It´s been four years since the last expedition of Ears for the World to St Francis Xavier Hospital. The pandemic of SARS-COV-2 paralysed our lives and our cooperation projects, but the team of Ears for the World, still worked to find more audiphone which help continued to work for more hearing aids to help with deafness in what we consider our home in Africa, Foso.
We returned last month to the comforts of the European continent and our advanced homes, while a part of our heart remains there, until next year. Our Sisters, our patients, the hospital staff, and so many others who have given us life lessons, are now part of ourselves, and we are part of them, forever.
It has been a hard year, with 12 hours of work per day in which we have fitted 55 hearing aids valued at 90,000 €. A rewarding but also frustrating task, as we have not been able to treat all the people who needed it, either because their case was impossible or because, in the end, we had to decide who to fit and who not to fit, as there were only a few units left.
The decision was to prioritise children and older patients, but how could we tell a person who had been waiting for four days in the street that they had to go home without their hearing solution? This is something that still pains this team in the depths of their hearts.
To heal our wounds, we will try to remember all those children we have rescued from the world of silence, giving them a new chance in life. They are our driving force and the reason for the existence of Ears for the World People Rescue.
We would like to highlight our deepest thanks to Sister Georgina, Sister Margaret, Sister Jhoana and the rest of the sisters and hospital staff who worked every day to make us feel at home. Our deepest appreciation to all of them. They succeed with flying colours.
On the other hand, it was also a joy for us to see the progress of the works of the new maternity hospital, in which we have actively collaborated with the sale of our books, to then witness, with sadness, the harsh reality that these works are progressing at a slower pace than the deterioration of the old maternity hospital, where the situation is becoming unsustainable.
From this humble Non-Governmental Organisation for development, we promise to work hard so that our dream of one day seeing this new maternity ward in operation becomes a reality.