Last blog post

 

I have been writing this blog now for 16 years - I started it for Mum and she'd proudly take her iPad to show her friends what we were up to in Tanzania - but now I think it's time to bring it to an official close!  Just one last post about our trip to Africa in April and May this year.

Our first trip to Africa was in 2006 when my sister Lyn was living in Pretoria working for Ford.  We spent time in Gauteng Province; and Toby and I travelled up through Botswana to Zambia to see Victoria Falls.  The thrill of white water rafting on the Zambezi River below the falls will never get old!

Anyway, I have always wanted to return to Botswana and this year we did.

With friends Rob and Lou we travelled to Namibia and spent a month visiting birding hotspots and scenic delights.  Rob and Lou were returning to Namibia, last visited when they were AusVols in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, so it was interesting to hear how much had changed and how much was still the same.

Steve and I had a month in Namibia in 2015 and again in 2021.  We love it there.  It is so easy to travel.  The national parks are excellent and the geology is stunning.

Then we travelled to Botswana for a week around the Okavango Delta - somewhere we've always wanted to go.  

From southern Africa we travelled north for 3 weeks in Tanzania, via Rwanda, then home, via Kenya and South Africa .  Most of you will have heard the aeroplane saga already from my Facebook page so I won't re-prosecute that!  

Here are some annotated pictures. (A work in progress but I will post to before I lose it)

We stayed at Arebbusch Lodge in Windhoek while we sorted cash, a hire car and snacks for the 4 week road trip - Rob and Lou had stayed there in 1996!

At White Lady Lodge, Brandberg Mountain. A lovely lodge.

This old bloke was resting after a hard night in the Dolomite region of Etosha NP.

Swakopmund - a very German part of Namibia.

You can't go to Walvis Bay without visiting the salt works.

I love the rocky outcrops in Namibia.  We had never seen the country so green. There had been heaps of rain in January and February.

Spitzkoppe is a remarkable geological formation. 

The walk up to the White Lady rock art.

The White Lady rock art at Brandberg Mountain.

Waterburg NP.  No maintenance in at least 4 years - a real shame!  This was the only place that disappointed us.

Plenty of zebras in Etosha NP

Also plenty of elephants

And giraffes

The thorn trees are brutal

Water lilies in the Okavango delta

Sunrise, Okavango

Tarangire NP Tanzania

Love these birds

Who doesn't love a Leopard Tortoise!  We didn't make it to the Sakina Compound to check up on T1 and T2 but have heard they are doing well.

We stayed at the Amani Research Institute which is almost derelict.  The forest was wonderful, the building maintenance was not!

Such a shame to see a once proud institution in such a state.  This institute has done significant work on tropical medicine over past decades.

We stayed on the Indian Ocean coast near Tanga, north east Tanzania.  The tidal difference was huge.  This is the breakfast spot - sometimes there is water, sometimes there is not.  We went out to sea looking for terns - I was sea sick for the first time ever.

It was great to be back at Olkokola Catholic Mission.  Much was the same but there was a new group of trainees to get to know and there are always improvements happening.

Thank you to my family for funding some much needed equipment for the physical therapy room including an examination bed, a TENS machine and a massage gun.  Plus some extra books for the library.

The physical therapy room, funded by an AVI grant in 2022, is in frequent use.

Mt Kilimanjaro was visible from the airport hotel, with just a little snow on top.

That's it for this blog!  Thank you all for following along, love from Jenny.

ps.  We are currently living in Lae, Papua New Guinea.  We are with the Australian Volunteers program again, this time both working at the Papua New Guinea National Agricultural Research Institute.  If you are interested in have a new blog at https://clarksinlae.blogspot.com/.  JC

Back to Africa

 

Almost exactly two years after we left Tanzania we're heading back to see how things are going at Olkokola.  We'll have a month in Namibia and Botswana first and then we'll fly up to Arusha for most of May.

I hope to post lots of pictures here for your entertainment so please send me your comments.

Jenny

I have been working!

