Letters from Overseas

September 2008

• Conselho Cristao de Mocambique
  Zambezia, Sector de Comunicacoes
  Ave Julius Nyerere 948, CP 400
  Quelimane MOCAMBIQUE

Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed.

Luke 5:18

We don't know how far those men had to lug the paralytic to where Jesus was. Then they had to lift the bed to the roof and lower it through the tiles. Probably the bed was something like what most rural Mozambicans have to use to get their sick to the nearest clinic: a cloth or a web of banana leaves fastened to two poles that four men carry. Since those biblical men carried rather than pushed it, certainly it had no wheels. And nowhere in the Bible do we find the word "ambulance."

In the district of Mopeia, along the Zambezi river, 92,800 people live in an area of 7,500 square km. Mopeia has one district hospital, six health posts, one doctor, and just one ambulance, which can't reach most communities because they haven't access roads, only tracks through savannah. So the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM) has been providing bicycle ambulances—bicycles pulling a stretcher on wheels. They're made in a workshop here in Quelimane. The basic design comes from the World Health Organization; CCM added a shade cover to protect the sufferer from intense tropical sunlight.

Bicycle ambulance

About 200 people turned up recently for the ceremony when CCM handed over a dozen more ambulances to the District Health Directorate, at the health post in a rural Mopeia community called 8 March (which is Mozambican Women's Day—appropriately, since many of the ambulance users are and will be pregnant women, about to give birth and facing complications). There were musicians with drums and rattles, dancers, government officials, the local chief or rainha (queen), and a Mozambican TV crew.

CCM works with the District Health Directorate to decide where each ambulance will be positioned, according to local needs and distances from clinics, and to organize and train a local ambulance committee. These usually include a local midwife and health-care community volunteers, responsible for its storage and maintenance, and for making sure it's always on call to be pedalled away in response to an emergency.

By making it possible for people in need to get to the nearest clinic, and get there sooner, every ambulance saves lives, every week. If there'd been ambulances like these in Palestine in Jesus' time, more sick believers would have gotten to him, and he would have been even busier at curing. From what we've seen of these vehicles, we're believers.

In mission and service,
Karen and Bill Butt

Karen and Bill Butt are United Church of Canada Overseas Personnel serving with Conselho Cristao de Mocambique in Mozambique. The work of this ecumenical partner and the work of overseas personnel are made possible through your gifts to the Mission and Service Fund of The United Church of Canada.