Monthly Archive for March, 2004

March 2004 – Paul Jeffries

Published by Paul Jeffries on March 22, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

Hi all. Here we are in April and I am starting to feel the cold.

I returned from my eighteen days working in Malampa Province Vanuatu in 38 degrees to a chilly 12 degrees in Auckland. A Ni-Van friend of mine says, “Why do you live in such a cold place Paul?” I’m starting to wonder that also.

As I mentioned in the last report my time this month was spent in Vanuatu building two 20,000-liter water tanks. We also cleared a container of building and medical equipment (including a 4×4 vehicle) and attended meetings with Ministry of Health representatives.

Our first tank in Vanuatu this trip was erected in the village of Rori. A remote village where the villagers only supply of clean water is five kilometers away. This meant that women and children would spend the whole day walking to and fro with water containers for the local supply.

Ray Badger, Leo Bourke and Phil Curin from Bridges in Cambridge accompanied me on this trip as volunteers. It was a great feeling to expose these men to the plight of the locals and to see the difference we made after building the tank. The village people came out every day to assist with the labour and to learn new skills. The local Chief organised his men and within a few hours we had a well-melded construction team. Others supplied us with a steady stream of fruit including pompamouse (like sweet grapefruit) coconuts and bananas.

Women and children would stand, watch and laugh at these crazy white men working in the heat and sweating profusely. Phil even had time to play soccer with the kids and left them a new soccer ball, which went down a treat. After the first day it was hard to get the kids to let Phil come back to work, as they wanted him to show them his skill and ball handling tricks.

The funniest thing though was communication. My French is negligible and although my Bislama is improving we had a lot of laughs getting our message across. We have been nicknamed “The Tankmen of Vanuatu”. The word is getting around on the bush telegraph and we were being addressed in other parts of the country as the “Tankmen”. Our second tank was at Norsup hospital, where we fixed an old tank, built twelve years earlier that always leaked.

After eighteen days we had built and fixed a total of 60,000 liters of water storage. Our total in the last two trips now exceeds 100,000 liters. What a difference.

Paul

March 2004 – Margaret Suman

Published by Margaret Suman on March 20, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

This month we discovered what a great concept job sharing is. I had to go to the States for an unexpected family matter and Anita continued running the nursery without a hitch. We are constantly amazed at how well we work together. It seems like we already know what the other is thinking before we actually have to verbalize it. It is a great comfort to know that when you do have to go away unexpectedly that things run along smoothly.

Seed collecting and cuttings
This is one of our busiest times because most plants produce seed only once a year and we have to make sure that we collect and process enough to propagate plants for the 2005-planting season. Seed has to be collected at just the right time or all your effort is wasted and this then must be catalogued, cleaned and stored correctly or it is useless.

We are also doing more cuttings this year as sometimes we get quicker results. We have been lucky enough to secure additional funding that has enabled us to hook up electricity to the glasshouse and put down heating pads. This equipment will assist us with cutting success.

Department of Conservation (DOC) Conservation Corps
We had a very successful day out with the DOC Conservation Corps helping them collect seed for their revegetation project at Boulder Beach on Otago Peninsula. We showed them various methods for raising plants including digging out small native seedlings, collecting leaf litter and gathering ripe seed.

We took them to see the largest and last remaining (unplanted) Matai on the Otago Peninsula. These large trees are in the middle of a paddock and with people power we scrabbled around on the ground to collect as much Matai seed as we could to propagate in the nursery. If we are lucky they will grow into large trees unthreatened by grazing animals.

The paddock with Matai in it was beside a piece of land that had been bought by DOC and retired from grazing 8 years ago. The difference between the two pieces of land was incredible, the land not grazed had such a diversity of plants including an understorey of trees and ferns. It was very easy to see what fencing out stock can do for forest regeneration.

Visit to Otapahi Reserve with Trustees Margaret Murrell and Pat Mark
Purchased by the Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust because it had penguins breeding on it, the last 6 years has been spent fencing out stock and restoring the natural vegetation. The trustee in charge of Otapahi, Margaret Murrell, wanted to walk around the site and take notes on what needed to be done, look at past plantings and discuss future plantings for the site. This is something we feel is very important to do. Too many times we go out to plant and don’t have time to actually look around and discuss vital information. We even got the chance to walk up to a remaining bush area to collect viable seeds and cuttings.

We also got the rare opportunity to see 3 generations of yellow-eyed penguin, an adult in moult, a juvenile (we rarely see these guys) and a big fat chick. It can be a very stressful time for adult penguins as they start their yearly moult so we were careful not to go too close.

Okia update
Anita was out at Okia (a Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust reserve) a few weekends ago and she was thrilled to see about 35 people on the beach and many with the laminated “information sheet” that we wrote and supplied 4 weeks ago. It appears activity is increasing at Okia but we feel the yellow-eyed penguins are safe from visitors as our guide directs them to other areas of the Reserve.

