We are only Tourists here.

It seems strange being mere tourists, doing touristy things in Africa.

We remember learning at school about the many battles that the British fought here in the 19th century against the Zulus and Boers, and we had the chance to visit some of the Battlefields over a long weekend. Probably the best known battle was the subject of Michael Caine’s first film, Zulu , which was about the defence of the Rorke’s Drift Mission station in 1879. Not only was this of interest from a historical perspective (when about 100 British (mainly Welsh) soldiers held out against 4000 Zulus), but the site and original mud brick buildings might also have been similar to the first Mission station established in 1900 at Mvumi – out in the wilds of African countryside, miles from any other buildings other than scattered native huts. Unlike today when Mvumi has grown to a village of 12,000 or more people.

The defence of Rorkes Drift immediately followed the massacre of 1,000 British (mainly Welsh) troops at Isandlwana, about 9 miles away (the subject of a later film, Zulu Dawn). Our guide, Foy, explained the history of the war, which was initiated by the British in order to conquer territory. The Zulu king did all he could to prevent it and never understood why his friends, the British, wanted to fight.

Apart from that we are mainly lazying around. Malcolm has been working on some DVD’s including a video of the service at St Andrew’s Church on 4th October which he has posted on YouTube. It can be found by searching for ‘the crawford clan’ or by URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjXmZX3zCmE

On Sunday we return to Tanzania prior to preparing to return to England.

Farewells

Again – two blogs for the price of one.

It has been a hectic week packing up and saying farewell. One exciting piece of news was that our church in Chesham had raised at their harvest supper an enormous sum for the Hunger Fund here. Although wonderful it did give us the problem of how to get the money out of Dodoma’s ATMs before we leave and what to do with it, We felt the best thing would be to use half to distribute through the Anglican Churches in Mvumi, by increasing the number of families supported each month by 38, and by extending the support until June next year. The remainder we have asked to go to the Diocese Secondary School to help the poor families of children at the school who are sponsored because they are intelligent but don’t have money to pay secondary school fees.

To mark our departure from Mvumi our church invited us to a special meal after the Sunday service. Because a lot of money has already we past few months for the Hunger Fund and to complete the building we left small sums for each of the choirs and Sunday School, plus a cloth for the altar.

Our friends invited us to a farewell meal at the Dodoma Hotel on Sunday. This included a cake with the inscription ‘Thanks for all the fish’ which is a reference from ‘the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ which had to be explained to some.

And then we left on the next leg – the 8 hour coach ride to Dar es Salaam with our six suitcases and other various bags. Will we all arrive safely in England……….?

A Different World?????

If our operatic society were putting on a concert then there would be weeks of rehearsals, and at least one run through before the performance – but nor so in Tanzania. As we wrote last week, having seen a video of their performance in our house, the Mamajus Kwaya asked if they could come again the next Saturday to have not one, but 9 more songs videoed.

Naively Malcolm thought this would just be a run through in the house similar to the previous time. Not so. These were highly choreographed productions using the features of our garden including the child’s climbing frame. The nine songs were completed one after the other without a pause, to a backing tape they had produced themselves a few weeks earlier. And all this without a run through in the garden. It was difficult for Malcolm to keep track of what was going on.

Now all he has to do is produce some DVD’s.

On Sunday we began the long journey via Dodoma and Dar es Salaam to Pretoria for a holiday with Malcolm’s sister, Helen and Partner Chris. She started work at the British Consulate about 3 months ago. Some things are familiar in Africa. The way that as we left the plane to walk the long corridors to find our baggage, at one point we passed a group of 6 staff idly chatting to walk down a corridor to meet other passengers coming towards us as the door at the end was locked so they assumed we’d gone the wrong way – but it was simply the staff had forgotten to unlock the door. This is Africa!

Pretoria in many ways is like England. The weather is temperate, as they move from spring to summer. The grass is green and the buildings are smart and European. However, we have been warned that it is not as safe here as in Europe or Tanzania with concerns about mugging. Helens house is in a gated compound with guards and electric fences. An automated finger print reader is used to allow people in or out – as neither of us are registered in effect we are locked in!!!!!
We went for a trip on a ‘Hop on, Hop off’ tour bus that passes some of the tourist’s spots in Pretoria. This was billed as having a ‘Professional Tour Guide’ to explain the history of Pretoria. Unfortunately the bus was 20 minutes late and there was no tour guide but simply western pop music. However, the ticket was only £5 so it was good value and we were almost the only customers. We visited the Parliament building and the monument celebrating the first Dutch trekkers who traveled by ox-wagon train into the interior of South Africa to found states such as the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

Next week we plan a few days visiting battlefields near Ladysmith and Rourkes Drift before returning to Tanzania on Sunday.

Homeward Bound?

