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.

The unthinkable!

The unthinkable!

I am afraid the unthinkable has happened. Today our laptop decided to stop working. This has been our main communication and entertainment channel (our lifeline) – enabling us to keep contact via email with friends, watch dvds and save pictures and videos. Fortunately, if the worst comes to the worse, we have been keeping a back up of files on an external hard-drive so at most we have lost 2 week's blogs. We have borrowed Dr Corrie's laptop to write this blog.

It has been a diverse week. On Saturday we met at Dr Corrie’s for breakfast and a spot of bird watching in her garden. Malcolm concentrated on the food (scrambled egg with bacon as smoked salmon was off the menu, muesli, yoghurt and fruit juice.) We were surprised to be joined by Sam, an American Peace Corp volunteer who has lived as the only ‘mzungu’ in the neighbouring village and was about to return to America to go to university as a post-grad.

For the Mamajus choir at St Andrews church the unthinkable happened. They usually rely on an electric keyboard and guitars for their music but several weeks ago their keyboard broke. For the past few weeks they have been improvising with drums and traditional instruments, which has gone down very well with many older people in the church. However, the fear is that younger people would lose interest in being members of the choir and leave the church. This week they were told that the key board is irreparable. A new one costs about £250 which is well out of their reach, and they had asked us for help. Fortunately we found out that the school had a spare keyboard they were happy to sell very reasonably at which the choir were delighted. On Thursday they came to our house and prepared a meal of thanks. One of the gifts was a live cockerel. Stephen, our gardener killed it and Irene plucked and gutted it – having been shown how by her mother over 40 years ago – good old mum!!!!! (Sorry to our children, I don’t think she has shown you how. Maybe when we return to England…….)

At work Malcolm is very sad to find out that several of the lower paid members of staff at the Hospital have probably been tricked by a money lending company into taking out very expensive loans. The rates of interest are over 150% per annum and there are those who have taking out loans that require paying all their monthly take-home pay (about £65) to repay the loan every month for 3 years. In England there are laws to protect people from such loans, though some desperate people are forced to use illegal lenders. Here the laws may not be so good, even though many don’t seem to have understood the cost of the loans when they took them out, and many of the applications seem fraudulent.

It also seems someone has reported Malcolm to immigration, saying he has not got a valid work permit. On Wednesday he was asked as a matter of urgency to take the permit to the Diocese HQ as immigration had asked to see it. Last year the same thing happened to the Task Force Manager (a German Tanzanian) and she was held in a local jail until her mother, a retired MP, and her husbands clients, senior officers in the army intervened. Malcolm has clearly got someone worried about his work to sort out the Hospital finances.

Work at St Andrews has started, plastering the walls and laying a smooth concrete floor. Some weeks ago we mentioned the money raised by a Cornish church by the sale of spoons, and this week the gift is being used. There is great excitement.

For those tracking the cost of producing eggs there have been 17 more eggs – but we’ve had to spend £10 on buying more food – a total so far of £53 for 94 eggs or 56 p each.

Next week we are tempted to say nothing unusual (or unthinkable) is expected – but watch this space………

A testing time in Mvumi.

It is examination time for the training schools! For the past few weeks each school in turn has been setting exams prior to graduation. This week it has been the turn of the Clinical Officers Training College. Dr. Corrie, who has taught obstetrics to the final year students at the College was pleased that all her students have passed that subject – which is quite an achievement as she knows it was all above board! (We are told one way students pass exams in Tanzania is by bribing the examiner).

Unfortunately it has been a testing time for Mama Asante. On May 1st we wrote that her niece had died, and that last year her brother had been killed in a car accident. Last Saturday we were told that her sister had just died from Aids. (Two of her other sisters have previously died – one following a caesarean operation and another stabbed by her husband,) On Monday, before dawn we heard the ambulance siren. Later we were told that the family of Mama Asante’s sister in law living in another village had been attacked during the night by someone with a machete, with one child killed and others seriously injured.

Although the village appears relatively peaceful on the surface, we are aware of the underlying risk of violence especially as the food shortage gets more severe and people become more desperate for food. Although Christianity, and to a lesser extent Islam are predominant (most people profess faith and are active in their church), there is still an underlying culture of black magic. Christianity was only really introduced to this part of the country 120 years ago at the time this Mission was founded so the ‘old’ religions continues under the surface. (This is hardly surprising – St Augustine came to England 1,300 years ago but there are still those who follow pagan beliefs). Because most people have had a very poor or no harvest of maize and millet, those who have a reasonable crop are at risk of being attacked on the assumption they have used black magic or simply from jealousy. We are told some of the men were expected to use magic to make it rain – and risk being attacked because they failed.

We are now both busy at work. Irene has joined Malcolm in trying to help sort out the finances of an organisation – but this time the secondary school. Unfortunately it has been discovered that the former cashier had stolen money and falsified many financial records including the fees paid by students. While they wait for a Bursar to be appointed, Julia has been trying to sort out ‘the mess’ and Irene has been helping her. Like the Hospital every day it seems another problem emerges. Irene also continues to work in the Medical filing stores. At last someone has come to work out the cost of putting more shelves into the stores. The existing ones were poorly designed with shelves to far apart wasting space. There is now no available shelf space and unless more are fitted they will be back to storing files on the floor. There is only one person between Irene and more shelves – Malcolm who has to find the money!!!!!

Last year Malcolm got used someone coming in every week reporting that they were owed money by the Hospital, but he thought that was over. In the last month two former members of staff who left more than 18 months ago have come to complain that heir ‘NSSF’ contributions for 2006 and 2007 had not been paid – which was a surprise as we (and NSSF) had believed all contributions had been paid up to May 2007 as a result of settling the Magistrates Court case last year. As the former accountant had stolen the payroll sheets this had been based on limited information. It now appears that the Hospital’s and (therefore NSSF’s) records of payments due were also inaccurate.

Last Sunday we visited as guests of honour (because we have been distributing Hunger Fund to the parishes) St Pauls church in the village The service was lead by a pastor, Abinery Ghinamata, based at the Hospital for the past month as part of his advanced training. He has been helping the chaplain in leading morning prayers, visiting and baptising patients and preaching at churches. Following the service we were invited to a presentation to him of thank-you presents. He will be returning to the Hospital in a week or so as his wife is heavily pregnant.

Chicken economics. We have had about 15 more eggs which means 77 for £43, the average cost is now 55p each – but we need to buy more food.

Update on Stumpy. Although we still hear occasional shots around the village which we assume are dogs being culled due to fears about rabies, Stumpy is still well spending time sleeping in our verandah.

Next week:
- breakfast with Dr Corrie to watch the birds in her garden
- continuing to work on the Finances of the Hospital and school.