- Dear Family and Friends,
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- Its hot and purple in Zimbabwe: Jacaranda trees adorned
in purple
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- flowers; skies heavy with purple rain clouds, bougainvillea
creepers ablaze with carpets of purple blooms and Mulberry trees dripping
with sweet, sticky, staining berries. Overhead the flycatchers are back,
the long russet tails of the males flicking through the trees as they chase
their mates. Underfoot, emerging from the ash of a million fires that have
again devastated so much habitat, the wild flowers are on
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- defiant display: yellow heads, violet gentians, orange
pimpernels and exquisite salmon pink gladioli.
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- Zimbabwe needs this beauty more than ever now to soften
the ugliness of what's going on around us. Tragically its not just political
and economic ugliness we're dealing with, its a basic loss of compassion
and empathy that seems to have engulfed us as a nation. We've lost our
moral compass, someone said this week and how true that is.
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- Recently, asked to assist in finding help for people
in need, I heard stories that are cause for deep shame. A doctor described
being ushered into a small dark house in a high density township where
he examined a 43 year old woman.
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- The patient, Mrs M, has no regular income and is
dependant on donations made by scattered relatives. The doctor easily
diagnosed a large cauliflower growth as advanced breast cancer. He
was amazed Mrs M had not sought help before and felt despair as he
heard how she had tried and failed, again and again, to get help.
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- Referred to a government hospital 6 months earlier when
her problem began, Mrs M's first attendance yielded nothing because the
nurses and doctors were on strike. Weeks later she tried again and was
referred to the Chitungwiza Hospital in Harare where she was seen by a
junior doctor and given a date to return to see the surgeon on duty.
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- More struggle and begging for help to get bus fares for
another trip to Harare. On the specified date the surgeon ordered a chest
X ray and some blood tests and told Mrs M to return with her results. To
her dismay Mrs M found she had to pay cash for the tests but she had nothing
left. The hospital would not waive the fees and so again she returned home
without having been helped. On her third attempt and with money for transport,
X rays and blood tests, Mrs M returned to Chitungwiza but the surgeon did
not arrive to conduct his clinic and so she was sent back home again.
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- The doctor said that when he saw Mrs.M. again, recently,
her tumour has doubled in size and she was in considerable pain. Deep down,
he said, he knows Mrs M has missed all chance of a cure but hopes for some
compassion, empathy and palliative care.
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- Such anguish for the price of an X ray, the cost of a
blood test or just the hand of compassion - our poor Zimbabwe.
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- Until next time, thanks for reading,
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- love, cathy
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- Copyright cathy buckle ww.cathybuckle.com http://www.cathybuckle.com/
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- For information on my new book: "INNOCENT VICTIMS"
or my previous books, "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears,"
or to subscribe/unsubscribe to this newsletter, please write to:
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- cbuckle@mango.zw
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