Two blogs for the price of one this week!!

This weekend we start of long journey back to England. The Hospital hade a farewell lunch for us on Thursday, when we were presented with a kanga and some material for Malcolm to have a shirt made – though we might find a better use for it as it is a bit bright for Western fashion, and Malcolm is known fro his sartorial taste!!!!! Ir ene has spent most of the week packing up. What we are not taking back to England, or a few item we are leaving in case we return to Tanzania, we have given to friends or our house workers.

When a ‘mzungu’ leaves a common experience is to have a long series of visitors who come to say goodbye – which is very nice. Unfortunately it is also their last opportunity to ask for money so it does get a bit wearing as they don’t realize that although that is normal for their own culture, for westerners it feels like all they want is our money. Hey ho – you get used to it.
When Dr Corrie left a few weeks ago she did the sensible thing. For the last 2 or 3 weeks she only did limited work at the Hospital because the other staff would have to cope when she left, so it was better if they coped whilst she was there to help.

Did Malcolm do the sensible thing? Did he heck!

Whenever he leaves a job he always tries to do lots of things at the end. In addition to sorting out the accounts of the Eye Department, answering auditors queries, sorting out PAYE annual returns, leaving notes on what to do when the September payroll is received from Government (which has not arrived yet), write a final report on action taken for the Medical Officer in Charge and a host of other things he was also pleased to do some work on a system for the Secondary School accounts and payroll. Still, he thinks he has dealt with everything.

After a farewell at our church, St Andrews, on Sunday we go to Dodsoma for the evening and a meal with friends at the Dodoma Hotel. Monday a 600km coach ride to dare s Salaam and on Tuesday we fly to Johannesburg for the 60km drive to Pretoria.We might be on our way back to England – but its in the wrong direction!

This is Tanzania!

The temperature is in the early 40s and climbing, electricity cuts are getting more frequent, water is getting scarcer, there’s been an outbreak of cholera on the edge of the district and 2 men in Malcolm’s office have typhoid; time to go home?

But not yet.

Power cuts are getting more and more frequent. A few weeks ago Malcolm spoke to the General Manager of the local electricity company. Apparently the problem is that there is too much demand on the national grid for the cables to handle and so they are instructed to schedule cuts in parts of the network. He did assure us that there would be no more than 2 cuts a week. This week we had 3, the longest being all day Friday – which is a bit of a problem as that is one day when operations are carried out and the Hospital has limited back-up. Would you fancy having an operation not knowing if the equipment was going to stop working because of a power cut? Fortunately, in a sense, electrical equipment is limited here.

Two of the cuts were at dusk, from 6.30pm, just when Irene was cooking dinner. Having been shown how wagogo cook she quickly adapted to a charcoal fire to cook the meals, and even boiled a cup of tea on a wood fire on Friday. Who needs an Aga?

And power cuts mean less water as it is pumped by the Hospital from a borehole.

Malcolm was feeling a bit feverish and started coughing on Thursday so for peace of mind went to have a routine malaria test. It was negative but apparently a virus is affecting many people in the village. Has swine flu arrived in Tanzania? We hope not, but it probably would seem a blessing compared to Malaria, Typhoid, cholera………….

Mama Asante invited us for a meal. The chicken we had given her the previous week was there – on the plates and we provided the soda (which is usually drunk as a ‘pudding’. Her husband was there, as well as her 2 youngest children, Iluma and Asante.

Last Sunday we were invited to the Good Samaritan church. One of the memorable items in the service was their ‘Mamas’ choir which played a traditional chigogo drumming item. For mainly pensioners it was a very lively performance! Unfortunately Malcolm hadn’t taken his video camera so only got a poor quality video on his digital camera. It might be an activity that the Mother’s Union might want to take up in England.

On Wednesday we had a ‘video evening’ with a difference. Very few people have electricity in the village so they have no TVs or DVD players. We therefore invited the Mamajus choir round to see the videos of their singing at our house 2 weeks ago, and other videos Malcolm has taken of the church over the past 18 months. It was such a novelty that they wanted to see themselves singing 5 times. The first time was in silence as for some it was the first time they had seen moving images of themselves. Each time the video was shown there were more and more comments and laughter. The next problem is, they want to return this Saturday and record on video more songs!!!

It continues to be fun dealing with the bank. Changing cheque signatories gets more and more difficult. Over a month ago we started the process of replacing Dr Corrie with Dr James. The Hospital cashier has been sent away 3 times by the bank;, each time they want something more. We have got the form completed, signatory card completed, photograph taken, Tanzanian ID card, letter from Village Councillor that the person is who he says he is, evidence of residenc video Manajusy, copy of minutes of Hospital committee approving change, letter from me saying Committee approved change, letter from Diocese Accountant approving change. A few weeks ago I joked to our Chief Cashier that the next thing they will want is Dr James’ little finger. This time, the new requirement is that they need him to travel 40km to Dodoma so that he can have his fingerprint taken (the old fashioned way with blue ink). It wouldn’t be so bad but they don’t take fingerprints on cheques and there probably is nobody at the bank skilled in checking fingerprints. In the meantime we are trying to pay suppliers to keep the HIV clinic open. This is Tanzania!

