There's always something to do

The students finished for the year last Friday and have all returned to their villages for the Christmas break.  Most have gone on buses north, west and south.  The more remote have flown on FMS clinic days to their homes.  A pilot reported to me there were tears of joy from family when one of the amputees walked across the airstrip on his new leg without crutches!

Of course there was a party before departure - pilau, chicken and chips and salad.  We contributed three watermelons and a bag of lollies which were appreciated very much.

This week I have been making washable/reusable pads, and bags to keep them in, which will be distributed to school girls in the Usa River area by a Dutch NGO called 4ALLFoundation.  I’m making a trial production run of 100 pads and 20 bags to test time taken (remembering how to use a treadle machine was surprisingly quick!) and materials needed.  The production element that takes the longest time is the cutting out.  I have to figure out a way to speed that up - I’m sure applying mathematics will be the key!

So this week could have been a bit quiet.  The (American) dentist who comes occasionally to run free clinics (extractions and fillings) and distribute toothbrushes and advice had one day working out of the container next to the sewing room so I had plenty of company that day.  

Actually I received plenty of attention - someone using a sewing machine in a public setting must be selling something!  So I had people wandering in to see what they could buy.  Women really liked the idea and wanted to take them away then and there - I kept having to say they weren't ready yet (I still have press studs to sew on).  Men went one of two ways when I told them what I was making.  They either looked puzzled and embarrassed and went away quickly or tried to figure out alternate uses that would suit them.  It’s funny how men sometimes think there should be nothing that excludes them.  Anyway, if we can get excess production we’ll have no trouble selling (or giving away) the extras.

(The taboo around around discussing menstruation and sex is a huge problem so I was right in there telling men, women and children all about it - my swahili vocabulary is growing.)

This photo was on my Facebook a few weeks ago but I have included it for those who don’t see FB.  There are still so many things here that make us laugh!

And Happy Christmas to you all!

Love from Jenny

A little more on November and into December

Our mamas and babies are heading home to their villages over the next few days - one on a bus and the other two will fly back with FMS when there is next a clinic at their village.  We hope to get feedback over the next few months on the reactions of the family and friends to lack of a 'cure' and also to assess whether the mothers are continuing with the therapies to strengthen the babies' muscles.  Data on this will be important in deciding the next step in this project.  We have to weigh up the positives - improvement in the babies head control, education of the mothers in what cerebral palsy is, mothers realising they are not unique in having babies with special needs (the 'holiday' in a guest house with no housework and all meals provided and time to sit and chat with other mothers in a similar situation was something they all appreciated mightily!) against the negatives - possible unrealistic expectations and dashed hopes,  reduction in respect for what modern medicine is able to do leading to failure to immunise or bring health concerns to the clinic staff.  We may be doing more harm than good.   

Clearly education is required so mothers recognise signs of cerebral palsy in their babies and get early intervention.  Also better birthing practices and education on the dangers of prolonged labours could reduce the incidence of CP.  In rural Tanzania over half of deliveries are attended by traditional birth attendants with no medical training and often old wives tales prevail - for instance mothers are told not to eat any meat or eggs in the last 3 months of pregnancy to reduce the baby's size for an easier birth but this also damages the baby's brain and overall development, and the mother's health. 

Also education about what modern medicine can and can't fix - there is no dawa (drug) to cure the common cold, or regrow an amputated limb or fix a damaged brain.  But good ante-natal care and birthing practices would go a long way to addressing the problems of peri-natal and maternal mortality which are still far too common here and of other birth complications including fistula in mothers and brain damage, due to lack of oxygen during protracted birth, in babies.

The ethical question remains - is it wrong to prolong the life of a community member who cannot be maintained realistically in a semi-nomadic community?  There is no alternative community for these children to live in.  They will mostly die young.  Their needs may be neglected because there are not enough resources to go around and, as the disabled are considered a burden and a curse, they may be hidden away where neighbours cannot see them and have no intellectual stimulation, no life.  Yet these babies are loved!  I see it in the interactions between these mamas and their babies.  They have agreed to come to Arusha because they want what is best for their babies.  I cannot say it would be better if these babies had never lived.  It is a question with no right answer.

