Jo helps to change lives in Kenya

“Fantastic, but heartbreaking” – that’s how Complete’s Head of Clinical Services Jo Cooper describes her latest volunteering trip to Africa.

Jo, who became interested in aid work in Africa as a teenager, has since made four trips to the continent, most recently spending three weeks in Kenya this August with the volunteering organisation African Impact.

During her trip, she joined a party of 15 volunteers and spent time at Limuru, a mountain town around 90 minutes from Nairobi, where she worked alongside the staff of a local clinic diagnosing, treating and counselling patients with conditions ranging from coughs and colds to TB, HIV and Aids, cholera, typhoid and malaria as well as the victims of stabbings, rapes and attacks with rocks. Some of the time was also spent educating the staff.

Jo said: “There was no appointment system so it was normal to arrive to find around 300 people queuing to be seen, some of them local and some who had travelled up to eight miles to get there. There was no water or sanitation at the clinic so keeping things sterile was challenging! Expectant mothers would walk there, on their own, along dirt roads to give birth with no analgesia and then walk home again, an hour after their babies were born.”

She also travelled to the huge Kibera slum in Nairobi – one of the largest slums in the world – to vaccinate under-fives against measles, mumps, polio and meningitis in a government-funded programme and helped give out food parcels to over 450 homeless elderly people in Limuru, which she described as distressing.

Challenges included surprisingly cold temperatures for Africa, which meant she had to sleep under five blankets – and was not helped by cold showers in the morning – and the risk of attack by rival gangs operating in the area but Jo says she can’t wait to go back and is already planning a trip next year.

“I will never forget the singing and dancing, hugs and kisses and the joy and heartbreak that comes from a summer volunteering,” she says. “The street kids just longed for a cuddle and some food and we were desperately trying to show them that not all grown-ups want to hurt them. Despite their desperation and poverty, they greet you with a big smile and a huge hug. They are beautiful.”

Jo says she could “talk forever” about Africa and the work that needs to be done there, adding: “You can feel very guilty about how fortunate we are but we can all raise awareness and do what we can to help.

Something to think about

If the world was made up of 100 people…

• 43 would have no sanitation and 18 no good water supply
• 6 of the 100 people would own 59 per cent of the world’s wealth
• 13 would be hungry
• 14 would be unable to read
• only seven would be educated to secondary school level
• 49 would have AIDS / HIV
• if you have a fridge, a wardrobe, a bed, a roof over your head and a bank account, you would be one of the top 25 (out of 100) richest people in the world
• 53 would be trying to live on less than $2 per day