Next week we have a break as we visit Malcolm’s sister in South Africa. From what we can gather although it is still Africa, Pretoria will be a completely different way of life to what we are used to here. Our Swahili will be no use whatsoever (except to confuse touts maybe) and it does not sound so peaceful – we shall see.

It's party time!!!!!

It’s been a week of celebrations.

On Saturday we were overwhelmed with the amount of effort and organisation put in by members of the Mamajus choir for our “farewell do”. The first youngsters arrived with huge cooking pots and ingredients at about 10.30 in the morning and hung around until Mama Asante arrived to set the whole thing in motion, at about 1. Big fires were lit in the garden and the pots balanced on stones, and cooking commenced. At around 4 every thing was ready. Malcolm, Irene, Julia and her gap student, plus the school chaplain and officials of the choir sat at the “top table” whilst about 35 members of the choir squashed into the lounge to sing and dance. We then all enjoyed the rice, meat and mchicha, a type of spinach, and a reprise was sung. Unbeknown to the choir Julia had brought tubs of ice cream for everyone, the cheer from the younger choir members when they saw this was deafening. Irene particularly enjoyed watching the face of a woman as she tasted ice cream for the first time! At the end there were a few speeches and they presented us with a tape of their music. We hope they enjoyed themselves as much as we did and we wont forget all the trouble they went to on our behalf. A video has been posted on Youtube (search for thecrawfordclan) - a taster is available below.

On Monday it was a public, muslim holiday for Eid and so we were able to attend a confirmation at St. Andrews church which happened to be on the same day. It was only the previous Friday when we were reminded that it might be a holiday depending on when the new moon is first sighted. This takes a bit getting used to when you come from a country where even the traditional Whitsun holiday is moved to the last Monday in May to be convenient, and you assume the moon has been researched for long enough to be able to forecast its cycles in advance.

The Bishop presided at the service. About 40 people, teenagers and older, were confirmed. The Bishop’s wife sat next to us and gave us a detailed translation of his sermon. She said he always used the same sermon at each confirmation during the year, tackling subjects that the local ministers were either afraid to speak on or didn’t understand. This was the 101st confirmation service this year, and therefore it was the 101st time he’d given this particular talk - and the confirmations continue until mid December! She also said that they put on a lot of weight during the confirmation season as all the churches gave them meals. She knew the sermon so well after hearing it 100 times before that several times during translation she apologised she had got ahead of her husband.

Packing has begun and Irene is trying to work out a way of protecting all the wooden carvings Malcolm has been “persuaded” to buy by the local carvers. She has yet to start thinking about the paintings! The final 3 chickens left us on Wednesday, 1 to Mama Asante, 1 to Stepheni, our gardener; and one to Zenna who has been giving us weekly Kiswahili lessons. We know she wants to keep her hen for eggs but suspect the others have already been eaten. Irene is missing them as they were the nearest thing she had to pets! Malcolm is interested in the financial aspects. The final, net cost of producing in total 184 eggs, assuming each surviving chicken is worth £2, is £38 or over 20p each. As Eegs in the local market are no more than 10p each, and the cost of labour isn’t taken into account this was not a sound business venture. But then pets are never a sound business venture unless you own a pet shop!!!,

Malcolm is still trying to get a quart in a pint pot as regards to work He has many things he wants to finish off before leaving and time just seems to be running away from him. This is not unusual for him, and no doubt he will leave thinking he has not done enough – and no doubt the work of the Hospital will continue.

Spot the differences

Irene had a birthday on Friday.

One of the features of Tanzanian fashion is that vibrant, bright (to us garish) colours are preferred. This applies to birthday cards where bright flowers are popular. Irene had several bought in Tanzania, and one sent from England – can you spot the difference?

Mvumi has changed over the years, but in many cases this has been slow and differences small. The first qualified doctor was appointed in 1938; an Australian called Paul White who is best known for writing the series of ‘Jungle Doctor’ books for children popular in the 1960’s. His first book, "Doctor of Tanganyika" published in 1942, describes his experiences in Mvumi, and includes several black and white photographs.

The first church here was St Peters, originally a whitewashed building. It is still standing cleaned to its original stone (but behind a modern building) in front of the former doctor’s house and girls boarding school which are now used for storage by the Secondary school. Still standing too is the Baobob tree – but this is hardly surprising as they live for over 1000 years and are revered by villagers, to the extent that some are used as shrines for pagan beliefs.

