PHYSIOS in ZANZIBAR

We arrived in Zanzibar after a long flight from London, and a longer than expected boat trip across to Stone Town. After such a tiring trip it was great to be met off the ferry by Salam, a good friend of Pat and Janie’s from ZAP. Once settled into a hostel, we set about trying to organise our work at the Mnazi Moja hospital. This, as expected, was a little more time consuming than we’d hoped, but eventually we found ourselves in the small, but surprisingly well equipped physiotherapy department. Memoko, a Japanese volunteer, had been there for 18 months already and showed us the ropes for the first day. After that we were on our own.

We’d normally arrive to a department filled with patients so it was all go from the minute we walked in. Monday and Wednesday’s were assigned to adults, Tuesday and Thursday’s children. On Friday the department was much quieter and was used to see any patient you needed to spend more time with. Our day began at 8.00am and finished whenever all the patients were seen. This could vary from 11.30am to 2.00pm. When comparing this to a typical day in the NHS this seemed ridiculously short, but we soon discovered we were seeing the same amount of patients but at a much faster and much more intense pace.

The conditions we saw ranged from basic to complex musculoskeletal, orthopaedics and neurological conditions. Some of the cases we had commonly seen whilst working back home, such as post stroke rehab, others were much less familiar, for example certain skin conditions. In some cases, due to the lack of a referral, we never knew the diagnosis of the patient, so had to simply treat what we found.

Communication was one the hardest barriers to overcome – most of the patients did not speak any English – so we took it upon ourselves to begin Swahili lessons. There were many cultural differences and we became adept at adjusting our physiotherapy skills to account for this. Over the course of the 2 months we began to realise that many mothers were not aware of developmental milestones of their children. 3 month old babies would come to the clinic as their mothers were worried they could not walk. We decided that advice and information would prevent this unnecessary worry and expense. We produced a poster to explain the milestones from 0 months to 2 years. This was written in Swahili and we used photographs we had taken in the clinic to demonstrate this further.

Of course, it wasn’t all work and no play while we were in Zanzibar. We had plenty of time to explore the island and visit Jambiani where ZAP is based. We made lots of friends during our time in Stone Town and the various other villages around the island. Whilst in Jambiani we had the opportunity to see the work done by the charity and meet some of the students they have helped, including having an exceptional meal cooked for us by Choma and Pai!

We’re so glad to have had this opportunity and to put our skills into practice in such a different environment. The experience has taught us a lot and we are both looking forward to going back some day to see how Zanzibar has developed.

Clare and Roz

August 2008

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