Making veterinary house calls in Tanzania with Dr. Maguo

Article and photos by Tony Mangia

Animal welfare in Tanzania seemed like a simple enough volunteer program to sign up for once I made the decision to “get away” this past fall during the pandemic, but I didn’t expect to find myself poking needles under fur and getting elbow deep in body fluids, all with the aspiration of helping keep creatures — including myself — safe in a remarkable land far away from my isolation bubble at home.

This was my eighth volunteer stint at different worldwide outposts over the past five years, but, this time, the excursion came with the threat of an invisible menace — namely COVID-19. 

Overseas volunteering is a proclivity I do twice a year for three to four weeks — with a  week or two of adventure mixed in. On this trip, I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro before my volunteering stint began and, like almost anyone else going anywhere nowadays, it was my first time traveling during a worldwide pandemic, so there was that added sense of risk as well.

Before leaving in September, I did get a flu shot and had considered getting a rabies pre-exposure immunization, after I was told I be working closely with animals, but the injection timeline — three shots spread out over 28 days — didn’t fit my schedule or my macho sense of immortality. So that inoculation was ignored — quite irrationally.

I would be spending two weeks with the International Volunteer Headquarters program in Arusha, Tanzania. IVHQ is a reputable organization with a variety of worldwide programs based out of New Zealand — six of which I already had satisfactorily completed with them. 

There was a standard orientation and meeting with some of the volunteers in other IVHQ programs (mostly childcare) my first night at the hostel in Arusha. Not surprisingly, COVID restrictions and worries had narrowed down the usually larger number of volunteers, but there were still about a dozen twenty-somethings from different locales such as Mexico, Switzerland, England and the US already there. IVHQ took a lot of care to safeguard its enlistees from the virus, as well their all-around safety. We were in good hands.

Each day, I would be picked up outside the home where I would be residing for almost three more weeks (There would be a four-day safari in-between). I preferred paying a little extra for a private homestay in order to avoid the noisier coming-and goings of the younger volunteers inside the group dorms. As a bonus, I get to live with, and get to know a local family.

On my first day, waiting outside the gate of my temporary home, Dr. Maguo — a genial, neat-looking man in khaki pants and button-down shirt with what already seemed a permanent smile — waved me over to his jeep-SUV hybrid with the PAWS (Protection of Animal Welfare Society) logo on the doors and tire cover.

Inside the vehicle were two other freewill engineers (my personal euphemism for us volunteers) — Liam — a 20-year-old from New Hampshire and Julien — a 75-year-old Canadian from Halifax — together, a nice combination of polar-generational perspectives in the mix. 

Liam had already been in Arusha with his wife Jordan for a few weeks and the young couple planned to spend the next four months in Tanzania. Julien — a retired dentist — was, like myself, on his first day of the job.

The doctor gave us a brief background of his experience and explanation of his official duties — with a fairly impressive command of English — while we drove to our first assignment.  His ancestors came from the Chagga tribe — the second largest group in Tanzania behind the Sukuma — and he has a masters degree in zoology and a BS in environmental science (both from Atlantic International University in Honolulu) plus a doctorate in veterinary medicine. He grew up around Arusha and has been working as a veterinarian since 1990. 

I found myself addressing him as Doc in some casual settings. He didn’t seem to mind.

Doc and his wife Evelyne established Elang'ata Agro-Vet Services — legally registered by the Tanzania Government — in 1997 as a way to promote animal rights and provide for their welfare, while at the same time educate people by offering advice and free veterinary services.

Since 2010, Dr. Maguo has been working as the District Animal Welfare Inspector in Arusha. Prior to this he was the district subject matter specialist in disease control, meat hygiene and inspection, artificial insemination and small and large animal production.

To put it mildly, he was, and is, a dedicated animal specialist whose enthusiasm for his work is well … infectious.

Elang’ata Agrovet provides a number of animal welfare services and sells veterinary supplies and medicines, but the one crusade that Dr. Maguo, as founder of Arusha Society for the Protection of Animals, spends a great deal of time on is combating the scourge of rabies — known as Kichaa cha Mbwa Kinaua or “madness of dog” in its Kiswahili name —  as much as his resources allow. We just called it Kichaa for short.