For many living conditions are also the same. Most villagers, particularly the poorer ones, live in a traditional houses made of a wooden frame and mud bricks supporting a flat, twig and mud covered roof, Windows are small, which at least helps to keep the houses cool and the mosquitoes out. If they are wealthy they aspire to a house of concrete blocks with a corrugated iron roof.

An end of an era was marked when Corrie left the Hospital. Paul White was the first Doctor here – Corrie is the last western doctor (at least for the time being). For many years the Hospital was managed by medical missionaries who knew that one of their roles was to train and develop Tanzanians to take over the running of the Hospital. This is now complete. However, although there are Tanzanian ‘Doctors’ at the Hospital they would not be recognised as such by western Hospitals as they have only 3 years basic training.

There was also a difference to our cooking arrangements on Irene’s birthday, In the morning we had one of our regular electric power cuts. Irene was desperate for a cup of tea and soup for lunch, and so Mama Asante was delighted to cook over a traditional, Gogo, fire.

Next week we are to have a farewell meal with the Mamajus choir from St Andrews church. We will also need to decide what to do with our 3 remaining hens. Since the last update 2 weeks ago there have been about 28 more eggs, and we had Jet for dinner (two dinners). Her value was about £2 so the net cost for 178 eggs is £44 – 25p each.

PS – although Irene is a year older it’s hard to ‘Spot the difference’ with her!!!

A chnage of culture.

"Look!! I’ve just seen an elephant. Or maybe it was a giraffe! Or a man in grey trousers".

It is difficult for an untrained eye to spot animals in a safari park. For our farewell tour with Corrie we stayed in a luxury tented safari camp inside Mikumi Nature Reserve. Luxury as each of the large tents are within a wooden shelter (tented bandas) , and have beds, electricity, showers and toilets. And there is excellent, western food. This was all part of preparing Corrie for her return to western culture

Although inside the park, and not allowed to walk outside on our own, we were well away from any large animals and had panoramic views over the Mikumi plains. It was absolutely quiet except the occasional sound of an animal or bird.

Although we failed to see any leopards (who are mainly nocturnal animals) we did see the only surviving hartebeest living in Mikumi and a fresh lion kill. Corrie also managed to see 5 birds she had never seen before. Unfortunately she also attracted a number of tse-tse flies and acquired a number of painful stings

After two nights there we moved on to Iringa.

Travelling between towns in Tanzania is fairly convenient as there are many private coach companies. Conductors make money by taking on extra passengers between bus stations, and pocketing the fares. Our experiences included:

- the police check-point which forced 2 passengers without seats to get off the bus, only to be picked up again 200 yards down the road, in sight of the check-point, to the cheers of other passengers
- as we got on a coach, as arranged, outside Mikumi, being offered the alternative of paying £6 each without a ticket or £9 with a ticket. Having said ‘£9 with ticket’ later being told by the conductor we could pick up the ticket next day in Iringa – some chance!!! We didn’t argue as we wanted his help getting off before the bus station. Later found that the correct fare was £6.
- Waiting 2 hours at the side of the road for the 10 am bus to pick us up – which it did at 11.30 am
- 8 hour bus journey back to Dodoma accompanied by very loud Tanzanian soap operas, comedy shows and a Jet Li film

We stayed for 4 nights at a ‘not so luxury’ but excellent camp site outside Iringa (tented bandas and shared toilets but excellent food). This was all part of Corries adjustment back to western culture – BBC World news on TV, cooked breakfasts, cappuccino coffee, cold weather (Iringa is in the southern mountains) and being surrounded by Mzungus. She also added 17 to her new bird sightings.

We visited a couple of tourist attractions. South of Iringa is one of Tanzania’s few historical sites. A few years ago the clearance of a former silted river revealed a horde of stone age artefacts – stone knives, axes, tools etc. Within 100 yards is a second gorge with remarkable sand-stone pillars formed by an old river which washed away the surrounding stone but left pillars where there was a large, impervious boulder at the top. A mini Cheddar Gorge.

Despite the spectacular settings, and the fact that Tanzania has very little alternative built history, we were the only visitors there. A problem in Tanzania is that so often things aren’t done just right. Money had been invested in building a very smart, modern museum and large car park. However the access track from the main trunk road was a narrow, bumpy 400 yard mud track impossible to use without a 4 wheel drive car. Impassable for coaches. The other oddity was that although there are comparably few electricity lines in Tanzania, the decision had been taken to erect large pylons over the site – equivalent to erecting pylons over Stonehenge!!!!

On Friday we went our separate ways – Corrie to Dar es Salaam for her flight to Manchester and us back to Mvumi. She is a good friend and we will miss her.

Next week – back to work and start to prepare for our return to England.

