"The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience."
- Tom Hiddleston
Well, that wasn't clever.
Tom Hiddleston reports on visiting Guinea for UNICEF
by Frances Wasem / 7 March 2013
Earlier this year, Tom Hiddleston was asked to join UNICEF UK in Guinea, in West Africa. The actor travelled across the country by car, visiting UNICEF projects, learning about their work for children on the ground. Tom then wrote blogs and posted on Twitter (as far as the limited internet allowed) in an effort to highlight the plight of children in Guinea. Now back in London, Tom has written a retrospective account, exclusively for Bazaar, about his extraordinary trip and life changing experience
During my first two days, I experienced joy and sadness in equal measure. I was delighted, enlightened, and confused. The UNICEF team in Guinea gave me the most comprehensive introduction to their programmes for children, and a deeply complex picture of life began to emerge.
CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM TOM HIDDLESTON’S UNICEF TRIP
I immediately got a real sense of one of the biggest challenges that children face in the country: hunger and malnutrition. When a baby doesn’t receive the right nutrients in the first thousand days of life, it can irreversibly ‘stunt’ their physical and emotional development. They will grow up unable to realise their full potential, so that even if hunger doesn’t take their life, it will almost certainly take away their future.
One of the first places we visited was the National Institute of Child Health and Nutrition (INSE) in the Donka Hospital in Conakry. Here I met some of Guinea’s most experienced doctors and child-care specialists, in whose charge are some of the most severely malnourished children. Seeing these children immediately tempered any surges of adventurous adrenalin that I’d felt about travelling in West Africa; I was simply overwhelmed by seeing so many small infants in such great need.
One small ward, about the size of a single room, housed at least twenty children, some of whom had slim chances of survival. Their arms and legs were indescribably thin, their cheeks tear-stained, their skin a harrowing, slate-grey. Most shocking to me was the speed and urgency of their breathing, asleep or awake, it was uniformly unsettled and uneven. When you see a child struggling so hard simply to breathe, it makes your heart hurt. Most if not all had been admitted because of malnutrition, or a condition inherited from their mother’s malnutrition.
The doctors are doing everything they can, but they need more and better equipment, as well as greater capacity. In the ward of twenty children, there was one life-support machine supplying oxygen. Just one.
It was tough to get to sleep that night, remembering the sight of those children, but I had come expecting the week to be tough one, full of mixed emotions.
The next morning heralded an early start: a drive along the one main motorway in Guinea to the remote village of Loppe, to see UNICEF’s sanitation work, to meet the families who live there and use local wells and latrines. Separating water sources is vital to keep water wells clean and to protect them from run-off from the land in the rainy season, which is contaminated by animal waste.
This basic hygiene and good sanitation raises the standard of general health, and protects mothers and children from passing on disease. If there’s no bar of soap, a bucket of ash will do the trick. This is particularly crucial for children suffering from malnutrition. Diarrhoea, caused by drinking dirty water or bad sanitation, is one of the biggest killers of children. Even if they live, it can leave their weak, young bodies struggling for survival.
What happened next was one of the most uplifting experiences of my journey. I was invited into the home of a young family with one boy and two girls. They lived in a thatched roofed circular hut, under which was one singular room. Inside was a bed, which also served as bench and table. I compliment the mother and father on how well their children look, how strong they seem. Her elder daughter reminds me of my niece.
My travelling companion asked the mum if she was able to breastfeed her children. “Yes,” she says, “for six months, each of them”. How did you know to do that? I ask. “I walked to the centre de santé,” she replies, “when I was pregnant. They told me I should breastfeed. Also I heard it on the radio”. ‘That’s fantastic’, I say. I’d been alarmed how few women knew that breastfeeding for the first six months is extremely important for nutrition and to prevent malnutrition.
I then tell the father I’ve been looking at the village’s new water hygiene programme. He replies that it’s very important. He always tells his son he must wash his hands before eating.
I found it heartening and stirring to talk to a family, for whom life is hard, but who are making the best of things. It was so encouraging to know that messages about nutrition and hygiene were getting through.
One of the last stops we made on the journey across Guinea was also a happy one. At a school in Kouroussa – L’École Primaire Layiya – we were introduced to several classes of the best-behaved, attentive and sweet children I’d seen since I’d arrived. A little girl, in a red-checked school dress and braids in her hair, was so shy and smiley that she couldn’t even tell me her name. After the heart-breaking sight of the tiny babies in the Donka Hospital, seeing these children happy, healthy and so keen to learn left me feeling optimistic that children in Guinea (with the help of UNICEF) can grow up to realise their full potential.
Now that I am back to the hustle and bustle of London, I miss the warmth and people of West Africa and even wrap myself in a mosquito net each night. The week that I spent in Guinea was truly life changing. There, I made certain connections about the way the world works, and all the ways it doesn’t work: connections that I’ve been in search of for many years. Before my trip, child malnutrition, global hunger, water paucity, and poverty had been important issues but academic in my mind. Now, they are real, present and urgent.
I learned in Guinea that we are all responsible for the state of our world, particularly for the most disadvantaged women and children in it, struggling to survive simply because they do not have enough to eat. All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. Help me spread the word.
UNICEF UK is part of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, a great movement of individuals and organisations united to tackle global hunger in 2013. Please visit www.unicef.org.uk to find out more.
CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM TOM HIDDLESTON’S UNICEF TRIPSource: http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/going-out/who-what-where/unicef-supporter-tom-hiddleston-on-the-plight-of-children-in-guinea
A Preview of Tom Hiddleston’s Acceptance Speech at South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2013 and he SINGS a bit! (x)
2012: Total Film Hotlist - Hottest Actor (The Avengers, The Deep Blue Sea, Midnight in Paris).
2008: Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer in a play (Cymbeline).
2009: Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor in a play (Othello, Ivanov).
2012: Jameson Empire Award for Best Male Newcomer (Thor).
2012: Glamour Award for Man of the Year.
2013: Three If By Space Award for Best Actor in Science Fiction Film (The Avengers).
2013: The Times South Bank Sky Arts Award for Breakthrough in Television Drama (The Hollow Crown).
For an Asgardian, he doesn’t seem too concerned about guarding his ass at the moment.
Tom, you big slut, good for you.
“The best thing about being Loki is that he is my diametric opposite. Physically, he is a photo negative of who I am. Loki is dark and pale, and I am light and fair. Also spiritually I am not much like him either. Yet I feel an incredible freedom in playing him.” — Tom Hiddleston.
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