If you have a chance to speak to other students in other universities who pursue the same professional courses like we do then you will know how unique MUCHS is. Yes! exclusive in the sense of experiences students pass through, from classes, clinical rotations and the most fascinating community medicine. Though these programmes are customary and routine every time they have a different taste. If your taste was not what you were asked then it’s what you were answered, either an answer for a question you didn’t ask or a question you never expected.
It’s part of the curriculum for second year medical students as part of their study to
...undertake a nutrition field practice. Last time it was in Tanga urban. For some of us, Tanga is not a new place. Close to the Indian Ocean, with more than seven tribes, and a typical Swahili culture. Attending last year’s program had me rethink of the enemies of our state if ignorance, disease and poverty are still the major ones. Where do other harms like poor sanitation and malnutrition fall into? Are our people malnourished because they are poor or because they are ignorant? I supposed in a way all these are interlinked and none can be separated from the other. If they are disconnected one from another and without any link to any other, then one wonders were malnutrition is in a political context for in a health perspective it’s well sung and said; a condition not a disease.
To several people where we went a better meal is large, thick if not heavy and should fill ones stomach to a point were more body movements are a nuisance. Contents or ingredients of a meal are out of question. Meat or fish should be eaten when the pocket is full, you need a single piece anyway, vegetables should be eaten by children for they are growing up and need good vision, when it comes to fruits these are necessary when prescribed by a doctor as a remedy. Incidentally they are not meals!!
In a way it’s immensely perceived, the bigger heap on the plate the better.
My memory goes back to this woman, a mother of five who had two of her offspring under five. Sitting quietly in front of her thatched house she had a grin on her face while breastfeeding her current offspring who seemed to be nine or ten months. When she saw me her first question was if I had brought her a mosquito net. When I said no that I only wanted to speak to her regarding her kids’ nutrition she lamented “I know this is segregation, just because my husband is a member of the opposition party!” I had a chance to ask what she thought of the health of her children. It’s when I learnt a lesson and a secret behind the kid’s name. She called him “Boss” who was supposedly to be three years. He had yellow hair, a swollen stomach and limbs a condition I sensed signifies kwashiorkor but not to the mother. To her the kid was health and regarded him the icon of health in all the kids she ever had hence a reason for the kid’s name. Convincing her that the child’s state was pathologic and needed medical attention was more difficult than persuading her to deny her religious faith.
This would be an example of many experiences we pass through, if you don’t meet one like this then you were either asked if you could operate on a lump in the groins or prescribe a medication for a kid’s skin rash they think came from eating a cock’s meat before the head of the house did.
While waiting anxiously for my last chance as a student next year, I can’t envision how this will be; perhaps I will meet more “Bosses” or I will have to take with me mosquito nets.
When all's said and done a taste is a taste, fascinating, intriguing and more often than not if long lasting. No doubt MUCHS is unique in its own way!
MUCHS newsletter-march 2006
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