A road in Africa

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!