Cheers Margaret and Anita

March 2004 – Victoria Carpenter

Published by Victoria Carpenter on March 2, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

March got off to a roaring start with AUT ‘awarding’ us one of their third year film students to make a 10-minute documentary on behalf of the MDA. What a fantastic resource to help us educate people about Neuromuscular disorders. After meeting with our ‘Film Director’ it was decided a brief overview of the four most prolific conditions was the way to go. Sort of a Muscular Dystrophy 101, the best thing being that it could be used by both the educator and in a formal sponsorship presentation.

Filming started on the 26th of March at Mt Roskill Primary School where the Paralympics were being held. The crew and I were following the activities of one of our Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy boys, who has a fierce competitive spirit and won his race hands down. Over the next 6 weeks we will film another three clients, highlighting both their individual conditions and their determination to live independent and fulfilled lives.

I have had broad marketing exposure, but the world of Public Relations has been one that I have dallied in, until now. Adopting a brave face I contacted AUT and asked for training, so bravely in fact that I wangled 2 hours private tuition from the Head of the Department. In the end it was he who displayed bravery taking my jumble of ideas and helping me form them into something cogent, stopping just short of the communications plan – which he sent me off to write!

That had to take second place though to my trip to Australia to see our sister organization the MDA of NSW. They are a true success story and have turned themselves around over the last 2 years to become a slick well supported organization with Baz Lurhman as their patron and Laurie Daly doing advertisements and fundraisers for them. How had they done it? I planned to find out. The answer is hard work, networks and the far-reaching power of passion. I bled them dry, and I returned home enthusiastic and ready to let loose on the communications plan.

First though I took the opportunity to go with our Neuromuscular physiotherapist to one of the Kidzfirst clinics at Middlemore. It’s a day where all the children with Neuromuscular conditions come and see all the health care professionals who are associated with their conditions, everything from Neurologists to Occupational Therapists. It was an amazing day with everyone working tirelessly, often without a break, to see and speak to not only the kids but also their families and all associated caregivers and teachers aids.

I am not afraid of hard work or long hours, but I have never worked so hard emotionally before. I was exhausted and wrung out afterwards, mostly from the sheer burden of realizing that I couldn’t hug these kids and make everything better for them, in fact there was nothing that modern medicine could do for them full stop.

Finally I got the chance to put my money where my big mouth was when one my colleagues who has Muscular Dystrophy was presented with no option but to crawl onto a Tranzmetro Auckland train – that is if he wanted to get on at all. Such despicable prejudice from an employee, when the train is clearly available for use by the disabled! Well the MDA did its best to kick up as much of a media storm as it could, TV, Newspapers, Radio, Talkback we did it all, and we followed it up and will continue to do so for as long as the story has legs, which looks like it could be for some time yet.

Victoria

March 2004 – Tracey Napa

Published by Tracey Napa on March 2, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

My first month at Deaf Mental Health Service has been a time for training and also networking in the community, both facets of which I have found very interesting.

This week I attended a two-day first aid course, which was both fun and informative. Our teacher, Roy Malone had an excellent sense of humor and had us in stitches as he described hilarious anecdotes of his various rescue experiences, and demonstrated the correct and incorrect ways to tend to patients in an emergency situation. I now feel confident to take the initiative and administer the necessary medical aid if I am ever required to.

In addition to the first aid course I have had one-on-one computer training and completed my end of term assessments for the intermediate level New Zealand sign classes.

To further improve my signing I went along with fellow students to the Deaf Club for a social night. One of the best avenues to Deaf culture is to socialize at the Balmoral Deaf Club on Friday nights. I always recognize familiar faces and get to catch up with Deaf friends in their own language. I’m now looking forward to starting the advanced level of New Zealand sign language class at Waitakere College.

At the first aid training I also met some other Richmond fellowship staff members who work in mental health residential support houses, and chatted to them about client centered, self initiated rehabilitation programs, discussing how internal confirmations must be in place in order for positive reinforcements to make progress in the lives of individuals.

I have thoroughly enjoyed making contact with other Health professionals in the community this month. I visited The Mental Health Foundation, which has an excellent selection of resources, as well as various mental health community centers and Te Atarau and Taharoto hospitals.

My intention was to disseminate some current information about our service and also to collect resources that can be used as visual aids for our Deaf clients. I have been pleasantly received and given many great resources that can be used for the promotion of mental well-being and help breakdown stigmatisation of mental illness in the wider community.

It is more prevalent than we may realize so public acceptance is as important as self-understanding. Hopefully discrimination is becoming a thing of the past, especially considering that 1 in 5 people suffer from some kind of disability and that all of us at some stage of life will experience it.

Tracey