• Home
• What's involved?
• How it works
• Placements
• Reflections
• About us

• Reflections
• Cath Bamber
• Mayumi Mikawa

« Back to homepage

Volunteer reflections

Mayumi Mikawa

Mayumi is a nurse from Japan, currently working in the dispensary in Iguguno, Tanzania. These are extracts from her first letter to us:

It was so - long journey!.. It made me completely tired.. I was just able to see dry tree and dry sand and vast earth from the window of the car. Anyway, I arrived Iguguno safely.Let me tell you about Iguguno convent. There're 3 sisters at this moment. Sister Adria is teacher of geography at primary school. Sister Monica and Sister Aurelia are midwives in dispensary. They're planning to open maternity ward as soon as possible. Two girls are helping to cook, to clean, to take care of our farm.. We have electricity, so we can use light, TV, ironing etc. Sometimes we get running water by windmill. Not every time! Depends on wind. (Now) we don't have running water at all. That's very hard! We have to draw water from a well. I'm using it little by little. Our kitchen doesn't have electric stove so we use firewood. Sometimes I gather wood, but there's plenty!...

Food is very nice here. They eat rice a lot. So I'm very happy with that. We have some papaya trees in our farm so we can eat it almost every day. They have bread and tea and coffee in the morning. They also have a kind of porridge -it looks not so attractive to eat. The colour is grey - thick sauce but it tastes nice! Especially, it's hot. So I don't have any problem with the food here.

This dispensary was built by Italian funds. We cover the area of east Iguguno, Serene, Lukomo etc. Total population is approximately 10,000. Opening times is 8am - 4pm. The number of patients is 10ish daily, especially in the morning. the diagnosis, malaria 50%, urinary tract infection 10%, ARI - Pneumonia 10%, eye or ear infection, worms, skin infection etc. Every Wednesday we give vaccinations such as BCG, Polio, DPT-B, measles and vitamin A. So the dispensary is better than I thought... I have something to teach them to improve. But they have their way which they have been doing already. So I'll try to tell them little by little and also I'll learn from them.

Everything slowly here. even they walk slowly. From convent to dispensary it'll take a few minutes for me, but they walk slowly and stop everywhere, so it takes 30 minutes for them! It is the way they are. I have to cope with that!...

I want to tell a lot of things here. Because everything is different, interesting, new to me! Thank you very much to give me the chance to come here!