 

Three weeks to go and time is evaporating rapidly.  This post is a reminder that I am actually here working!

First staff meeting back after the safari with Liz and Sophie the head of the centre said she’d like the carpentry and masonry trainers to visit Arusha Technical College to see how they do things there.  Easily done, I thought!  You’d think by now I’d know better.  Emails to ATC went unanswered.  Three visits to the public relations office eventually gave the ruling that only the Rector could give permission. I really didn’t think he’d want to be bothered with what I considered a trivial request, he runs a residential college for 4,500 students, but I was WRONG.  I finally had an interview with the Rector three weeks later and he professed himself delighted to meet with me and insisted on going out to the carpark to meet Steve who was waiting patiently in the car.  We have since had the visit by the acting head of our centre and the two trainers and I’m hoping the relationship will continue as I think it is beneficial to both organisations.

I really liked this art work on a wall at ATC!

I’ve been chasing materials in Swahili about sexual and reproductive health for months and have been passed (by email) from one organisation to the next, to the next, until I was in despair of ever finding what I wanted.  Finally, on the same day as the ATC breakthrough, I met with the team from EngenderHealth who gave me fistfuls of brochures and posters on all the things I needed - enough for us at OCPH and the Olkokola RC Clinic as well!  I also picked up the brochures about the centre that I’d renewed with up to date information and had printed AND visited ECHO East Africa to organise some training for our AgriVet trainees in tree grafting.  Four successes in one day was nearly too much to bear!  And the lesson is this, it is only by actually visiting in person that you’re likely to have success!

When I was working at Baimbridge College I spent wasted energy lamenting teaching and learning time lost to excursions (other people’s!) and events but here the last month has been chockers with such disruptions.

Concentrating hard on her question

Comfy Care 12 is a local social enterprise organisation that has benefitted from Australian Volunteers’ support - grants and in-country and remote volunteer assignments.  Their team came to talk to our girls and women about sexual and reproductive health and menstrual hygiene.  This is such an important discussion to have openly - taboos around talking about it are a big problem - as girls are missing out so much on education, sometimes a week every month and often leave school early.  I hope ComfyCare12’s enterprise is a huge success!  Our girls were certainly happy with the information and discussion.

Lots of notes being taken

Then the next week it was Inherit Your Rights who came to visit.  Their Director, Winnie Manyanga, is such an impressive speaker - she had the trainees spellbound!  Inheritance is another area of life where women miss out in Tanzania.  Inherit Your Rights is doing wonderful work in this field.

Me with the team from Inherit Your Rights

Marilyn Hokororo from Afrika Wear and Design

Then we had International Women’s Day and another really impressive woman, Marilyn Hokororo, who kept the trainees entranced with her story.  We had some visitors from a local women’s cooperative who have a chicken raising enterprise.  They were really interested to hear what Marilyn had to say about the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship as a widowed supporting parent and I think another mutually beneficial relationship has started!

The cake was especially good!

We had a special morning tea with cake and sodas and that made everyone happy.

In the week just finished the masonry, carpentry and agrivet trainees and trainers had a visit to Twende, another local social enterprise with a connection to Australian Volunteers.  The trainees learned about innovation and appropriate technology and will have a chance to do some innovating and invention themselves if they wish.

The Twende workshop at Nane Nane

Our trainers were by now wondering when they’d ever get a chance to do some training and so was I but the visit by Connects Autism Tanzania was scheduled for Friday and it was a whole day event.  This time the focus was on life skills and entrepreneurship and there was lively discussion and lots of questions.  This is another connection with the NGO community and one that I hope will continue.

Talk on financial record keeping - very important

And then we’ve had all the visitors to the centre! Showing people around and spruiking about our program has somehow found its way into my job description.  We had a group of Tropical Medicine experts come to visit on Tuesday.  Their tour was interrupted by a wonderful shower of rain - the first we’ve had in weeks! - and I couldn’t wish it away.  But it meant we were stranded in the masonry classroom during the heaviest of it and again teaching was interrupted!

Such a lovely gift!