Farewells

Two years is a long time away from home.

This week the Hospital VSO Doctor, Dr Corrie, packed up to return to England after 2 years in Tanzania. For the last 18 months she has run the HIV clinic and been responsible for the obstetrics and gynaecology wards of the Hospital as well helping train the student clinical officers at the training school. For those who work in Africa for any length of time the experience can be very frustrating. The novelty of a different culture soon goes thin and it can become very wearing because it feels that you are achieving little compared to what you know is possible, and Africans have a different view of priorities and relationships.

Her last weekend in Dodoma was spent saying goodbye to friends including going to a party with some of the many babies she has helped deliver here. She has carried out almost 200 operations including caesaerean and sterilisations.

It is also a bit of a milestone in the life of the Hospital. The first white doctor (from Australia) arrived when the Hospital first opened in 1938, and there has probably been a continuity of ‘western’ doctors since then – Dr Corrie is, for the time being, the end of that line. For the first time the Medical staff at the Hospital will be entirely Tanzanian with no-one being a qualified Doctor to European standards with 'Drs'having no more than 3 years basic training.

We had a special ‘farewell’ meal on Thursday night when the entire Mzungu community of Mvumi met – that is us, Dr Corrie, Julia and the two ‘gappies’ at the school Zoe and Hamish (who were also starting their return journey to England the next day). Irene baked a special cake, and our gift was a wooden carving of a doctor by one of the nearby villagers.

Irene had an interesting day visiting a nearby village nursery school, at Mgangwa. She listened to the children reciting their English lessons. Bearing in mind English is their third language (after Swahili and Chigogo) she was amazed at the language skills of the 3 to 5 year olds. Irene’s contribution was to teach them a song about colours; ‘I can sing a rainbow’. On the way there she also saw a whirlwind which we understand can be quite dangerous on occasions.

When we go for walks around the village there are usually 3 things that are shouted at us by the children:

‘Mzungu, mzungu’, or

‘I want money’, or

‘Picha, picha!’.

The first statement we either tend to ignore, or Malcolm tries to say in his best Swahili ‘Where? I don’t see a Mzungu’ which tends to confuse them.

The second we reply that we won’t give any money. The problem is that the more the children think that white people will give them money, the more they will pester them and the more they will expect to be given money rather than working for it.

When asked to have their picture taken, we often oblige. The children get excited about seeing their pictures instantly on a digital camera as almost all cameras here use film. There was just such an opportunity last Sunday when Malcolm went for a walk. A group of children, several of the girls carrying heavy buckets of food or water on their heads, were delighted


At work Malcolm has started to prepare for leaving. The annual audit is taking place at the Eye Department have eventually agreed to make their books available for audit along with those of the Hospital – not much of an achievement after almost 17 months! Malcolm also ‘hosted’ a seminar by NSSF to Hospital staff and staff from the secondary school to explain their entitlement to pensions, health care and maternity benefits. It seemed to go down well as many staff do not realise their rights – at least Malcolm thinks so as it was all in Swahili – except for his introduction.

Egg production from the remaining 4 hens has slowed down to about one a day. This means total of about 150 eggs costing £46 or just over 30p each.

Although the Hospital is saying goodbye to Corrie, we are not doing so just yet. On Saturday we go with her on safari to Mikumi nature reserve followed by a few days in Iringa – but more of that next week.

In the dark.

Last weekend was spent very pleasantly in a MAF guest house in Dodoma, with a meal and board game on Friday evening followed by a very lazy Saturday surfing the net in the guest house. Fortunately we picked up our “repaired” laptop Friday morning and we had already taken the loaned one in to Dodoma with us so we were able to have one each for the weekend. Unfortunately our “repaired“ laptop is still not functioning properly but we hope it will tide us over for the next few weeks until we return to England when it can be repaired under a service agreement. On the Sunday we again helped to lead the worship at the cathedral and then went on with Corrie to a new Italian restaurant for an early farewell lunch for her.

For Malcolm the saga of the Hospital payroll has got more bizarre. For July we received, for the first time, a Government grant and payroll for almost all the staff. However, almost everyone‘s pay was wrong. Last weeks the Hospital chief nurse (Patron) and new Hospital Accountant visited the Ministry of Health in Dar es Salaam to sort things out. This week we received:
- the pay-slips for July, which were different to the amounts we were told to pay staff
- the payroll for august, with many staff being paid twice but with differing amounts

It is not clear why this has happened but it does mean additional work to sort out which to pay staff.

Because of the Hospital’s better financial position it is time to start dealing with the large debts the Hospital has built up over the year. There is enough money now to clear the outstanding electricity bill. Malcolm also visited NSSF who are owed about £30,000 plus penalties (about 3 months total salary bill for the Hospital). Draft proposals for how the Hospital could pay this debt month by month were agreed and now need to be formalised.