Dr. Maguo has been taking on volunteers like Liam, Julien and I to help in his quest for about 10 years now. 

For the most part, like an old-fashioned country doctor, he does mostly personal house calls — only with pets and livestock. But, when Dr. Maguo does mass dog vaccinations and promotes rabies prevention in the temporary rural health centers he sets up around Arusha, it turns into an amazingly grand scene. 

Until then, we would be making the rounds with Dr. Maguo — watching and learning — during the house calls.

[more]

Seeing Tanzania during pandemic made it more than an adventure

 Article and Photos by Tony Mangia 

There weren’t too many countries in the world accepting visitors when I made a concerted effort to escape from my COVID-19 cocoon at home this past spring. Then, after languishing on my own throughout the summer, a September window of opportunity to get away from the isolation arose, and I broke out my cobwebbed passport and made plans for Tanzania.

My previous plans for an overseas expedition in April were dashed — like so many others were — when flight limitations, the fear of contacting and, possibly, spreading COVID or finding myself stranded in a foreign quarantine ward were, for lack of a better phrase, at a fever pitch.

So, during the summer months, I watched as coronavirus cases spiked and subsided around the globe, even wondering if I would ever be able to travel overseas again without all the excess baggage a person would now need to bring along — namely COVID plus all of the concerns, and even guilt, associated with it. 

In all honesty, traveling with the pandemic scare only added to my sense of adventure and the urgency to leave.

Meanwhile, I waited patiently, somberly gazing at my computer screen, reliving photos of my past faraway journeys and researching all I could about the virus, until I contacted a doctor friend (an infectious disease specialist) who assured me it was okay to travel, but stick to the standard precautions like masks, hand-cleaning and social distancing. As simple as those well publicized safeguards were, her professional reassurance and tone went a long way in helping to make my decision. So, after months of anxious, self-imposed seclusion at home and, after Tanzania re-opened its borders, my mid-September take-off couldn’t come soon enough.

And it would be worth every bit of the precautionary frustration and health advisory red tape just to break free of my tiny quarantine bubble.

My September-October itinerary would include a two-week animal welfare volunteering stint in Arusha sandwiched between a seven-day climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro and four-day safari in Serengeti National Park.

Looking back, I don’t know what was a crazier idea — going to Tanzania and attempting a world-class climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro or just going to Tanzania during a world-wide pandemic in the first place?

But also, in retrospect, the global virus — which had basically kept us all locked up at home — was a catalyst fueling a desire to challenge myself and take more risks, especially anywhere far away.

And what better way to isolate and break the boredom of self-quarantine than making a solo climb on the deserted trails of a lone mountain? 

Talk about taking social distancing to an extreme. 

It would be my first time in Tanzania, so it goes without saying that the climb up Kilimanjaro would be a new accomplishment. I did a safari in Kenya a few years ago, but, even so, whenever you have a chance to see the wildlife of Africa up close, you do it.

And the volunteer program, well … who knew what to expect dealing with that?

I did get a seasonal flu shot in advance and, after being informed I would be physically handling many different animal breeds in the volunteer program, I considered getting a rabies pre-exposure immunization, as well. But that injection’s timeline — three shots spread out over 28 days — didn’t fit my schedule or my macho sense of immortality. So that inoculation was, quite irrationally, ignored.

So, despite that bit of recklessness, the trip was on. I packed the normal essentials plus those hard-to-find-over-there extras: headlamp, batteries and baby wipes. Then I added some new first-time carry-ons — including about a dozen face masks, rubber gloves and a half-dozen, pocket-sized bottles of hand sanitizer — to what I usually pack in my luggage.

A few maddening domestic flight changes by the airline (Departure from Dallas, then Chicago, then New York City) in the pre-flight weeks and having the overseas take-off pushed back (from Thursday to Friday) and Tanzanian airport rerouted (Dar es Salaam Airport was restricted because of COVID) to Kilimanjaro International only days before takeoff turned my whole departure into a convoluted logistical mess.  And when I finally got to the Tampa check-in starting point, an agent then asked for my “negative COVID test.” 

Of course, I hadn’t gotten one.