Work, work, work – and play

It has been a busy working week.

For those accountants reading this, 30th June was the end of the Financial Year. This means Malcolm had the diversion of carrying out a stock-take of the main hospital medical stores and Pharmacy. Last year Irene helped carry out the first stock-take for many years of the medical stores. At the time the stores were in a small building, poorly organised and stocks were limited because of the shortage of money. This time, because of additional funding for supplies they are more plentiful, located in a larger building with shelving and many individual proper ‘bin cards’ and a stock ledger showing what should be in stock. Much of the credit for the organisation goes to the Hospital Matron, Rehema. Consequently, although the stock-take took a full day it was much more rewarding.

The Pharmacy store was also pretty well organised. However, there were worrying signs that procedures were deteriorating. In the past year the doctor in charge, Simon left followed six months later by the Pharmacist. The remaining staff were continuing with what they knew with ordering and issuing drugs but did not understand some of the management controls. Some of the items were there because others had left them, with no plan of what to do with them.

On Wednesday the new hospital accountant, Mr Msonga, began work. This has meant that Malcolm has spent time showing him how the hospital and the financial records work. He is a recently qualified ‘advanced diploma’ accountant which means he has a qualification but not to a level to be registered as a professional accountant. He is enthusiastic but with limited experience which is of concern as unless a permanent Medical Officer in Charge and Administrator are appointed then he will struggle with the Management issues, even if he is a competent book-keeper.

Malcolm had warned him that at Management Meetings he may have to be strong in stating what is required even if colleagues disagreed. An example of this was at a Management Committee called with less than a day’s notice on Friday. Here there are no niceties of circulating an agenda and it was only at the meeting that it was announced the budgets of the Training schools were to be circulated and considered – none of which Malcolm had seen. It was clear that the budget was not in accordance with what the Health Board had approved and Malcolm had to (tactfully???) make this clear.

Irene has had a busy week at the school helping the acting bursar, Julia, with pupil fees and other financial records and tackling accountancy problems.

Good news and bad news on the chicken front. The good news is that we have had 10 more eggs – total 38 for £43 - £1.13 each. The bad news is that because the weather has got chilly (very cold for Tanzania) the two young chicks died. This is despite Irene’s best efforts of trying to keep them warm with a hot water bottle and tender loving care. That means any hopes of recovering some of the cost from new chickens has now gone.

We met the church leaders on Saturday and distributed the second month’s Hunger Fund. The feedback is that the money (£5 a time) has been given to the most needy in each church, some old, disabled, families or orphans living with relatives, and that is is of great help to buy basic food such as maize which is scarce due to the poor harvest but essential to survival. We noticed that most recipients had “signed “their names with a finger print, few having had the benefits of any education,

We were invited to a meal with members of one of the church choirs (Mamajus – which means the wise men from the nativity story). One of the activities to attract and retain young people at a church is to join a choir which provide most of the music at church rather than congregational singing. At St Andrew’s there are 3 choirs – two for young people with keyboard and electric guitars and a ‘Mamas choir ‘ (for more mature ladies) with traditional chigogo drums. Malcolm has used the music as background to some videos of Mvumi on Youtube (search for ‘thecrawfordclan’)

In the coming week we are not aware of anything special – but anything can happen when you are in Tanzania.!!!