As promised, here is a pic from the baptism on November 17.  This lovely baby is the nephew of the baptismal girl.  He's not totally impressed with being handed to the mzungu but did doze off.

And a picture of a giraffe is always worth posting - from a trip to Arusha NP on November 9 with fresh, new volunteers recently arrived from Port Fairy.  l love being with friends when they see their first giraffe - it's such a magical experience.

And our girls starting to line up for a photo with the speakers from Femme International who came on Thursday Dec 5 for their final follow up visit on matters related to menstrual health - these girls inspire me with their resilience and perseverance in the face of huge barriers.

Hopefully one more post before the end of the year,

Love from Jenny

Where did November go?

Well another month has gone and I’ve been procrastinating over this post for weeks!  This morning (and the next morning as it happens!) I’m listening to the cricket Aus v Pak, biting the bullet and getting my thoughts down on (virtual) paper…

The month started well with a visit by Zoe Manders-Jones, Program Director of the Australian Volunteers Program and Colin Collett Van Rooyen , Regional Director of AVP.  It’s always a pleasure to show visitors around Olkokola Catholic Mission, I am so proud to show off all the good work that is done by the Flying Medical Service (FMS), the Olkokola Dispensary and the Centre for the Physically Handicapped.  We had been successful in getting a grant from Australian Volunteers in this year’s Community Grants Scheme so I was able to show the visitors what we planned to do.  The weather was perfect and Mt Meru was on show.  The centre is in a lovely setting.

I have also felt like I’ve made progress on other fronts, visiting the Teacher Training College that specialises in  Special Needs to organise to have a teacher for the deaf visit for some specialist training for our trainers next year (I hope it wasn’t an African “Yes”) and forging links with Vocational Training Colleges and other educational institutes (even though we aren’t one!!).  These were all part of my original assignment plan so it’s good to get them ticked off.

The mathematics homework box is going well.  Doing voluntary mathematics is after dinner entertainment evidently.  I’m excited to get the self education room underway - that’s what the CSG from AVI was for - funded by Wheeler Foundation.

Now the tricky part. I was given some money by some very kind and generous members of Hamilton Uniting Church congregation and it was set aside to use for a special project bringing infants with cerebral palsy and their mothers from remote areas serviced by FMS so they could have specialist treatment here in Arusha - an intensive 4 week program to train the mothers in giving physical therapy to their babies.  The money has paid for bed and board for the families at a guest house in Arusha.  This has been so much more complicated than I had imagined!

Our protocol specified that families must understand that cerebral palsy is not something that has a ‘cure’.  But such is the belief in modern medicine that it has proved impossible to convince the families that their infants will never walk.  The therapy is to strengthen muscles so the infants will be able to hold their heads up and possibly roll over but that is really the limit.

Now I’m worried that all we’ve done is set the families up for a huge let down, giving them unrealistic expectations despite all we’ve said.  And to make matters worse a visit to an eye specialist has shown that two of the babies have no sight at all and one additionally has no hearing.  It seems the mothers did not know, so either the clinic medical officers had not tested for this or had not told the mothers in a way that they understood or believed.  It is heartbreaking.  So the mothers will return to their villages next week with infants that are not only not ‘fixed’ but are now more disabled because they are now blind as well.  I feel like it has all been a disaster! I hope it doesn't stop the families using the clinic services or drive them into the clutches of witchdoctors or evangelical preachers in their search for a cure!  I don’t know how much of this we could have forseen and how much was a Rumsfeld ‘unknown unknown’ as much of what happens is!  More on this next time when I’ve processed what happened - the ethics of it all is so difficult in the context of where these families live and their nomadic lifestyle.   

On a more up-beat note, back to my core mission.  The participants in our program are trained using an apprenticeship model.  The trainers are skilled tradespeople who demonstrate how to do each task and then help the participants to refine their work.  It is “on the job” learning.  At the moment the carpentry and masonry students are building the new teaching and learning space.  It will reduce the crowding in the tailoring room - 28 students is about 10 too many in there - and allow us to give more meaningful tasks to some of the most disabled participants - those who realistically won’t ever be able to use a sewing machine.

