Some finish their laps.

For us we have almost completed ‘half a lap’ as we are 3 months into our 6 month visit here – having spent time getting into the work we now have to start winding down. For others it’s a week of farewells as they finish their laps.

Last Saturday St Andrew’s church held a special service to say thank you to Simon, Laura and family who have now left Mvumi after 8 years work in the Hospital, church and community. The service was held in the new church building, and it had been hoped that it would also celebrate the opening of the new church – unfortunately the ‘fundis’ havn’t yet completed the roof so it was a very hot, open air service. I like to think one of the highlights was the singing of the ‘mzungu’ (white man’s) choir which the Tanzanians seemed to enjoy (or take pity on!!!). However the heart of the service was communion and the opportunity for the many people and organisations that Simon and Laura have helped over the years to express their gratitude.

For the Waltons it was a very hard fortnight. The children have spent most of their lives in Mvumi so were saying goodbye to childhood friends. For Simon and Laura as well as saying goodbye they also had the difficulty of moving their belongings into store, and travelling to Dar es Salaam twice in a week (400 miles each way) for the court case to approve the adoption of their son. And there is no Pickford’s here to help you move!! All done manually in the back of a car to a container in Dodoma.

We hope they can now relax for a week in Dar s Salaam before flying back to the UK for a year. However, Simon will be staying a bit longer as he now has to deal with UK bureaucracy (designed to make it difficult to enter the UK) to get an entry visa for their son’s Tanzanian passport. It sounds like this will take about 4 or 5 visits to the British embassy and will take a fortnight, which means he will return a week after Laura and the girls. More time to relax queuing in the embassy!!! Be positive – time for father-son bonding (the modern term for changing nappies, I think!!!)

It makes our challenge of moving into their house this weekend look easy – a few suitcases and a fridge – mustn’t complain!! We do ‘inherit’ some food and other items ,including joy O joy, tartare and horseradish sauce, a pumice stone, rhubarb (crumble here we come). But more exciting – hot water!!!!!! Also hens & ducks (eggs etc) and (temporarily) a German shepherd dog, Squashy. We hope to move in on Sunday.

What else has been happening. The tax inspectors completed their assessment of the Hospital on Tuesday, but worryingly said they will not be ready to brief us until later – this probably means there are lots of issues they need to sort out.

One surprise this week was when I visited the bank and discovered that the Hospital has 16 bank accounts – we knew about 11, which itself was too many. One of the reasons seems to be l lack of trust in the management so that departments decided the answer was they have their own accounts, and more – loss of control by the Diocese over the Hospital Funds, and a gift to the bank in charges. Some of the accounts seem to have been used for dubious purposes and several were overdrawn due to monthly bank charges. We’ve immediately closed 4 accounts and will review the rest. I’ve also arranged with the bank to receive monthly bank statements on them all (another first I think as the bank hasn’t been sending us any statements – we have to travel 40km to request them individually!!!!)

On Thursday we interviewed the applicant for Director of the Hospital schools. He has been offered a one year contract. One of the reasons for the appointment is to try and bring together the 3 schools each of which acts as if they are totally independent of the others, even to the extent they each employ their own cooks but use a common kitchen and dining hall.

On the way back from the interview we visited the depot of the Hospital Manager’s husband’s building company to see three snakes that had been captured. These included an 8 ft python and a puff adder. The python was skinned to make a belt for the manager.

The is a new video of the Hospital published on Youtube. See: http://www.youtube.com/v/EdT_LfTkxE0

We are looking forward to next week:
• feedback from the Tax Inspectors?
• we move into our new house – and have hot showers!
• Management committee will be briefed on the new structure and redundancies. I will report that there are not enough funds in the main account to pay July salaries unless management agree to use some of the money in their accounts to reduce their debts to the General Account