the parasites in check and they start to multiply in the bloodstream and begin to affect our body’s systems. Many people here work hard physically and don’t have a nutritious diet so they liver their lives on the borderline of a malaria attack. I know it because I’ve been there. My nutrition is O.K. but sometimes I work too hard and don’t get enough rest to recoup my energy. This condition puts me at risk and the parasites start to multiply until my systems get overwhelmed and I start to have symptoms. There are times when I walk around with a mild headache and I know I am on the borderline of an attack. When I feel this way for a day or two I will start myself on a quinine regimen. I have a friend in Kukurantumi who can tell my physical condition by my handshake. He is very sensitive to temperatures and he can tell when my temperature is slightly elevated, say 99 degrees, and he will shake my hand and say, “Yes, I feel a malaria attack coming.” In the past twenty years the parasites have developed resistance to the quinine drugs. These drugs are hard on the liver. My lower back aches when I take a regimen of quinine. Fortunately, the Chinese have developed several herbs which are effective in the treatment. Their side effects don’t appear to be as severe as the quinine, but the medicine costs more because they haven’t cultivated in sufficient quantities to supply all the people in Africa, South America and Asia. President Bush promised to spend 15 billion dollars on medical research and treatment for HIV/AIDS and malaria. That was three years ago and we haven’t spent a tenth of that money yet. In fact with USA and European backing, the big drug companies just forced India to take their generic retro-viral drugs off the market because the Indian companies weren’t paying patent fees for them. The Indian drugs were widely used in Africa because they were very inexpensive. In a continent with so many people needing retro-viral drugs to treat active AIDS, the Indian drugs were the hope of the poor. Now that door has been shut. If India did not comply they would not be allowed to join the World Treaty Organization. O malaria continues to affect most people in Ghana when their resistance is low. The disease kills over a million children a year in Africa. This morning when I asked the husband of our niece to go sailing with me tomorrow, he explained that he was coming down with a fever and that he had to rest. That means malaria. The rainy season is just beginning here. It didn’t rain once from Christmas to Ash Wednesday. Now it has rained for forty five minutes each day for three days. The rain will create breeding grounds for the mosquitoes and in ten days or so we will have plenty of mosquitoes. Hilda and I will be all right. We can afford the medicine and the illness just puts us “down” for a few days and interrupts our work schedule. There are some who can’t afford the medicine or the rest time and go to work with a fever. This is part of our life in Ghana. Is it all bad news from Africa? No. We really are pleased with the progress in the economy and its positive effect on education, health care and infrastructure like roads, mass transit and communication. Unlike ten years ago the teachers are now paid regularly, albeit underpaid somewhat in the USA. There was a period of time in the past when teachers had to take a second job in order to get any money to live on. This was due to a very stagnant economy with high inflation and an upper echelon administration that were very corrupt. There is a lingering after effect in that some teachers don’t come to work on time and take private students after hours which interferes with the grading of papers and preparations for regular classes the next day. None the less, we are making progress. When Hilda had the call from God to “go build Me a library” very few schools in rural Ghana had textbooks for their children. This is slowly improving. Yesterday when I stopped into the library in Kukurantumi around 3:30 pm there were about 25 students of various ages reading books. There are usually several older teenagers studying the science and Math books really hard, copying notes from the books. The books you give us are good and they are well used. Thank you. God bless you all, Kirt and Hilda |
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