A very African week

We must be in Africa - one of the week’s highlights was seeing the back half of a very large elephant as he stepped off the road and into the forest in front of us.  We spend Wednesday in Arusha National Park as no work on a public holiday.  The week just gone included the celebration of Eid el Fitr - a two day (or possibly two half days) holiday that isn’t declared until the evening before.  This year it could have been Tuesday and Wednesday, or Wednesday and Thursday (or even Thursday and Friday but that was only a slim chance that no-one took seriously).  It is a public holiday that tells me I’m in Africa with equal parts amusement and exasperation!

Sewing group - making slings to suspend babies in when they are being weighed at the Flying Medical Service  Clinics.

I’ve been working on getting a speaker from Femme International to come and talk to the girls about sexual, menstrual and reproductive health for over a month and late Friday last week FI finally sent an invoice and confirmed a speaker for Thursday June 6 if we had paid and if it wasn’t a holiday for Eid.  The problem was that I couldn’t get to the bank to pay until Tuesday and if that was a holiday then the speaker wouldn’t be able to come on Thursday even though it wasn’t a holiday because we wouldn’t have paid and the materials for the workshop couldn’t be prepared until I had.  If Tuesday wasn’t the holiday then I could pay but FI couldn’t come because Thursday would be a holiday!  What a way to run a country!  Africa! (I did make the payment on Tuesday and have had a speaker confirmed for Thursday next week!)

Wednesday we had a lovely day at Arusha NP.  Lots of birds, mammals and reptiles and a glimpse of the snowy peaks of Mt Kilimanjaro.  Look at Steve’s Blog for lovely pictures.

Yesterday I had three jobs to do - 1. get money from the ATM, 2. transfer it into my M-Pesa account on my phone to pay for electricity and 3. get some laminating done for Monday’s maths lessons.  I walked down to the shops with high hopes.  The CRDB ATM was not working, neither was the NBC ATM. Oh well, hamna shida, I gave all the 10,000/= notes I had to Glory in the M-pesa office so at least we would be able to pay the electricity.  Luckily (!) the electricity was off for about 12 hours on Wednesday so we hadn’t used up all of our last top-up.  I tried the first laminating shop - they don’t actually do laminating there, they send it away to be done and you pick it up later so no use to me.  The next laminating shop - one I’ve used before - was closed.  The third and final one was open but had run out of pouches!  So I walked home with one job half done.  Not a great result even by  Tanzanian standards.  Today I took the pages needing laminating and some of my own laminating pouches down to the third shop and did the job using his machine.  I gave him 1500/= for the electricity used! I need a visitor from Aus to bring me my laminator and a case full of pouches!

Today we also went to Shanga - one of my favourite places.  We took our collection of empty glass jars and bottles for recycling.  Shanga has workshops for glass blowing, weaving, tailoring and jewellery making, mostly staffed by people living with disability.  I bought another jug - I just can’t resist.  And I think it a social enterprise eminently deserving of support.  We are taking the students from Olkokola there next Tuesday on an excursion.

We still have no work permit or residents visa.  I have a receipt that says I’ve paid the visa fee which the Archdiocese immigration officer says I can flash if the Immigration Police ‘disturb’ me.  A trip to Uganda could be in the offing!

More from Tz soon, love from Jenny