We had a relaxing weekend in Dodoma. On the Sunday we attended our first English church service for over 3 months at the cathedral. We wouldn’t normally get excited about a cathedral service in England and the service, though undertandable, did lack some of the excitement of the Swahili services at Mita. Still, we recognised most of the choruses and enjoyed the singing.
We also met Peter and Alison Roots for lunch. We last saw them in Chesham when they had returned to the UK for 6 months. They have just returned to Dodoma to work.
We had a surprise in store at the guest house. There was a party of 9 from Britain who were leading a children’s Holiday Club nearby. One of them, Nicky Biddal, appeared familiar, but it was only at the cathedral service when we introduced ourselves to the congregation that she realised where we had met before. We think we last met almost 20 years ago when we moved to Clacton and we went a few times to the Baptist church where her husband was the minister. I was amazed that as a pastor’s wife, who must have met thousand’s of people, she could recognise us after such a long period!! I have trouble recognising myself in the mirror when I get up each morning.
Back to Mvumi on Monday for a fairly routine week.
For Malcolm the ‘highlights’ at work were:
- getting enough money to pay the July payroll
- receiving the detailed working papers from the Revenues Authority showing how the Tsh 55 million assessment has been calculated. He’s now working on this to prepare a briefing paper for Management Committee and the Bishop. The formal assessment should be served next week and the Hospital will then have 30 days to pay or agree instalments
- issuing invoices to about 30 people who should have paid tsh 6000 per month (£2.50) for water but havn’t done so for many years. Although it doesn’t sound a lot for many it will be any enormous sum so there will probably need to be some sensitive negotiations. For the Hospital it is important to receive as much as possible to help with the financial problems
A key issue for the future financial well-being of the Hospital is being made a Dedicated District Hospital. It is still unclear about how much of the costs will then be paid by Government. It was planned to visit a similar Hospital near Dar es Salaam next Monday to find out their experiences when they became DDH. Unfortunately the visit has been postponed for a second time. The Hospital should have become DDH at the start of July - every months delay increases the Hospital’s debt by more than Tsh 10,000,000 progress is critical.
For Irene the ‘highlight’ at work was finishing the medical stock take and getting it inputted onto a spread sheet.
Grace and Esther – don’t read this bit!!!!
It’s been a landmark week for the chickens. With only 10 weeks before we leave we need to plan a reduction of stock. We felt justified as the 6 hens had only laid 3 eggs in the last fortnight and therefore the cost of feeding them is uneconomic. So on Wednesday Mama Asante and Irene selected one to feed us for a change. The strange thing is by the end of the day we found the remaining 5 hens had laid 5 eggs – have they realised what is going on and trying to prove that they are earning their keep???? Now it’s the cockerel who could be in trouble!!!
Although our hens are kept in an enclosed hen house there are other chickens that roam free. A couple of them also almost found themselves in the cooking pot when Irene noticed them in our garden eating some lettuce seedlings that she had planted. By the time she had scared them off, most of the seedlings had gone.
So, what are we looking forward to next week:
- a visit to a neighbouring village tomorrow to see some mission work there
- our first service in St Andrews new church building
- Irene still waiting (again) for more shelving so she can complete filing the medical Records
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