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?
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