Dog-time

I’m home alone. Well, kind of. Wayne and I have a new puppy called Buddy and another dog called Hamilton so I’m actually in quite good company. Little Buddy is a Staffordshire bull terrier and the cutest thing ever. Hamilton is a Jack Russell with psycho tendencies! Kind of thinks he’s human a lot of the time. Wants the comforts of human life, the food, to sit on nice chairs....and is a bit on the moody side. While Wayne is away visiting family for the month I am head down with my preparation work for a training session as well as proposals I will write. Buddy and Hamilton are keeping me well entertained and far from lonely. According to those results that come up on Google Buddy is ‘very easy to house train’. I have never trained a dog in my life and so who knows how the little thing will turn out.  I could do with a crash course on how to stop him eating and biting everything but also on how to get him to sit and come when called. He’s twelve weeks old and I’m sure if I don’t strike now I’ll miss my chance. Any tips on the easy way to make a puppy learn?

I am very pleased to see the start of a new project. Delighted actually. Fr. A and I wrote a proposal together and received funding to build homes for staff of a health centre he manages. It was when I saw the men actually digging the foundations and sweating under the heat of the sun that I realised our hard work had come to fruition. This health centre is 25km from a main road and closest town and far into the open lands where Maasai and rural tribes live. It is very difficult to attract good (or any) staff because like anywhere in the world the urban centres are more popular and some of them pay more. The staff houses on site are awful, just awful.  It was becoming more difficult to attract anyone to work for them but also to keep the doctor they have, their key employee. He lives on site without his wife and children because she won’t join him until the new homes are built.  I thought at one point that he was going to leave, it was hard for him not to see his family. It took quite some time to pull this off and I think Mr. Doctor almost didn’t believe Fr. A and so when the building work began there was a big smile across all our faces. These homes will rehouse all staff and allow for more to be recruited, in line with plans to develop the centre. They will have their own garden and shamba(allotment) and will be just lovely. I can’t wait to see them finished and everyone moved in.

The health centre has been the only source of water for miles around due to the sources drying up and rains not coming until this week. It is also the only centre for a population of about 20,000 people and we have worked hard to put some plans together to grow it and start to offer more much needed services. The Rosminians want to build a theatre and create a whole hospital as well as use only solar energy where possible. There is no power and until the national grid hooks them up (who knows when that would be) they have only solar or generator. The genny costs a fortune to run and although initial outlay is a lot the solar is by far the way to go.  If we can build staff homes to keep the back bone of the centre upright then we can do anything is my motto. Watch this space….a hospital in the making.

PS. I didn’t even see an Easter egg this year. I feel deprived.

I couldn’t resist. All the longing for ice-cream yesterday made me get in the car and drive the 8kms into town to buy Azam chocolate ripple. Thanks Mel, but the virtual tub just didn’t do it. I was plagued by the craving man and had to do something. I ate almost half the tub without stopping then got chest freeze and vowed never again. Not that Azam ice-cream comes even close to the quality stuff but when there’s nothing else it’s absolutely delicious!

While I’m rabbiting on about ice-cream and think I am very hard done by I was swiftly brought back to priorities after recovering from chest freeze when I did a few hours’ work on some projects I am focussing on. The Rosminians (missionary catholic priests, in TZ since 1945) have a number of projects in the rural back ends of nowhere about midway between the cities of Tanga and Arusha. There are two health centres and one dispensary that they run for extremely rural and extremely poor communities. The biggest challenge however is water. I am so used to rocking up to any of the centres to do my site visits or whatever and be told there isn’t a drop of water available or that there is only a few buckets left to see us through til tomorrow kind of thing. The rains also just aren't  coming and I am almost praying for them to come as it might help to cool us down too!  I have been struggling to see how I can possibly help to get enough funding to drill boreholes and get sustainable water sources set up. Last week some of the people I saw accessing water at one of the health centres had walked 10km just to get a bucket of water. I can’t comprehend it, I see it all the time but I can’t imagine doing it. It’s terrible and gross and unhygienic, and it’s life threatening.  So my big focus at the moment is to create a case for a strong funding proposal to get water for these three centres which could changes the lives of so many people in such a basic way.  Thanks to a contact I have made funding may be not just be forthcoming but life changing. It makes me feel good to be involved. The Rosminians know what needs to be done, they own and manage these centres and get things done. But they don’t have the skills to write the proposals or find new sources of funding. Here’s what I spend a lot of my time doing. So, when you turn on the tap please make sure to conserve.  And send some rain our way!

'Phishing' for ice-cream

My friend Paul sent me an email this morning to say that he was in the air between Paris and Singapore. Don't you hate that?! Forget that I haven’t even updated my blog to include what I did for Christmas this has sent me on a minor off course collision with freshly squeezed thoughts of Kir Royale, pain au chocolat and anything indulgent and bad for me. What I wouldn’t do for a shopping spree and copious amounts of oh la la to pass the days roaming the streets of Paris. Oh how I miss the very things that sent me packing off to Africa in the first place. The guaranteed pay-check, the Friday night drinks with friends leaving me hung-over for exactly the duration of the weekend until Monday morning and everything expensive, especially chocolate!

But now that I think about it….twenty months later, my Swahili is not so good, I was miserable for much of my first year here but I am a demon with a funding proposal and found the love of my life. I have few hangovers anymore, I have learned how to find roads that don’t exist (and not drive over anything with two legs or more while on the road), I can make bread and can finally swim with confidence.  I miss all those dear to me terribly but there are some things in life you just have to do.

I recently looked in my wardrobe and pitied its owner.  My reputation is all but ruined. How do you restock when you live in the back end of Africa and don’t have access to online shopping simply because anything you order for delivery ends up in the hands of the lovely man or woman in the post office, who might I add swiftly decides it would look better on someone else once (s)he’s extracted a fine few shillings for your new garment(s) from whoever will buy. But what about the very accessible markets the voice in my head tells me. The second hand market is infamous in Africa. A whole industry and millions of people make a living from the hand-me-downs and cast offs that we have all thrown in a bag and sent down to the local charity bin. I have to say I already have a number of quite good looking items I picked up for a euro or two in my scant wardrobe. Instead of worrying about wearing dead person clothes, which is usually a big possibility when shopping in charity shops back home, I wonder about who on earth can throw away new and almost brand new clothing. Not that I have been that lucky but there are many items including Old Navy, Gap and other high street brands that come out here with the labels still on. The big guys are hardly donating their seconds, surely not!? If you’ve ever wondered where your used or not wanted clothing goes, it goes to right here in the middle of Africa. A lot of what I see here in TZ is from the US and so millions of people go about their daily lives wearing T-Shirts that might say ‘2010 Junior High class’ or ‘Wisconsin warriors’ and some more tongue in cheek which always looks hilarious because you know that people have no idea what they are wearing.

There is two sides to every industry and while I think it’s a great substitute (when I‘m in the mood to trawl through the stalls) for what I can’t buy back home there are many in the textile industry who have been put out of business as it’s easier for people to buy western clothing cheaply in the market than it is to get someone to make something at a local stall. It could also be said that the clothing that you intend for poor people is certainly not getting to them and instead becomes part of a chain of traders who profit on what you give away with good intention.  An article such as this summarises a little of the story behind the second hand trade in East Africa.  http://www.iq4news.com/lauramkenya/fashion-second-hand-clothing-booming-business-kenya

But while I pity myself for not having anything new to wear and swoon over all I really want is a tub of Ben and Jerry’s phish fish food ice-cream to devour with greedy delight.  What I wouldn’t do for a tub…..