The going gets tougher

Oh the bliss of having a hot shower in the morning!

Moving into Simon's and Laura's house has been well worth the effort, we even have a double bed again (although when Irene wakes up in the middle of the night with no sheet she wonders if this is an advantage or not!) It is quite fun too having chickens and ducks in the back garden and, until the end of the week, a cow mooing gently in the front. We are acting as Foster parents for the ducks until their owner, the chaplain, returns from holiday – we often thought we were a bit quackers!

However, the cockerel who thinks that dawn is 3.30 in the morning and crows accordingly, is first in line for the cooking pot as far as Irene is concerned. His stay of execution has been because she doesn’t know if chickens continue to lay if a cockerel is not present and fresh eggs are very useful.

We are also temporarily looking after Squashy, the large Alsatian who is meant to be a guard dog but is as soft as a brush. Malcolm ‘enjoys’ taking him for walks in the evening, the local children are getting less afraid of the dog and he often has a bunch of them following him around.

Malcolm does feel a bit guilty about last weekend though. At one point some girls came round and were a bit annoying with Irene. A bit later some boys came into the garden shouting as if to make mischief and Malcolm told them to go away (‘Clear orf’). A bit later when he realised someone had taken 3 plastic bottles of water from the garden, which were being sterilised by the sun, did he realise the boy were shouting ‘ Maji, Maji’ or ‘ Water, water’ and they may have been warning that someone was taking them.

A couple of hens disappeared before we moved into the Walton’s (now Crawford’s) house. When Malcolm mentioned this to someone, ‘magically’, that night, one returned.
On Sunday St Andrews said goodbye to another key member, the Revd Meshack Sudayi. who has been temporary pastor for the last year. Although he leaves the church he remains chaplain to the Hospital.

Work continues much the same as usual. Irene spent an enjoyable day with the chaplain on Tuesday handing out clothes to the patients in the wards. She particularly enjoyed visiting the labour wards and seeing all the new born babies. There are lots of clothes for babies but very little for adults who probably are in more need. In the men’s ward they were incredibly grateful for just a pyjama top or hat and every one tried on their new clothes immediately. She is still waiting for the ‘fundis’ to put more shelves in the filing office so she can finally finish off the medical records.

On Friday she had extra exercise chasing an escaped chicken around the garden. Fortunately it wanted to return to its coop as much as she wanted it too, and eventually she managed to capture it with a little help from Squashy. It was also the day that the cow and Friday, the donkey were moved to their new home about 120km away. (There goes our source of cheap, fresh milk). This meant getting them onto the back of the hospital lorry along with their cow shed. This was quite a feat as the donkey in particular didn’t want to go and even Malcolm had to put the video camera down to give a hand.

Malcolm has had another tiring week trying to meet all the financial demands of the hospital. The main events were:

- a Management Committee meeting chaired by the Diocese General Secretary. This lasted for over 4 hours, and was the first time several members were told of the creation of a Director of Schools post and the redundancy of about 20 support staff. Malcolm also circulated a paper reporting that it would not be possible to pay July salaries unless and until the schools and eye department paid their monthly contributions, and some of the arrears in contributions that they hadn’t paid over the past 2 years. Most of the discussion was in Swahili, but it was clear that the department heads did not like being reminded that with the independence of managing their own bank accounts comes the responsibility of paying the agreed contributions to the hospital to pay for their staff

- a meeting with the District Medical Officer to discuss the financial effect of becoming a Designated District Hospital. It is clear the District Council doesn’t have all the information and it is likely that in a few weeks Malcolm and District Council staff will be going on a fact finding visit to a Hospital north of Dar es Salaam which has gone through a similar process

- on Thursday the Tax Inspectors reported their assessment – it was largely as Malcolm expected though still a big problem. The Task force knew the Hospital had not paid to the Revenues Authority about Tsh 25 million of PAYE deducted from staff – the Inspectors found another Tsh 20 million or so that should have been deducted from allowances but hadn’t been. This meant a total debt including penalties of Tsh 56 million. The problem is that they will now issue their report and the Hospital will be required to take action to clear the debt – when it already has other debts of about Tsh 200 million – that means total debts of about £100,000 or 40% of the Hospitals annual expenditure. It would be nice to have some money rather than empty bank accounts and debts!!!!

So, what happens next week:
- we prepare to go for R&R at the Dodoma MAF Guest House at the weekend
- Irene returns to the stores to do a stock-take
- Malcolm looks for money to pay July Salaries, and maybe will have to ask Management Committee what they want to do – i.e. which staff not to pay!!!!
- The Tax Inspectors issue their formal report