We were privileged to be invited to the ‘after party’ for the baptism of the younger sister of James, one of Steve’s local bird watching mates.  It was a lot of fun.  Rachel, the baptismal girl, is 14 years old and will start at secondary school next year.  For this event she was dressed almost like a bride and had a similarly dressed attendant, like a bridesmaid.   It was very surprising but possibly quite new ‘tradition’.  We met James’ grandfather who is very old - the family thinks he may turn 100 next birthday - and also his parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins. I even had a cuddle of his one year old nephew so the infant’s mum could eat her lunch unencumbered.  The party involved food and drink for about 300 family and friends.  All the neighbours from the village were there too.  There was music - a DJ with generator and speakers - and speeches.  I’ll add some pics when Steve returns from Rwanda.  Look at his blog for the story of his trip to speak at a conference in Kigali.

Also this month we have had our annual In-Country Meeting.  The ICM is a chance for all the AVP volunteers in Tanzania to get together to learn from each other and from outside experts.  This year the theme was around inclusivity especially of people with disability but also gender diverse and all the well recognised ‘isms’ - race, age, sex.  It was a very interesting couple of days at a lovely venue up on the crater wall near Karatu called The Retreat.  Staying in such a place is a luxury but it is regarded as a ‘Thank you’ from the program - our normal living conditions are far less salubrious - and it gives that bit of emotional distance from our work to be able to see it more clearly and realistically - something that is hard when you’re in the middle of it.  At ICM we met the volunteers who live in Dar es Salaam and I discovered one is a Melbourne Demons supporter but unfortunately his assignment has just finished so I’m back to feeling like the only Dees supporter in Tz.

December has arrived while I’ve been writing this and so, now this month, we are looking forward to showing our dear friends Lou and Rob Drummond around the northern safari circuit of Tanzania - Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Speke Bay, Lake Manyara and Tarangire.  It’ll be fun.  They are also Africa specialists having had two years in Zimbabwe as Australian Volunteers in the 1990s.

On a sad note my dear Uncle Allan died this week.  We saw him and Auntie Lyn just before we left.  We will not be able to go home for his funeral - it’s just too far from Sakina to Ouyen! - but will be thinking of all the family and missing them enormously this week and next.  It’s a good reminder that we need to try harder to remember to use Skype and stay in touch - has to be part of breakfast time with the 8 hour time difference.

I hope I’ll get another blog post written to wrap up the year at work before we head off on December 28 for our safari, but knowing how long this has taken I wouldn’t be holding my breath in expectation!

Love from Jenny

Tarangire and more

We try to give the participants in our program a variety of experiences in the wider world so last week we had our excursion to Tarangire National Park.  It was a lot of fun but a very looooong day.

Monday, October 14 was a public holiday for Nyerere Day so we were able to hire the school bus belonging to a local private school that could hold all our students, our teachers and various others.  The wheel chairs and the picnic lunch fitted in the lockers under the bus - no hydraulic lifts here; and the four girls who need the wheelchairs were helped onto the bus in the same way you’d ‘help on’ a sack of potatoes!

The drive to Tarangire Gate is about 2 hours but the passengers had been sitting on the bus for quite a while before we left and a few were desperate for a convenience stop just before the turn off the tarmac, so we stopped at the side of the road and they divided, girls to the right, boys to the left, to go behind the bushes.

At the gate it took a while to process the paper work but soon enough we were in and on the lookout for wanyama wa porini - simba, twiga, tembo and their friends.

We were very lucky, we had good views of lions (two very lazy males who had been working their way through a meal of baby elephant) giraffes, buffalo and various antelope.  The young trainee tour guide even stopped the bus for birds so we saw ostrich, Southern ground hornbill, Kori bustard and many vultures.  We despaired of seeing elephants (they are all currently in Lake Manyara NP as you can read in Steve’s blog!), but eventually we saw a few including a few very young ones.  

