2017-02-08-noticia-tantaka-monkole

Mónica Domingo and Esther Ballesteros[ENF' 16] bought a ticket to fly to the Congo to help in the Monkole hospital during the last exams of the degree program. Those tickets took them to a world of hardship and transformed their lives. They are now delegates of Ebale Monkole, a solidarity project driven by several institutions to attend women and children in extreme poverty, in a country where 30,000 women die in childbirth each year and more than 20,000 children lose their lives during delivery or in the days that follow. Wherever they can, Monica and Esther recount their experience in Africa. The residents of high school Mayor Olabidea were so moved that they offered to make the concert they had scheduled as part of the cultural cycle of this semester, "Passages", a benefit. The concert was held on Monday, January 30 with full capacity in the auditorium of the Museum of the University of Navarra. They raised 4,000 € (of which, 1,000 € only from donations apart from the tickets), with which they will be able to finance 10 births.

 

What was the most difficult part of your experience at Monkole: the lack of material resources or being immersed in this status?

Esther: At the beginning, it is hard to learn to manage the lack of resources, not having water or electricity. But what affected me the most was at the level of staff. For example: to see a four year old girl with sickle cell disease, an anemia subject that causes leg ulcers, crying because of pain and that the morphine runs out and there is no more... That seemed very hard to me. They don't have the resources. In Europe we live at the service of things and there only people matter. Here the cell phone battery is running out and you are like crazy.

 

You have raised €4,000 for project Ebale Monkole, what were your expectations?

Monica: We were going in a bit blind. We were surprised for the better. We thought we would raise €2,000 or €3,000, but not that the Museum would be filled. The truth is that Olabidea has achieved everything: we went one day to tell them about our experience and they offered to donate what they raised in this concert that was scheduled within the cultural cycle of semester ["Pasajes"].

 

What is the reality for women in the Congo?

Monica: Complicated. We had time to talk to many people. We met quite a few girls who wanted to study medicine, because they had the possibility, but at the same time they told you: "I will work if my husband lets me". The status of women is that they have children and, if they can, they work. In the Congo there are very wealthy people and the rest, which is the great majority, live in rural areas, with an impressive poverty. And many mothers die in childbirth.

Mónica Domingo and Esther Ballesteros with a Monkole patient 

Why did you decide to go there?

Monica: The truth is that it was the last summer in which we could do this, because life then gets complicated. We were studying for finals one day and Esther told me that she wanted to do something in the summer, that she would like to go to Africa and that she had arranged to meet Miriam del Barrio, a nurse in the ICU of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra. We went together and Miriam drew us all the horrible things about the Congo, she didn't make it pretty: that there was no water, no electricity, that it was dangerous, that we wouldn't go on excursions... The next day, without even contacting Monkole, we bought the plane ticket. I think that if we had not bought it at that time, we would not have gone.

Esther: I had always wanted to do volunteer activities on vacation, and I thought it would be the last summer I could do this. I'm very square, but I didn't think about it, I met Moni, we talked with Miriam and we bought the ticket. I had the bug and it was a bike ride. We had to go.

 

What difficulties did you encounter?

Esther: When you get there you realize that the need is beastly, and it's not that you see poverty, it's that everything is. In that sense, we were very aware that it is very hard, but at the same time very beautiful. People in the summer wrote to us: "How envious, I wish it was me...". We thought: "You don't know what you are saying". We were not aware of what we were going to, and now I would repeat, but we do not know how to live without water, food and light. We had a great time, it has changed our lives, but really, and we had a lot of bad times, maybe more than good times.

Monica: "I'm leaving here" crossed our minds many times. It was very difficult for us to understand the way of working there, here they instill in us that we have to be very attentive to the patient and to the end, but there they move in a world of survival.

On the other hand, the cultural topic was a constant psychological fatigue. There everything catches your attention: men jumping over a car, a child playing in the garbage, a motorcycle with five people, a car without doors... But it helped us a lot to talk to each other.

 

How has Africa changed you?

Esther: It has taught me to play down what is not important: to put things in their place. Here we lose our way.

Monica: The people there have little and nothing ever happens, that's financial aid you to clear your head. It teaches you what we know from theory: that by giving you are happy. We always say to ourselves: "How happy we were in the Congo", because by thinking of others you receive so much more.

 

What story comes to mind when you think back to those months?

Esther: I was passing by a floor, I met a nurse who was going to bathe a patient and I offered to help him. I had no idea who he was, nor did he understand me because he only spoke Lingala [language spoken in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo]. We finished the bath and the nurse left. I stayed for a while talking to him in French. Then I was very impressed because, without understanding me, she took my hand, looked at me, said something I didn't understand in Lingala and it was a moment I don't know how to explain. We understood each other. The patient passed away that afternoon and I may have been the last person he spoke to.

Monica: A lady was about to give birth, eight centimeters dilated. She started to push, but it would not come out and the doctor told her that they were going to prepare an emergency cesarean; she was very upset, she wanted her husband to be there, because they are terribly afraid of a cesarean, and she just cried... They left us alone with her while they prepared everything -almost two hours went by-. Suddenly we heard a scream and the baby's head was out. We ran out to get the doctors. When the woman took her baby girl in her arms, she said that she had been born thanks to her two friends who had stayed to take care of her and gave us three kisses.