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.