There were very many (naughty) monkeys at the picnic ground where we stopped for lunch and tourists were not minding the park rules about not interacting with them and making future behaviour worse.  You can’t go wrong over-estimating the stupidity of a very few people!

It was a great day out for everyone, any day that involves a soda must be a red-letter day!

Last week I also progressed a step along the path to becoming a registered tax payer in Tz.  I had tried the week before, going to the TRA with all the required documents listed on the application form, but was told I also needed an ‘Official Letter’.  We argued that no such thing existed or was needed but to no avail. So I went to the Archdiocese to get an Official Letter and they said, “What’s that?”  I had come prepared with what I thought it should say and the nun in charge of such matters dutifully typed it up.  I spell checked it while she watched “Monkey Magic” on the telly then she said I should return the following day after it had been signed by Someone Important.  I have it now so I feel Official.  It’s been too hectic since to return to the TRA but I’m sure when I do there will be another hurdle to clamber over.

This week I have also made some progress on a plan for professional development of the trainers at the centre.  (We can no longer be a ‘college’ with ‘teachers’ or ‘students’ because we are not registered with the education authorities, and we cannot be registered because there is no category for what we do!)  The Catholic order that started the Mission where I work runs a Vocational Training College and a Boys Secondary School with a Deaf Education Unit at Tenguru, just east of Arusha.  I visited there with two of our trainers so they could have collegial discussions on curriculum and pedagogy (or as Mark put it, “I have a new friend!”) and I also visited the secondary school and made a new friend.  I have struggled with explaining money related arithmetic to our deaf students but now, courtesy of Madam Happy, the DP at the secondary school, I have a short video of all the necessary Tz sign language hand signs.  She was very pleased to be filmed on my phone!  We will return there next week and hope to get a collaborative partnership happening.

I have spent quite a bit of the last two weeks on the road including the 5 hour round trip to Moshi driving our four leg amputees for prosthetics fittings at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre.  Driving in Tz is never pleasant and on Thursday rain added to the degree of difficulty although it did keep the pikipikis off the road!  It was a successful trip with progress made by all four.  One was even able to try out his new leg and was so pleased to be actually walking!

I have also made progress on the Kiswahili literacy front.  I put a list of the 100 most common words in written swahili on the wall of the classroom / dining room and the students swarmed all over it reading them all out loud!  They are so starved for reading materials.  I am hoping over the next few months to get a collection of books together but then I’ll have to work out how to preserve them from damage and ‘disappearance’.  I have also printed small slips of paper with the most common syllables in swahili for the students to sound out and assemble into words.  Swahili is a totally phonetic language where any letter always makes the same sound so once they know the sounds the rest is easy (maybe!).  I will report on progress.

Next week will be another big week!  We have the Regional Director for AVI who is based in Sri Lanka coming to visit my work place to see what we’re doing together.  All the visitors I’ve shown around have been amazed by our centre and the way our participants tackle the huge challenges they face.  I love showing them off to everyone because they are such an impressive bunch! 

So I’ll have a lot to report next time, I appreciate your interest.

Love from Jenny

Visitors

Last week was a week of visitors.

On Monday friends from Warrnambool and Ballarat came to see Steve’s workplace and mine.  Martin and Anthony were Agriculture Victoria colleagues of Steve’s.  Martin and his wife Kaz are volunteering on the Bandari Project at Mto wa Mbu (Mosquito River) west of Arusha.  Anthony is on the board of a children’s home at Moshi, east of Arusha, and is also volunteering on an AVP assignment in Kenya.   Together Steve, Martin and Anthony can boast 100 years of doing no harm to agriculture in western Victoria!

Anthony, Martin and Steve

It was a quick visit - they had dallied at Echo which was fair enough as the men were all agriculturally inclined - but we walked quickly and I talked quickly so they were able to see all of the Olkokola Vocational Training Centre and hear all about it.  There was even time for questions. (Steve and I were able to do a reciprocal visit to the Bandari Project school on Tuesday on our way back from Lake Natron - it is an excellent project.)

