by Sr. Margaret Anne Meyer MMM                             USA                            13.10.2025

In August 1978, I was asked to leave Makiungu and go to Dareda Hospital, about sixty miles away.  The surgeon there had finished his two-year contract and was going home with his wife and newborn baby.  Sr. Doctor Maureen Mc Dermott had asked me to come and help her.

Dareda was a Government-designated District Hospital which meant that the people did not pay for their medical stay or medicine, and the Government paid the Staff salaries.  This meant that we were inundated with patients.  Sometimes our bed count was over three hundred.  I was sorry to leave Dr. Rachel Patton behind in Makiungu Hospital, but she managed very well.  She was able to perform extremely complicated surgery.  She was able to save the life of a baby who was born without an anus.

The change was not as difficult as leaving Uganda.  Instead of living in a semi-desert area the volcanic soil was red and seemed to lodge in the hems of our white coats.  Our home was surrounded by rose bushes and the garden produced many varieties of fruits and vegetables.  At times I could loll on the green grass lawn on a blanket with an enjoyable book or even write letters.  On one side we were surrounded by an escarpment from the Rift Valley.  The local people from the Iraqw tribe were not Bantu but were a branch of the Afro -Asiatic family.  Long ago, some of the Iraqw people had traveled along the rift valley escarpment which originates from Ethiopia, passes through Kenya and Tanzania, and even reaches some mountains in Northwestern Uganda.

The escarpment was a beautiful 1500-foot steep backdrop to our hospital. The people were very nimble on their feet and could carry their sick relatives very easily on a mat down the hillside to the hospital.  On one occasion, a group of young people were getting a ride on the road to the top of the escarpment and somehow the trailer disconnected to the tractor and about twenty-five of them tumbled down.  It was pandemonium when they reached the outpatients department.  My heart went out to them in their distress but I needed more hands to help me.  Thank God the medical assistants helped with the fractures and lacerations, but one young girl was in severe pain and was passing blood in her urine.  She did not appear to have a ruptured spleen, and I thought her kidneys were damaged in some way.  I got on to the radio Tel to request a plane to take her to the specialist hospital in Moshi, then called KCMC, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center.  That night I was called to her because she had almost stopped breathing.  I had asked the nurse to administer morphine every four hours as needed for pain but somehow, she got an overdose.  She responded to a dose of Narcan.   As I left her breathing comfortably, I realized I could have caused an explosion in the ward.  We had no electricity, and I entered the ward with a kerosene lamp which I put down near her oxygen cylinder to have a better view. What would have become of all of us when the plane landed that morning?  Thank God nothing further happened, and the young girl was flown to the specialist hospital and returned to us well healed of her injuries.

I learned to love the people and their clicking language but never mastered it.  I loved listening to it and at Christmas enjoyed the simple hymn honoring Mary, Ema,  Mother of Jesus.