INDEPTH: A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE
Egyptian Odyssey
CBC News Online | February 20, 2004
Reporter: Adrienne Arsenault
From The National, Feb. 20, 2004
Among the ready phrases Egyptian tour guides pull out about the allure of seeing this ancient civilization there are a few well-used words about the draw of the Nile. It's said visitors find it hard to resist. One long look at this river of plenty means they are destined to return to Egypt.
In the case of Canadian Patricia Pruden, the hold is even stronger, she can't seem to leave this country now. It's a part of her.
The story of Patricia Pruden coming to Egypt starts the way so many others do. She was just looking for a new challenge, a change from her life in Winnipeg. So in 1997 she accepted a job in this exotic city along the Nile. It was only supposed to be for six months. But it's been seven years and she's still here. Not because Egypt has changed her but because, it seems, she is helping to change Egypt.
Her Egypt is not the place the tourists see; it's a place of the desperately poor, of children and of sickness.
Pruden is a children's chemotherapy nurse, a job tough enough in any country. But what she saw in Egypt shocked her. It was overwhelming – the numbers of kids and families.
When she first arrived she worked in the cramped quarters of Egypt's National Cancer Institute, the place where Egypt's sickest and poorest end up.
The rate of childhood cancer in Egypt is six times higher than it is in the West. Doctors really aren't sure why.
What's even more worrying is that even though the vast majority of children in North America survive their cancers, that's not so in Egypt, where only 40 per cent are likely to make it. They are ravaged by both the disease and infections.
Dr. Maha Mohammed Ibrahim one of the pediatric oncologists says, "You've got two kids in a bed, surgeries performed in a non-sterile environment. We are doing our best… we as doctors feel so depressed… sometimes we feel this is the end of life. What can we do? We have no choice, but we are doing our best."
Given the lack of money, space and equipment, a sterile environment is just a concept.
But something in Pruden and the doctors she was working with said they could do better. So quite simply, they hatched a plan that many said would never work, to finance and build the first hospital in the Middle East and Africa solely dedicated to children's cancer, a high-tech facility that would treat all kids for free.
"I wanted it to be the best hospital in the entire world," Pruden says. "I wanted it to be a place filled with magic, the most beautiful place because kids with cancer have so much pain and suffering."
So the nurse took on an additional role as a fundraiser, helping to set up a charity that in a few years has become the most successful fundraising effort in the history of Egypt.
A small team did it by tapping into a generous Egyptian spirit in ways no one here had seen before: the first mass mailings, the first television campaign and an annual festival that has filled Cairo's soccer stadiums.
All of their efforts have raised nearly a $100 million.
And always Patricia Pruden has been right in the middle of everything, cutting through the thick bureaucracy of a country where change is usually impossibly slow.
"We wanted to go beyond what anyone said we could do," she says. She recalls that almost everyone said to forget about it. "They just said Sherif Abul Nega is crazy and now there is this foreign Canadian woman who is also crazy."
Dr. Sherif Abul Nega was the man who first recruited her to come to Egypt, the man who relies on her to help complete the vision of a hospital, funded entirely by donations, caring for every child in need.
"Sometimes you get an impression about a whole country when you see a person," he says. "How Canadians are kind people, not fighters. They are kindhearted. They are open to the world. This is now our impression about the Canadians. [Pat is] very important, she is an ambassador."
Until the new hospital is built, there are still many children to care for. Some come to a small clinic where Pruden and Dr. Abul Nega work when they're not fundraising.
During rounds they are giving a cake to a little girl who is just ending her chemotherapy. "She's an old pro around here now, filled with advice for the new and frightened," the doctor says.
The ultimate goal that one day so many more will be better is not just a wild ambition anymore. The hospital is happening, rising from a donated patch of land in one of Cairo's poorest neighbourhoods.
In the concrete frame, Pruden says sees the possibility of a clean, spacious colourful place, with room for families for play and for hope.
"I see in my mind, my kids with cancer surrounding this building, protecting this building, plus all the other kids who've ever died of cancer, protecting this building. They are my little soldiers."
Once the first child is through this door, she says, finally her Egyptian odyssey will be over and Patricia Pruden can go home.
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| VIEWPOINT: |
|
|
| CBC RELATED: |
|
|
| QUICK FACTS: |
CUSO tracks volunteers from:
AFS Interculture Canada
Canadian Crossroads International.
Canada World Youth.
Centre for International Studies and Cooperation
Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO).
CUSO.
Oxfam Québec.
SUCO - Solidarité Union Coopération
VSO Voluntary Services Overseas Canada
World University Service of Canada (WUSC).
CUSO Statement
Collectively, our organizations send or receive more than 3,000 volunteers each year and remain in touch with more than 60,000 returned volunteers. These figures include significant numbers of volunteers from the South, but by and large they represent Canadians so concerned about the disparity between life here and life in poorer countries that they are willing to give up weeks, months or even years of their time to improve the world. Through our network of members and volunteers, we reach into almost every community in Canada, coast to coast to coast. Ours is a real, concrete presence for Canada around the world, often the only Canadian presence outside of capitals, or even in some entire countries.
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