The external auditor also arrived this week for the annual audit. He is a lot happier with the records and the audit is taking less time than it used to. This does have the ‘disadvantage’ that he has more time to check into things and come up with good ideas for improvements – things which the new accountant can follow up on! Malcolm also submitted his report into an investigation of an irregularity to the Diocese General Secretary and Hospital Medical Officer in Charge. It took a long time to investigate – let’s see what happens next!!!!

On Monday evening we were invited to a meal at the gappies house and enjoyed beef burgers and rice, an interesting combination. We also watched a couple of early episodes of “Black Adder” due to that amazing wonder of technology know as a video player!

On Wednesday we felt the time had come to start culling the chickens. None of them had been laying for a while, two because they had recently hatched the sadly deceased chick, and two because they seemed to be having “phantom pregnancies” sitting all day on nothing at all! Logic said that George the cockerel should go as then the hens might start laying again. However, we rather liked George as he was quite a character, so we asked Momma Asante for her opinion and sure enough George was Wednesday’s tea! He was certainly very tasty and his death has been justified by the arrival of an egg on Friday morning.

The slow-down in egg production has meant little change to the cost. However, George was worth about £4 which means 142 eggs for £46 – 32p each.

In Tanzania power cuts are a regular feature of life. In Mvumi they are fairly infrequent, normally caused we believe by broken lines as the electricity company seem to try and protect the hospital. However, at this time of year the cuts increase as most electricity is produced by hydro-electric schemes and now water is running out. On both Thursday and Friday nights we had to get out the kerosene lamp and candles in order to see and eat dinner. As we had dinner with Julia, Corrie and the ‘gappies’, Zoe and Hamish this made for an ‘atmospheric’ meal – both in the quality of the light and the smell of kerosene.

Friday was also the first full day of the Healthcare Christian Fellowship annual conference. Representatives from across Tanzania attend, this year at Mvumi hospital. Although Malcolm could not understand the session he attended (being in Swahili), the worship was somewhat lively!

Next week we look forward to:
- a trip to Hombolo winery and lake

and we don’t look forward to:
- Dr Corrie’s last week at the hospital before she returns to England

Janet and John, Zoe and Hamish

When I first learnt to read English I remember using ‘Janet and John’ books to read to my teacher. ‘Here is John. John has the ball. John likes the ball’.

Dr Corrie has just given us the equivalent book, but in Swahili. It is Book 1 for primary school children. But it doesn’t talk about balls. ‘Here is mother. Mother is holding a winnowing basket. Mother is winnowing maize’. Maybe I was held back by not learning ‘winnowing’ when I first learnt to read. The book focuses on the local priority for farming and growing food. ‘Here is father. Father has a hoe and a cap. Father is hoeing’. To local children winnowing and hoeing must be familiar daily activities.

St Andrews church building now has a new smooth floor. For the past year we have got used to walking on very rough and dusty concrete, which is bad enough when you are wearing shoes, but extremely difficult for many villagers who prefer to stand and dance in bare feet. On Sunday it was our first service there since the smooth concrete floor has been laid and the walls plastered – the building almost looked complete!

Work continues. Malcolm has spent most of the week helping to sort out the problems with the July payroll so that others can go to the Ministry of Health in Dar Es Salaam at the end of the week to, hopefully, get everyone’s pay corrected. It is also the time when students are returning to college so there has been a flurry of sorting out the payment of fees etc. Finally, he is completing a report into an investigation of the possible theft of money from the Hospital which has taken up a lot of time.

The Bar B Q we expected with the gappies at the Secondary school never happened. Unfortunately both have been ill – Zoe had to go to the eye clinic because her face had swollen perhaps because something got in her eye or a bite. Hamish has been suffering from a stomach bug – perhaps from eating undercooked meat. We did have a meal together when Julia returned from her holiday, but kept away from meat with a vegetable lasagne. Squashie has also returned to his rightful home, although looking after him has meant we have both had a bit of exercise.

The other social highlight of the week was when Corrie returned from Dar es Salaam with a cauliflower – the first we have ever seen here. She had thought about feasting on it by herself but we persuaded her to cook cauliflower cheese – a real luxury.

We also went to a nearby village to hear a choir sing to say farewell to Craig. He is an American teacher who has come to the Amani agricultural project during his summer holiday in the past 2 years, and has joined the local church choir.

There has been a slow down in the production of eggs. This is partly because the ‘mothers’ of the chicks stopped laying when they were hatching eggs and haven’t started again, and the other two have gone “broody” and stopped laying in favour of sitting on stones! We also ‘swopped’ our best layer with an old hen of Mama Asante’s sister as it seemed a waste to kill and eat a hen in its prime. The result is that we only had 1 egg last week – hardly worth counting.

