Almost stumbled

This was quite a difficult week. It has not been helped by the failure of our modem which means we have not been able to communicate with the outside world. We planned a quiet day at home on Saturday. Irene visited a’ fund raising fete’ for the new St Andrews church which included old favourites such as ‘splat the rat’ (not a real one!), and local favourites such as, ‘find and pick a pen up whilst blind-folded’ which seemed a hit with everyone. Malcolm stayed at home and spent a long time trying to download a user manual for a cash machine, using Simon Walton’s modem, because an engineer had come 25 miles from Dodoma to programme the machine but had brought the wrong manual.

Sunday was the fund raising service for St Andrew’s church. Enough was raised to complete the building – over 500,000 shillings (£200). The ‘highlight’ was Malcolm presenting a gift from his home church – not too sure about the Swahili however – at one point instead of saying ‘they pray that God (Mungu) will use this 100,000 shillings to bless you it sounds more like ‘the pray that the Mongoose will use this 100,000 shillings to bless you’. (I wanted to attach a video but after 4 failures have given up - sorry). Still, the congregation seem to enjoy it. However it was a long day in the sun – about 4 hours.

More tiredness to come on Monday. It was the annual celebration of Florence Nightingale day when scores of nurses came from across the District. It was an afternoon of parade, speeches, a candlelight procession around wards followed by dinner (and more speeches). For some there was also a party going on to 2 am. This was probably the worst day for Malcolm. He was tired, wondering through several hours of speeches in Swahili what on earth he was doing here. That day he had heard that the Magistrate hearing the case for recovery of NSSF (Tanzanian National Insurance) debt that the Hospital must pay £20 million shillings by Monday 26^th – an impossibility. It seems very difficult even to pay the Tsh 7m he promised the Inspector by the end of the month, pay PAYE to the tax man and then pay the staff their salaries for May. All in all he hit the 3 week wall that probably most people starting a new job experience – added to a different culture and language. However, by the end of the week, as he has got stuck into the Budget for 2008/09, things have improved – not that the finances are any better but he is growing more confident in dealing with it (or surviving it!).

Irene has also had a tiring week. She has spent most of the time in the filing room to ‘supervise’ people putting the 50,000 or so files into numerical order – however its been more ‘doing’ than supervising. A number of staff and nursing students have been along to sort a handful of files into order for 100 shillings a bundle, but almost all have found it too hard and given up. Even the filing clerks, employed to sort files, are finding it difficult. Numbers are not a strong point for Tanzanians!!! And to make things worse she has found out that so far only about half the files have been brought up to the store-room.

And the oven has broken down!!

For a bit of relief Irene went with the Hospital Nurse Tutor to the village to speak to a ‘fundi’ (craftsman) to discuss making a dress for about Tsh 9000 for the material (£4) and Tsh 4,000 for Labour. (£1.60). She is thinking about it – doesn’t want to waste money!!!. We were also invited to dinner with a lady who works at the local secondary school, with a Dutch neighbour (Corrie, the tall lady in the video walking inside the new church), an American priest from a neighbouring village and a couple from Australia helping with the priest’s project to re-establish plants and trees in the village. This is a multi-cultural location!!!

So – what could next week bring:

- Saturday - A shopping trip to Dodoma with lunch at the Hospital Manager’s house.

- more work on sorting out the Hospital’s budget in preparation for a meeting with the Diocese Finance Board sometime in the next fortnight

- more filing for Irene (a regular item for the next few weeks (months))

- and Malcolm still needs to find a dentist to replace a bridge!!!!!