On Friday as well as Connects Autism we had a visit from a delightful (just turned) 18 year old who wanted to share her birthday and her cake with others less fortunate than she is.  She and her family arrived not just with cake but also many of the staple foods we rely on - oil, rice, flour and beans - and some luxuries - biscuits and juice boxes.  Such a lovely gesture especially as she was sharing her precious time at home with us before returning to her studies in the United States.

Nai's first quiche

And I’ve still been doing some training of my own.  Our new cook at the mission main house is an expert in local cooking but not so au fait with the foods that westerners are used to so together she and I have been working on that.  Nai is so keen and such a quick learner.  We started with bread, which she is now making weekly, then carrot cake and pizza.  We have done salad, quiche, cauliflower au gratin and zucchini slice and next week we tackle pumpkin pie.  It has been such fun! 

We put pineapple on pizza here!

We also had a trip to Tarangire NP last weekend, our first and only for this block of time in Tz.  Look at Steve’s blog for lovely pics and lists of what we saw.

I’ll just put this one pic in - taken with my phone - of lions resting in the trees after a successful night of hunting.

My next post should be the last from here before we travel to Britain, thanks always for your interest and encouragement,

Love from Jenny

January

January has been a month of real highs and lows!

Having Liz and Sophie here was wonderful.  I have told them that when I am in my dotage (some days that doesn’t feel too far off!) that I will depend upon them to talk with me about ‘my’ Africa.  They will know what I mean when I say ‘school’ or ‘shop’ or ‘terrible road’!  It’s always a wonderful thing to watch someone’s reaction when they see their first giraffe in the wild and the girls were suitably impressed seeing these beautiful creatures.  

Liz and Sophie saw the Big 5 and did really well on big cats and antelope.  But more importantly they saw the reality of daily life for people here - the poverty and vulnerability but also the joy.  I’m sure the sights, sounds and smells of east Africa will stay with them and they will treasure the experience.  Liz did get a marriage proposal too - from my fruit and veg man - but she thought him too young!  They leave Zanzibar today tired and ready to be home.  It’s such a long journey and east Africa is way out of most people’s comfort zone.  Sophie was a wonderful traveller and she will have so much to tell anyone with the patience to listen.

There’s more on Liz and Sophie’s trip including excellent photos on Steve’s Blog as well as the trip to Kenya earlier in January in case you missed it.

 The situation at the Flying Medical Service is still difficult.  FMS was grounded in April last year and since then the director has tried all avenues to get back in the air so that the isolated people of Arusha and Manyara regions will once again have access to maternal and child health services, immunisation and emergency transport for medical care.  The situation is disheartening as the reality is that people who may have lived are dying because they cannot get to advanced medical care, and disease outbreaks such as measles among the young are being made worse because children are not vaccinated.  

This photo is from the FMS website.

Another more personal tragedy was the death on 18 January of Castissima, the much loved housekeeper and cook at Olkokola Catholic Mission.  She has worked here for over 30 years and her children from their infancy have all been part of the OCM family, particularly Richard who is one of the pilots.  Casti is so sorely missed.  I will remember her as one of the most wise, compassionate, kind and generous people I have ever known.  Castissima helped me with my translations of documents into respectful swahili - something Google Translate doesn’t always achieve - and that I will miss along with her excellent chapatis and pumpkin pies.  Her family will miss her in much more profound ways.  She still has children in primary and secondary school and has always encouraged them to high achievement in education which she saw as so important to their futures.  I hope their love and respect for the values she held will keep them on the path she wanted for them.   

Castissima William

Steve loves the end of January - with the last weekend comes the finals of the Australian Open and the return of AFL news.  He has that to look forward to as he plans our trip to Britain when we leave here in April.  In this I may have to intervene so it is not solely a tour of RSPB sites!   

More soon as our time in Tz enters its last 9 weeks.  Steve will try to get out a few  more times with local birder mates.  here is an example of what we saw yesterday on the Maasai Steppe near Simanjiro.

Nearly as big as a bird!