This weekend we are spending in Dodoma at the MAF guest house. Our computer has been reformatted, and although it appears to work in sorts, there is clearly something wrong with the disc drive –hopefully it will keep going until we return to England.

Our friends and other animals.

Squashie is back!!

Last year we looked after the Walton’s Alasatian for 3 months – this year he is being fostered by Julia – but we are acting as surrogate parents whilst she is on holiday.

This has its blessings – and its problems.

To the locals Squashie is respected. All the other dogs in the area are smaller and less fearsome – Whenever he goes for a walk the villagers back away because of his size and rough looks (with a large scar on his face from an operation). This means that even though he is very friendly he is a deterrent to thieves and trouble makers. He also means that we both feel a bit guilty and have been taking him for walks. Malcolm even went for a 4 hour walk last Saturday to climb the second nearest hill to the village. Last year we reported how Squashie struggled on what should have been a 3 hour walk to the nearest hill and in fact for a fourth hour he virtually crawled back, resting every 200 yards or so in the shade of a tree. (Blog of 20th June 2008). This year he was much fitter and quite lively even though he, and Irene’s other ‘pet’, both fell asleep when they returned.

However....

We had hoped to talk more about the new chick, named Stumpy 2. What do you get when you mix a dog with a chick?? Unfortunately Squashie managed to get hold of the chick and injure its leg or wing. This has caused the other hens to reject it so, despite Irene careful nursing, we fear that it will go the way of the previous 2 chicks. It is just as well we hadn’t planned to make a living out of raising chicks.

We have started the count down. This means planning the week by week reduction, or should I say the consumption, of the hens. Jane went this week – though rather than eat such a good laying hen we swopped her for an older hen of Mama Asante’s sister, and ate that instead. This makes eggonomics more complicated. Each hen is worth about £3 so with about 11 eggs this week we have had 140 in total for £50 – or 36p each.

On Saturday were invited to lunch at the home of our Swahili teacher, Zena. Her main work is connected to the church, and she runs a nursery school each morning for about 35 children. In Tanzania only Primary education is free (from age 7). Parents pay about £1 a month for the children to go to nursery school. This is too much for many because of the shortage of food this year, so the numbers at Zena’s school are down from the usual 50.

On Sunday we were guests of honour at a small village church, Bethania. For the first time Malcolm was asked to read one of the bible passages – in Swahili. This is a bit of a challenge when you don’t know the language. Irene comments that there was no laughter but this may just mean they were just too confused!!!!

At work the good news is that the Government now pay for all Hospital staff. All non-medical staff had pay rises of about 30% as they are now on Government grades. The problem is that because the Government used an old staff list many have been given the wrong salary which now has to be sorted out. Also, those staff working in the Training schools are upset as they are not included so have had just the same salary as last month – it’s a feature of human nature that they were no worse off, except they felt they were worse off as others were better off. Malcolm was involved in meeting the cooks who refused to cook lunch for the student nurses. When the Medical Officer in Charge had calmed them down, Malcolm then went with him to share in the late nurses lunch at 3.30pm - every problem has a silver lining.

As we are the only Mzungus here at the moment we have welcomed 2 new gap year students (gappies), Zoe and Hamish, who will be working at the secondary school for the next month. It is the first time we’ve needed to help new people acclimatise to the new culture, and advise them on how not to get too ripped off by some of the shop keepers.

For the coming week:
- A Bar-b-Q with the gappies
- Welcome Dr Corrie and Julia back from their holidays
- Get ready for the Hospital Auditor
- More walks with Squashie?

Good news - Bad news

On Friday we went to Dodoma. Malcolm needed to buy a new printer and scanner for the Hospital. Although many things in Tanzania are cheap (because people do not have much money), computer equipment is not. The printer costs about twice as much as in the UK and replacement cartridges are more than a month’s wages. However, the printer is needed as Malcolm has been spending the last 3 months transferring files between computers on a flash card in order to print them – and transferring lots of computer viruses in the process. Malcolm’s computer has already had to be reformatted once, maybe because of a virus. Fortunately he had taken a back-up a few days earlier.

There are only ever 2 types of computer data – that which you have lost, and that which you are going to lose. So take back-ups!

The scanner is also essential to send by email documents to the UK Charity that helps fund the Hospital.

Where were we? Ah yes, Dodoma.

One of the reasons we went to Dodoma was to attend our second Ceilidh in the MAF aircraft hanger. This time there was a group of visitors from Scotland so Irene did not need to ‘call’ the dances.