On Wednesday we had a visit at OVTC from four young Dutch people (including an Australian/ Dutch woman originally from Perth). Two of the young men had visited Tanzania as secondary school students and the poverty they had seen had a lasting impact, particularly the lack of underwear possessed by boys.  They started the '4allfoundation' which aims to provide undies, currently just for boys but with the prospect of undies and washable/reusable menstrual pads for girls in the future.  They were impressed with OVTC and what it provides and I did a video interview - unexpected so unprepared! - which I’m debating whether I’d really want to see!  They also are keen for our tailoring students to start producing the menstrual pads, a sewing project that would be excellent from a social, ecological and economic point of view.

On Friday the children and staff from Step by Step Learning Centre, a school for mentally handicapped children, came to visit.  They were a lot of fun!  The children enjoyed seeing our students hard at work in their class rooms and also seeing our farm animals.  The accompanying adults were very impressed with the centre and the wonderful vegetable garden.  We have made Step by Step a present of a bull calf as they are establishing their own farm.  There is also the prospect of future links with our tailoring students making the fabric bags the Step by Step children require and our carpentry students making some furniture - shelves and cupboards.  We had a reciprocal visit to Step by Step Learning Centre today.  Our students and teachers had a very enjoyable time.  It is a very impressive school, a credit to the woman who started the centre when she realised there was no learning centre in Arusha where her mentally disabled daughter could gain skills and some independence.  A fellow AVP volunteer is working there on fund raising and I wish her all the success in the world - this centre (and many more like it) is sorely needed.

On Tuesday last week I was also a visitor.  I went out to see Holy Ghost Vocational Training Centre run by the Spiritans at Tengeru, just east of Arusha.  It is part of an impressive complex that includes a boys secondary school and a deaf education unit.  The Head Teacher showed me around and answered my many questions.  I am starting to get a better understanding of the vocational training sector and ways we might add value to what we do at OVTC.  I was also able to get a look at the official Vocational Education Training Authority (VETA) syllabuses for Carpentry and for Masonry - something which up to now had eluded me.  My next step is to get copies of the syllabuses for myself.  

My maths classes are continuing.  Each student has one hour a week in a streamed class that has a maximum of 12 learners so all can get individual attention.  The lowest ability groups have only 5 students.  We are concentrating on money and measurement.  For some students the aim is for them to be able to count and to recognise the currency of Tanzania; others are working on keeping simple financial records and doing tax calculations.  My challenge is to produce appropriate resources so that students will be able to be use them in a self-teaching situation after I leave.  Below is an example of the work left for our students by the local primary school teachers - with no feedback given!

Look at Steve’s blog for the story of our trip to Ngare Sero, Lake Natron and Engaruka with pictures.  Just a couple here as incentive to go and see more!

Love from Jenny

A trip to town

The lives of students at the centre are quite sheltered and the hours of each day are fully occupied with all they have to do - lessons in their trade, lessons in maths and swahili by teachers from the local school and organised sport and exercises.  There are also lessons in health from the Medical Officer at the local dispensary clinic. The students also share responsibility for all the communal cooking and cleaning as well as their own personal washing.  They really don’t get out much!  So the excursion program is an important way of broadening their horizons. 

Day to day life - masonry students making blocks

Most of our students come from remote villages and so a trip into Arusha town is quite a novelty. Just like our Hamilton students on a trip to Melbourne, their eyes are out on stalks. 

Yesterday we went all went into central Arusha,  The 41 students and 4 of the staff were squashed into 2 daladalas (minibuses).  Two more teachers travelled in the land cruiser pickup with the wheelchairs in the back.

Some of our tailoring students

The aim of the day was to show students the sort of shops where they might buy the materials and equipment they would need for their small business.  When we arrived in town we divided into the different streams and each group went with their teacher to see shops for masons, carpenters, agrivets or tailors.  I went with the tailors to see sewing machine spare parts shops, notions shops and fabric shops. The tailoring group includes four students in wheelchairs (baiskeli in swahili), four using crutches and another 10 with mobility issues.  So getting around town with uneven footpaths and roadways and anarchic traffic around midday when a large slice of the business community were heading off to pray was somewhat problematic!  But, as always, optimism and perseverance triumphed and we managed it!  The students now have a better understanding of the business world that are training to enter.

