An Audiology Overview for 2005
Dear Bill and Tani,
What follows is a brief report of our work in January and February of 2005. Thank you so much for your support.
Masiphumelele is a black, informal settlement about 30 minutes south of Cape Town of about 20,000 mostly Xhosa people, who came from their homeland in the Eastern Cape looking for work the Western Cape. Except for a few, scattered Habitat for Humanity houses, most people live in one-room, flat-roofed shacks of corrugated metal and scrap wood. Generally, there are three or four shacks crowded onto a lot, with one freestanding toilet, one water spigot, and one electric line per lot.
2005 was our third trip to Masiphumelele. Our initial mission (2003) was to follow up on a grant made by our church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to help support an aids awareness research study, in Ukhanyo Primary School in Masiphumelele. The project was conducted by University of Cape Town researchers and supported by the Diana Princess of Wales Research Center. We were also to contact other Anglicans to see how we could strengthen bonds between our churches, and to help support the South Africa Anglican outreach for AIDS.
We met with many health professionals and university personnel to determine the needs re hearing. The Director of the Western Cape Township Health Centers said, “Doctor, our first concern is survival here.” I was invited and gave two lectures at the University of Cape Town, where I was asked if I had any used equipment to donate. We subsequently returned home and acquired nine used diagnostic, clinical audiometers. Our church shipped them to Cape Town University, and they are now being used in area hospitals. We were invited to meet the Minister of Health, and he publicly thanked us for the audiometers, and it was written up in the Cape Argus.
In 2004, we wrote a modest grant to the Starkey Foundation for four pieces of basic diagnostic audiometric equipment: otoscope with specula, portable audiometer, an impedance bridge, and an OAE. Within days, Bill Austin called me at home and said his contacts in South Africa would lend me whatever we needed, and he would provide hearing aids for anyone who needed them.
When we arrived in South Africa in January, 2005, we contacted Leigh and Yvonne Kassner of Medifix in Johannesburg, and they agreed to lend us an audiometer (Maico MA-24) an otoscope, Starkey 2000 OAE, impression material, boxes for mailing, audiograms, etc. In addition, Mike Norton, of Welsh Allen, generously loaned us a newer audiometer and a Welsh Allen hand-held impedance bridge. We met with Sister Johanna Honeywell, Head of the Mosoma Health Clinic in Masiphumelele, who welcomed us to test hearing referrals two days a week when an exam room was free.
We immediately started seeing patients, age 3 months (well-baby visits) to 70. We found the whole spectrum of hearing losses from mild to profound. We fit aids for three moderately severe losses and one severe to profound. The four township individuals who were fit with Starkey Foundation hearing aids were thrilled. We could have fit more, but Medifix had only eight hearing aids remaining from the Starkey Foundation.
Across the street from the Health Clinic, we met with the Principal of Ukhanyo Primary School (K-8), and we offered to screen the seventh grade. First he wanted us to test him and several of his teachers at the Health Clinic. We subsequently screened 150 seventh graders in a small, freestanding room called the Thinking Room. (The seventh grade has two teachers, 75 students per classroom, ranging from 12 to 17 years of age.) Please see appendix for reports to the school following our screening.
We have returned this year (2006) with continued support from the Starkey Foundation. Mike Murdock called me to say, “Tani said to make this happen.” The will loan me the same materials as last year but they have no more aids. I need a manual for the Starkey OAE 2000, as Yvonne and Leigh do not have one. Better yet would be a hand held OAE to demonstrate to hospitals and medical personnel in the Cape Town area the value of this single piece of equipment in screening newborns in hospitals, children in schools, and well-babies in township health clinics. If any more hearing aids will be available for me to fit, please let me know how to obtain them and from whom.
Bill and Tani, you have been moved to respond to the needs of thousands of hearing impaired individuals around the globe. Your miracles of generosity are legendary in the professional hearing world and beyond. This miracle you have enabled to happen here in Masiphumelele is little known, at this point.
We are eternally grateful to you for making this work possible. May you continue to be blessed with heart, health, and strength to carry on your work and your philanthropy for many years to come. God bless you both.
Warmest regards,
Rich and Mary Nodar
P.S. On a personal note, the religious focus of our mission is St. Matthew’s Chapelry, a group of about 100 Masiphumelele Anglicans, who worship together with a visiting priest in a rented room, each Sunday. Our home parish, St. Paul’s, is trying to support this group as they seek to become a parish and to build a church in Masiphumelele. There is no more land zoned for churches in the township, and the Anglican applications to buy land have been turned down three times. (If you read the NYT article, December 25, 2005, Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa Protest Sluggish Pace of Change, you will have an idea of the critical need for land for homes for tribal people, and the desperately poor conditions in which most of them have to live.)
Currently, we are working with St. Matthew’s on a plan to build a new building to be shared with Masiphumlele’s Habitat for Humanity on land leased to Habitat. In addition, every afternoon, from 2:30 to 5, we volunteer in the Masi library; Mary reads to, and with the children and helps with homework. (M.S. is in reading from Syracuse U. ) Rich teaches chess and coaches his newly formed Masi Knights Chess Team.
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Letters from Masiphumelele 