It was a very sociable weekend. On Saturday we had lunch at Dr Corrie’s town apartment (or escape hide-away) with a neighbour, Leanne. Afterwards Malcolm disgraced himself by falling asleep on Corries bed, only to do the same thing when they stopped for a coffee at the Dodoma Hotel. That night (fully refreshed!!!) we were invited for a meal at the home of Tim, part of the MAF team, and his wife Carol. Carol has lived here for 21 years and it was strange visiting a ‘proper’ home. They are soon to ‘emigrate’ to Australia (having previously comes from England). This was followed by a game of ‘Settlers’ (the board game, not indigestion tablets). The family house rule was broken as Malcolm didn’t win

It has been a mixed week at work.

Good news – the printer scanner and a modem have been installed
Bad news – it took a long time to get it going, and even now it’s not quite right

Good news – the Government at long last has started sending the money to pay all staff
Bad news – they haven’t sent the correct money so many staff will be upset

Good news – we can now discuss with NSSF (the National Insurance of Tanzania) how to pay off about 65,000,000 Tsh arrears
Bad news – the more we look the bigger the debt becomes

Irene has come down with a cold (there is no swine flu in Tanzania – just malaria) which seems quite strange as it is comparatively hot. This has limited her work at the school as she hasn’t had the energy.

On egg economics (eggonomics) there were this week:

17 new eggs
1 new chick (who has had 2 mothers hatching the egg and claiming ownership)

This brings the total production to 129 for £53 or 41p each. Malcolm even had a 10 egg omelette one day!!! With probably about 8 or 9 weeks to go in Mvumi before we take a long journey home via South Africa we are beginning to plan a gradual reduction in stock (and new chicken recipes).

For the next week:
- We visit Bethania church as special guests
- We are invited to Saturday lunch at the home of our Swahili teacher, Zena
- Squashie (Simon Walton’s Alsatian) returns to our house as Julia goes on a 10 day Holiday with her daughter

Essential requirements

So what do you take as essential gifts to people who have spent several months in a Tanzanian village?

This week a family from Llandudno visited for the day. Kathryn Mann had been born in the Hospital in 1963 when her father worked in Dodoma as a telephone engineer. This was her first visit to Tanzania since she left, aged 4. What she brought as were the following essential supplies:

- Bodyshop foot cream for Dr Corrie – when you’ve been walking on dusty tracks here for 18 months you will know why this is essential
- Lady Grey tea and Highlights instant chocolate for Irene – essentials that are totally unavailable here (though last week we were able to buy Earl Grey teabags – amazing)
- Printer cartridges and Duracell AAA batteries for Malcolm
- Theatre gowns, welsh hats, tea towels, toys, exercise books and sweets for the Hospital and school.

They spent an enjoyable day (we hope) at the hospital locating the room where Kathryn’s mother was ‘confined’ (which may now be the eye department workshop) and touring the village and surrounding area to get a feeling of how the locals live. This meant great excitement to the local children who are always looking for opportunities to be photographed and thought it amusing that Kathryn was born in Mvumi a member of the Chigogo tribe?. They bought us lunch at Mvumi’s best reataurant – a total of £11 for cooked meals and drinks for 7. Not bad, eh! They then continued their holiday in Arusha and Zanzibar where they will get a tourists eye view of Tanzania.

Further essential building work has been going on at St Andrews church. Last Sunday there was great happiness because the Mamajus choir had a new keyboard (and speakers and radio microphone) and the walls had been plastered. This week a proper concrete floor is being laid, paid for by the ‘spoons’ project mentioned last week. This is a community effort. On Monday the women walked the long distance to the local well to collect buckets of water (carried on their heads – see Malcolm’s video on Youtube – ‘Using your Head’) to make the cement. On Wednesday the congregation came to mix the cement for the workmen so that the new concrete floor could be laid before the cement set. It was wonderful to see men, women and children of all ages carrying water, mixing the materials and carrying the cement into the church – all by hand and using simple tools as there are no cement mixers, and they had no wheel-barrows.

For those tracking the cost of egg production there has been a bit of a mystery. We had left some eggs with the hens to see if any more chicks would hatch – but the eggs have been disappearing one by one. Each morning, early, the hens do make a bit of a ruckus and our guess is that there may be a n intruder which is coming each day to help itself – we have sometimes seen the tracks of a snake elsewhere in the garden. Our hen run may be cat proof, but not snake proof. This week there have been 18 more eggs – a total so far of £53 for 112 eggs or 46 p each.

For those of you interested in the Hospital dog, Stumpy we are sorry to report that he has fallen foul of the Hospital cull. We will miss him.

We are spending this weekend in Dodoma, with a Ceilidh on Friday and a meal at an Italian restaurant on Saturday.

PS Another essential requirement is a computer. We have reported our broken Dell under a 4 year warranty that we took out before leaving England. It does normally include a home-visit by an engineer to carry out repairs – but not in Tanzania so we don’t now when we will be able to use it again. Fortunately we have borrowed a replacement from Julia for the time being.