Home Comforts!

A brisk, cold shower!! There’s nothing like it to start the day – or so we have been trying to convince ourselves. The water here is extremely minerally. One of the problems has been in the 6 months the house was empty, the water in the tanks evaporated leaving the minerals to clog the pipes and seize up the ball-cocks. In the first week the Hospital plumber freed up the cold water supply – this week, joy of joys, the hot water was sorted out and Irene was able to have a hot shower for the first time in a month. O.K. it was slightly brown but I’m sure people pay hundreds at health spas to bathe in mineral water. What bliss! Quelle aroma!.

Irene was also highly excited because Dr. Corrie’s sisters brought some earl grey tea with them from Holland, for her. Small pleasures mean a lot here.

It’s great knowing that the food we eat is incredibly fresh. People bring us produce picked that morning from their gardens and when Momma Asante bought some beef for us last week she had to wait around for the cow to be killed first. However it’s not as easy to obtain as popping out to the supermarket. For example Irene felt great pride in opening our fridge door and knowing for certain that the oldest egg there was 5 days old. However collecting eggs is not a simple process. The chicken run does not have a proper door so to enter you have to unwind lots of rusty netting and climb through a small, roughly cut out hole, with sharp wire edges. You then half crawl to their little mud house and carefully peer inside before gingerly putting in a hand as you never know what might be lurking around! If we don’t remove any eggs daily there’s a chance the other hens might eat the egg and get a taste for them! Oh the joys of rural living! And we always thought eggs come nicely packaged from a supermarket. We have now had 6 eggs from the hens – so the average cost has now plummeted to …….£4.33 each. Almost a bargain. And for those of you that remember last weeks blog, the name of the fifth hen is Drucilla.

One of the luxuries that a few old hands here have is – a common or garden polystyrene egg box from, say, Tescos. When you buy eggs from a shop they are simply placed in a plastic bag. The chances of getting them home with none broken are almost impossible. If anyone visits us, please bring us a present of an egg box – don’t bother with the eggs, just the box!!!

We seem to be collecting a wide range of handicrafts. We have many people calling on us – we made a policy of never giving money to beggars which means we don’t seem to get many any more. However, we do buy food and handicrafts from traders. A family of local wood carvers are frequent visitors and we are collecting a small army of wooden figures. Another regular is ‘the gourd man’ who last year sold us cheap and cheerful engraved gourd shells for about 10p each. This year he seems to have branched out as he has realised we might buy other objects. So far we have bought a number of oil paintings – some new and some second hand. The price is about £3 each. We have also bought an old, wooden Chigogo stool, which he suggested might have belonged to the Tribes’ Chief Mazengo – or was it the Queen of England, which is probably just as likely.

Malcolm is making progress with the Finances at the Hospital, and there may now be a way of paying April salaries – which will be quite an achievement. As you might expect, staff are getting desperate as a large proportion of their income is spent on basics such as food, which is in short supply. Unfortunately the expected management meeting did not take place as half the committee needed to attend a conference in Dodoma for the week, so he is yet to discuss the financial problems facing the Hospital with the whole Management Team. He has also been investigating a couple of financial irregularities – a time consuming but necessary process which is a distraction from resolving the core financial challenges.

Because of the food shortage a number of people in England and our home church have donated money to assist those who are in the greatest need to buy food. Next week we shall meet leaders from 10 of the Local churches to plan the distribution each month (at the moment for 6 months) of about £5 to 75 individuals or families. It does not sound a lot but should be enough for each to buy about 25 kgs of maize and to reduce the impact of starvation.

So, our concerns and plans for next week are:

- payment of April salaries
- the meeting with church leaders to plan the distribution of the Hunger Fund
- a safari to Ruaha National Park on Saturday
- more hot showers