Dear Friends,
I got back from Madagascar a few weeks ago. It took some time to recover (jetlag and a parasite I picked up along the way).
But now that I am feeling like myself again, I want to share some of what I saw.
Madagascar is one of the most challenging places where Seva Canada works. At the best of times, people face deep poverty and real barriers to getting health care of any kind. The economy depends on foreign investment, often mining, and the vanilla trade, which grows more uncertain every year as floods and droughts take their toll.
It is also one of the most climate-vulnerable places in the world. The week before I arrived, a cyclone damaged 70% of the infrastructure in the port city of Toamasina. Part of the roof was blown off the hospital we partner with there!
The local team still wanted to meet with us.
They wanted to show us the work and the impact that Seva Canada donors are making. It was so important to them. And that is what I keep coming back to.
The eye doctors and health care teams we work with in Madagascar do not have to do this work. They are skilled enough to move to Europe, practice medicine there, and live comfortably. But they stay to serve their communities. And after a cyclone turns their lives upside down, they still show up.
One moment I have not been able to shake: watching a young boy have eye surgery at our partner’s pediatric program in Antananarivo. I have seen adult surgeries before, but never a child’s.
He was sedated. He looked so small on the operating table.
I stood there thinking about my four-year-old daughter, Ingrid. About what this family must have gone through to get to that operating room. The fear combined with hope. The trust they placed in the doctors.
But he was in the most skilled, qualified hands in the country. The best equipment. The most supportive environment. That is what these teams have built in one of the hardest places in the world to build anything.
If they can keep showing up after a cyclone, I can certainly show up for them with jetlag and a parasite.
More soon.
Liz Brant – Executive Director
P.S. None of this happens without you. Your support does not just fund surgeries and screenings. It backs the teams who keep going, no matter what. Thank you.
