Project Tanzania

Dear Colleague: June, 2010

Since I have returned from my year off I have remained in contact, on weekly basis, with Biharamulo Hospital, the hospital I worked at for 3 months in Tanzania. It's a poor, needy place where adults, children and babies die everyday and night... many of them from lack of simple preventative health care. Recently, my former boss, mentor and Chairman of Thoracic Surgery at Maine Medical Center went there at my urging. He came back speechless. He's been around the world, but admitted that Biharamulo Hospital is one of the most needy places he's seen yet.

I plan to return there in late 2011. In the meantime I have been busy with my brother and a friend in Vermont with an assistance program we call "Project Tanzania". Our primary project involves sending a 40 ft. shipping container to Biharamulo Hospital. We have collected hospital and medical equipment from Rutland Hospital in Vermont and from Maine Medical Center and Partnership for World Health here in Portland. It's a big deal; 35 hospital beds and mattresses, wheelchairs, walkers and crutches and about 50 giant tupperware crates full of medical supplies. We have, for the most part, steered away from electronic equipment because electricity is on only about 1/2 of the time and no one can fix electronic equipment after it breaks. Picture this: Biharamulo Hospital has no washing machine that works. Remember this is a 120-bed hospital in the jungle in Africa, where diarrhea is common, with lots of laundry, all of which is washed by hand!

Now for the hard part. The cost of ocean and land transportation for the 40 ft. shipping container to Biharamulo is about $10,000. The trip will take about 3 months. We need your contribution to make Project Tanzania a success. Remember, success cannot be achieved by simply saying you care.

You can make a tax-deductible contribution to The Sandy Christman Foundation, which is the funding vehicle for Project Tanzania in two ways:

1) Go to our website www.sandychristman.org and hit the Donate with Amazon icon or...

2) Send your tax deductible check to:

The Sandy Christman Foundation

PO Box 10405

Portland, ME 04104

If you want to know more about Biharamulo go to our blog: www.barbaraandlarry.blogspot.com.

Thanks in advance for helping us with this valuable project. As the people in Biharamulo say in Swahili "twaweza"

( we can make it happen).

Sincerely, Larry Adrian PS To see more pictures go to BLOG ARCHIVE

to read posts go to 2008,2009

HELP WITH PROJECT TANZANIA!: PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO PROJECT TANZANIA BY GOING TO

www.sandychristmanfoundation.org and donating at the yahoo donation site. Thanks, Larry and Barbra

Biharamulo Hospital Pediatric Ward

THE OUTREACH CLINIC

THE FUTURE

STREET SCENE AT NOON

THIS IS KWASHIOKOR

THE BURN UNIT
TO SEE MORE ,SEE POSTS FROM AUG 2008

Humans Don't Belong Here

April 2009: At EBC

Taking It Out of Ya.
The mountain is trying to kill me. I mean it; seriously, the mountain is trying to kill me. It’s not Chomolungma, the mother goddess of earth, or some evil mountain spirit. It’s simply that this high altitude environment and my wimpy human physiology don’t mix.
We have arrived at Everest Base Camp after 12 days of trekking up hill. Here, in the Himalayas, at the end of the Khumbu Valley, is the world’s biggest dead end. When you finally get here you are surrounded by 270 degrees of 6000-foot vertical walls. Above those walls are the biggest mountains in the world. Five weeks ago we where in the remote southwest corner of Tanzania. In Africa it seems everything that is alive is trying to kill you. From viri to alligators the competition among the living is fierce. Compared to Africa there a few living things here that have you in their sights. Oh sure, there are bacteria and virus here, but they can’t be doing well either - no living thing does well here. No, compared to Africa, it’s what’s NOT here that will kill you. And what’s not here is oxygen. Between the lack of oxygen and the vertical world of rock and ice I’m dying. The higher you go, the steeper it gets and the less oxygen there is. So, like I said, the mountain is trying to kill me.
From the time you arrive and settle down into a life any where above 17,000 ft you are a dead man walking. You struggle and suffer and you literally suck wind. But eventually you learn to adapt. You feel pretty good as you figure out how to do the simple things all over again. Things like putting your boots on or brushing your teeth. You reconfigure these simple activities of daily living. They take on a new significance, as if they were a really important part of your day. So, putting your shoes and socks on, that could take 5 mins. Brushing your teeth; well just go slow. Its something that if a normal person, that is someone from sea level, were watching they might wonder “…oh yeah, must be brain damage” And at this altitude, they might be right.
Even if you think you’re getting better, getting your adapting, and acclimating down, you're not. Little by little, hour-by-hour, day-by-day, it’s taking it out of you. Life is being sucked out of your body by that big mother mountain that you’re planning to climb. So, like a guy on death row……your time is going to come. That doesn’t mean you have to die. You can get a pardon. But it does mean your time is limited. Closing time is coming for you and what’s left of your slowly atrophying body. And like the song says, “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here”

Humans just don’t belong here. The highest permanent settlement or city in the world is Wenzhuan, China at 16,700 ft (5100 M) I’m not sure what they do there in Wenzchuan but I know they do it very slowly. At extremely high altitude oxygen levels in your arterial blood drop faster then today’s stock prices. A scientific study done here on Mt Everest in 2007 showed Pao2 ( arterial blood oxygen level) of 20 mm hg in climbers who summited. That’s one-fifth the level of oxygen in your blood at sea level!! Bring someone up here directly from sea level, like in a jet….. they’ll be dead in 6 minutes. That’s not dead on arrival but they shouldn’t have bought a round trip ticket.
More evidence, I cut my hand 4 days ago on my crampons preparing to go up the Khumbu Ice Fall. I had 3 nice clean slices on my fingers. Sort of embarrassing but it stopped bleeding after a while. No big deal. But since then nothing has happened. No healing, no nothing. Now I have 3 open wounds on my hands that have just sat there for 4 days and done nothing. At this altitude cells don’t work, wounds don’t heal and your body is just slowly decomposing. Like I said, the mountain is trying to kill me

Namaste Cholatse

In the Khumbu Icefall

Originally labeled as "unsafe and unclimbable", the icefall is a huge frozen waterfall that tumbles down between Nuptse (R) and the west shoulder of Everest (L)

Telephoto, those black spots are not ants. Click on the picture  to enlarge.


The way up.
Doing the ladder thing. Now we are all ants.....at least thats the way it feels.

At Base Camp

 Everest Base Camp (EBC): 17,600 ft and surrounded by crumbling glaciers. If you were ever sceptical about global climate change spend time at EBC.  About every 6 or 12 hrs. there's at least a moderate ice fall/avalanche/rock fall. And every few days there's a huge fall. And thats above you( keep your helmet on). Below you, the glacier you are sleeping on  is groaning, creeping and melting and can keep you awake at night.
The Pujo Temple: Before a team enters the ice fall to climb up Everest or Lhotse they, and their equipment, are blessed by Buddhist Monks in a ceremony at base camp.

Lhotse, black rock, no snow on the summit

Is my tent safe?