Love from Jenny 

Half way

 

Now I really am half way through my assignment and we’re trying to figure out how we’ll fit all the things we wanted to achieve into the remaining 13 weeks.  We won’t get to do the Mt Kili climb!  I will use up all my “annual leave” with the trip to Kenya and then Serengeti with Liz and Sophie so we’ll be restricted to weekends.  There are no public holidays I can take advantage of and we fly to London on Easter Monday.

Kenya was a very successful excursion - spectacular scenery and interesting animals.  Steve’s Blog will tell you all about it.  It was great to be able to walk in the forest at Castle Forest though we did have to keep an eye out for elephants!  The waterfall was pretty.  And wherever the British go in the highlands of East Africa they leave hydrangeas and fuchsias behind!   

Ashnil Lodge Samburu at Buffalo Springs NR was very nice though it reinforced the thing I dislike most about travelling in Africa - the tipping culture.  I never know how much is too much and how much is not enough.  I always feel as if I’m disappointing someone!  I saw all my favourite mammals and most of my favourite birds.

I found it interesting to look for similarities and differences between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  One that stood out to me was the number of churches in Kenya.  The Roman Catholics and the Anglicans have mainstream religion sown up though the Methodists have a bit of a stronghold in northern Kenya. The RC and ACK churches and cathedrals were obscenely huge and ostentatious when compared with the very modest homes and schools around them.  Both seem to be in the midst of an ambitious building program.  The number and variety of pentecostal and evangelical churches was astonishing.  Most were a combination of Full Gospel, Deliverance, Healing and Transformation with a bit of Grace and Redemption thrown in and were clearly of the prosperity theology persuasion.  Huge tents for many of the pentecostal groups made me (uncharitably) think it was probably a circus inside!  The “Jesus Winner Ministry” was quite widespread but Glory Christian Church in Nanyuki was perhaps my favourite - who wouldn’t want to belong to a place for winners below the slaughterhouse and next to the prison farm.  I was also taken by a tiny corrugated iron shed that called itself the “Mega Church International” and another that was a “Faith Impartation Centre” rather than a boring tabernacle or cathedral or Kingdom Hall (yes, there are JWs as well as SDAs). The religion industry is doing very well in Kenya!  There were fewer mosques than we were used to and the Lutherans were nowhere to be seen but no-one was going to miss out on the chance to worship on any day of the week.

The only disappointment was on the last day when we were exploited (robbed!) because of the colour of our skin.  The caretaker of the public toilets near the bus station in Nairobi charged us Ksh100 ($1.20) each to use the facilities when I know the going rate is Ksh10.  And the taxi driver who brought us home from the bus station in Arusha charged Tsh50,000 ($30) when the Tsh20,000 we usually pay is generous!  The irritation this causes me is silly - we can afford to pay - but the attitude that we’re fair game for milking doesn’t sit well.

For me it’s back to work tomorrow.  I have 3 months to encourage / cajole the teachers to have their curriculum and assessment documents up to date and accessible on the centre’s computer and to have the Business Management lessons and resources squared away.  Other tasks will no doubt crop up but the  ones I need to get finalised are the ones on the assignment plan so everyone can be satisfied it was a ‘successful’ assignment.

The short rains have been poor in many areas around Arusha and my organisation is helping several hundred families with money to buy food.  Any crops that have had sufficient rain to grow won’t be ready to harvest for at least two months so the need is ongoing.  I have been able to help with the administration of the program - using Mail Merge to make labels for envelopes.  I have to type the Maasai names letter for letter as they are beyond my experience.  Here is a sample!

I am also working on a request for a possible AVI remote vol placement to help a hospital near the Ngorongoro Crater improve its fundraising capacity.  There is just not enough government money to satisfy the need and Endulen Hospital has been particularly badly hit.  So if you think accessing international philanthropic organisations could be your thing let me know!

We are so excited to have Liz and Sophie visit next week!  It should be the subject of my next blog.

Belated best wishes to everyone for the New Year,

Love from Jenny