And who was last back on the bus ( and almost got left behind ) ?  The Agrivet students of course!    

A  highlight for the students was having lunch at a cafe - roast meat with rice and a soda!  A meal they didn’t need to prepare and clean up after, plus soda - a rare treat! 

Having lunch in the cafe

An additional highlight for me was meeting Brian at Arusha’s central market. I had stopped short when I saw the Essendon Bombers t-shirt that he was wearing with pride - he clearly didn’t know about the season they’d just had.  In fact he didn’t know what an Essendon Bomber was.  He now knows they are a football team in Melbourne Australia (probably thinks soccer as Aussie Rules seemed like information overload under the circumstances) but not how poorly they played this year.  He was very happy to have his picture taken.

Brian, the happiest Bombers supporter in Tz!

More soon, love Jenny

August has vanished!

It has been a busy month at OVTC with the beginning of the new term, excursions and visitors. 

I had four nights in the ‘back blocks’, up near the Kenyan border, staying at the Parish house at Loliondo.  I was with two colleagues on a recruiting mission. We again did the ‘4 hrs 13 min’ ( in reality 8 hour! ) route through Longido, then skirting Oldoinya Lengai and Lake Natron.  It’s hard yards in the middle seat of a hard sprung Toyota Landcruiser pickup.

Again, both coming and going, we picked up hitch hikers willing to ride in the back of the pick-up to save a dusty walk.  Again we bought rock salt at Ngare Sero near Lake Natron on the return journey.  This time there was no goat and no puncture, and a return to Arusha before dark.

The parish priest at Loliondo and the catechist at Digodigo had been busy out in their respective parishes finding suitable candidates.  They travelled with us giving directions to some very remote villages along marginal ‘roads’ to do the interviews.  Most of the people we met with did fit our criteria - over 15 and living with disability but with the capacity to look after themselves, help with communal cooking and cleaning and learn a trade.  These were given enrolment forms and information brochures. Also information and advice to help them prepare for living independently. Others who came to talk with us did not fit our criteria - too young or with disabilities too severe.  My colleagues are very good at directing these families to where help is available though for families from these remote areas to have the mother away with one child getting specialist treatment while the rest of the family remains at home can be problematic.  It is a testament to the determination of mothers that many of these children survive at all.  We saw several cases of severe cerebral palsy with intellectual as well as physical disability and it must have been down to the fierceness of the mother’s will, still carrying a grown child, who cannot walk, on her back, that these children remain healthy, well fed and cared for.  

In another case a woman in her early 30s, married with two young girls, and paralysed from the waist down was being cared for by her family.  I think it was her sister-in-law who carried her and propped her up to sit so she could help with the cooking tasks.  We were able to take her into Wasso, the largest town in the area, where the hospital provided her with a wheelchair.  She has been given suggestions for exercises to increase her upper body strength.  With her family’s support to look after her children we hope to have her enrolled in next year’s cohort to learn tailoring.

On the Saturday we had a day east of Digodigo near Jema, a small and remote town.  The parish priest insisted we take a ‘picnic’ as he knew there would be no café or hotel to buy food.  We were up early putting together sandwiches of his design - peanut butter, pork, tomato, cucumber and honey - which were quite tasty!  We also had fruit, biscuits and water.  We met with people afflicted with ‘club foot’ (a congenital condition where the ankle is malformed and so walking is difficult), scoliosis (malformation of the spine) and other physical disabilities resulting from accidents but also several children with Down’s Syndrome.  People with Down’s are able to be contributing members of their society as they can walk and there are many simple tasks they can perform.

I have such admiration for everyone involved - my colleagues, the local communities who help us find candidates and the families of the people with disability who care for them, protect them and advocate for them.

If you have Google Earth you can look for the villages we visited

For my 60th birthday 2 weeks ago we had a weekend at Lake Manyara.  You can look at Steve’s blog for pictures of birds and mammals, but here is a rare one of the two of us.

More soon, love Jenny

Another month on

It has been a day of tragedies.  First I listened to Melbourne playing Collingwood.  Then the Essendon versus Bulldogs game put my misery into perspective.  And now, we’re just reading about a true tragedy.  More than sixty Tanzanians have been killed when an overturned petrol tanker caught fire.  Most of the victims will be pikipiki (motorbike taxi) riders trying to catch the leaking petrol to use themselves.  Pikipiki riders make about 10,000 Tanzanian shillings a week - around A$6 - so free petrol would be a great attraction.  Unfortunately one of them forgot to put out his cigarette first. (I wonder which story will get the most time on tomorrow morning's news bulletin?

Poverty leads to people taking risks and lack of education compounds the problem.  Then the fatalism that leads people to say ‘God’s Will’ means there is no change as the true cause does not get addressed.  Having daily experience of Tanzania’s poor roads, unroadworthy vehicles and appalling drivers which traffic police seem unwilling or unable to challenge I have no doubt that today’s tragedy is one that will surely be repeated.

If you are a regular reader you’ll have noticed little activity (actually none!) on the blog recently.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy - I truly have! - but I’m going through a ‘treading water’ phase waiting for feedback to see what direction to go next.  So nothing interesting to report. I could give you a run down on Tanzania’s tax system and send you my outline of a 10 lesson course on Running a Small Business - let me know if you’re having trouble sleeping.

In this job you hope what you do will be sustainable.  There’s no point going off on your own inventing wonderful things if the ‘yes, that’s good’ is an African ‘yes’ that means ‘no, not really useful at all’.  So I keep planting seeds and waiting to see what is watered, or maybe planting bombs and waiting to see what explodes!  My Running a Small Business lesson notes have been sprinkled around and I’m awaiting interest - someone who will say “I’d like to teach that!” and mean it.

I did have an interesting experience during the mid-year break going to the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), a huge teaching hospital in Moshi, with two of our students who are being fitted for prosthetic legs.  KCMC trains doctors, nurses and other medical professionals.  It has one of the largest and most highly regarded prosthetic limb laboratories and training facilities in Africa.  Our boys were live models for 5 students who all made moulds of their stumps using gauze and plaster of Paris. They had to go back the next day when the moulds had hardened to see which was most comfortable - direct assessment of the students’ work! - and now are each waiting for their new leg to be finished.  Then they’ll be fitted, given instructions on their use and care, and be trained in therapy exercises to get them walking again.  Very exciting.  (Harking back to paragraph 1, both young men have had an above-the-knee amputation as the result of motor vehicle accidents!)

Students admiring the cattle

In the vegie plot

The students are back now from their month-long mid-year break. The beginning of term has been messy with a whole-day excursion to Nane Nane, the agricultural show, on Wednesday then the Nane Nane public holiday on Thursday.  Next week we’ll have the Islamic celebration Eid al Hajj, a public holiday (probably Monday, but only announced the night before, argh!!) and a visit from Femme International to talk to the girls and women about menstrual health which could also be a day long event.  My maths classes will start again next week too which I’m looking forward to.  I need to trial some of my new maths worksheets to see what needs tweaking.

Over the next few weeks we should also be visiting a lot of the past students to see how they are managing - all students are followed up for at least 3 years and I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say about what else we should add to the 18 month program. 

I'm adding these photo of the Leopard Tortoise we saw at Kili Golf Estate on Thursday - Steve and i had a birding excursion there on the Nane Nane Day public holiday with four young Tanzanian birdwatchers from the group Birding for Life.

If you have the opportunity to visit the national parks why wouldn’t you?  We’re lucky enough to have time and resources so we had two nights in Tarangire NP.

From our side of Arusha it’s just a 2 hour drive to the main gate of Tarangire NP but we went down the luxury (expensive!) route of two nights full board at the Tarangire Safari Lodge which is inside the park. Look at Steve’s blog for lovely pictures.  We’ll have a weekend at Lake Manyara NP next weekend to celebrate my birthday so watch for more pics from there in a week’s time.

More soon, love Jenny