The afternoons are hot and humid. One day last week as we left our sticky room, tired and grumpy from the heat, we heard the sound of a small noisy crowd, coming towards us. Around 40 football fans were on their way to a match. They were so happy, beating their drums, waving their huge banner, singing and honking on a cheap parping trumpet. It instantly cheered us up.
It was around 2PM on a Tuesday, and they were on their way to watch the local team play. We guess that because there are so few formal jobs here in Bagamoyo they can play football matches at any time of day, and people will still turn up. They play on a pitch that is 90% sand, it has just enough grass for the local goats and cows graze to there. But people pay to watch the game – just a few cents we think.
We’ve walked past a few times just as the game has finished and a few hundred people spill out onto the road. The result doesn’t seem to matter too much since they’re always cheerful, and always singing.
Internet weirdness
Our friend Sarah has been banned from every internet café in Bagamoyo (actually there are only two). Her crime was using Skype.
The internet café next to our Home Base is always full and should be very profitable. Jackie, the owner of the café pays for her internet access using a pre-pay card. She buys a 10,000 shilling card, and this will frequently run out while we are using the internet. On one occasion the card ran out, and she didn’t have enough money to pay for her next card – so we had to have a whip-round amongst her customers.
The real problem seems to be that the internet cafés charge by the hour – but they pay for the internet by the amount of data consumed. They have no way to monitor the data usage of each individual customer, so the prepay internet access is frequently used up before the customers have finished – leaving the café owner out of pocket.
The solution: ban Sarah.
Max’s Hospital volunteering
I went to Bagamoyo hospital today to see if I could help in any way with their computer systems. My school will be closed for the last week of my placement, so I need to find something else to do.
I met Dr. Ponza at the hospital. He took me to the Malaria Unit where I met Alex, the I.T. guy. The Malaria Unit, in stark contrast to the rest of the hospital (which we blogged about earlier), is very swish indeed. I walked into the air-conditioned reception area to find a bright, clean waiting room. It looked similar to a newly built western hospital, and I saw the same insignia that I’d seen on some very new four-wheel drives that I’d seen around town.
I had to go back the next day to speak to the administrator. It turns out that the Malaria Unit is a research unit. They are funded by Glaxo Smith Klien, who have a malaria vaccine that they are testing out here. The unit has four beautiful new labs, including equipment for DNA analysis. Their computer systems are hooked up to Beijing, where test results are analysed.
Meanwhile, the main hospital doesn’t even register patients on a computer. Medical records are stacked floor to ceiling, semi-exposed in an outhouse with three walls. Patients are given, and asked to memorize, a patient number, which is then used to find their medical records. The problem with this is that patients don’t remember their patient number between visits – so the stacks of medical records are usually unsearchable.
I think that Dr Ponza referred me to the Malaria Unit because there aren’t really any computers anywhere else in the hospital (they have a couple for word processing, but nothing else). It’s a bit of a Catch 22: the reason that the Malaria Unit has computers is because it is well funded, because they are well funded, they don’t really need my help.
The problems with the main hospital’s computer systems (i.e. they don’t have any) can’t really be solved in a week. So I think I’ll find somewhere else to work when school closes.
Settling in at school
We have both been finding working with the children at school gets more rewarding over time. We’re getting to know the kids better - Anne knows all of her kid’s names, while Max knows the vast majority of his (there are about 10 girls with names starting with Z and he tends to get those mixed up).
It’s really great when in just a few weeks you can see big improvements in a child’s writing skills, their vocabulary increases, and they can solve more maths questions. And the children are getting more comfortable with us.
Max thinks that Anne is particularly gifted in coming up with silly games that the children love. The kids have christened their current favourite ‘mwa mwalimu’ (mwalimu meaning teacher). This is pretty simple – Anne pulls a scary face and says ‘mwaaaa’, chases then tickles the child on the tummy. The kids come up to her now, pushing the tummies forward and asking for ‘mwa mwalimu’.
It’s school holidays next week, so this week we both have to say goodbye to our classes, which is going to be sad. Max’s teacher, Madam Rachel, warned the kids that Max is leaving at the end of this week and the kids were unhappy (well, that’s what Madam Rachel said – it all happened in Swahili) – one of the younger girls started crying which was really sad. So we’re preparing ourselves for tears at the end of the week – if not the kids, then definitely us!
Max’s tropical neck disease
My tropical neck disease has now completely cleared up. Towards the end of the first week I woke up with a red rash on the back of my neck about 20cm long, running into my scalp. The next day this turned into what looked like a small mountain range of puss filled bumps.
I was told about some type of fly that purportedly causes this kind of infection when it lands on you. I’m not convinced by that story – but it could well have been insect related.
Anyway, my neck seemed to respond well to the sanitizer, disinfectant and threats to take it to Bagamoyo hospital. It finally cleared up at the beginning of last week.
Changing of the guard
Last week we said goodbye remaining members of our group. Adil and Mina had left the previous week, and now it was time for Staci, Tracey and Jen to go – leaving just the two of us from our original group.
We planned a trip to Dar to have a nice farewell dinner, but unfortunately some last minute flight departure confusion meant that just the two of us and Tracey were able to make it. We said our farewells to Staci and Jen in Bagamoyo on Saturday morning.
We’ve become very close over the last few weeks and were very sad to see everyone go. We hadn’t expected that one of the best things about volunteering would be the friendships made with other volunteers.
The people in our group (i.e. volunteers who arrived at the same time as us) are wonderful, warm, generous, loving and very funny individuals. We’re grateful that we had the opportunity to build such good friendships, and we feel very lucky in that our group immediately got along with one another so well. We’ll get to see some of them later on this year during our travels, and hopefully we’ll see the others sometime soon – there’s talk of trying to organize a reunion for later in the year, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long.
Although the rest of our group has left, there are still two volunteers from the previous group here at CCS, and we are quite close to them. They will be here for another month or so (they will be in Bagamoyo for a total of 12 weeks). In addition, last week we were joined by the next group of volunteers. This group is huge – about 20 of them. The majority of them are aged between 18-21 and on summer break from the US. Individually, every one is nice, but as a group it is a little overwhelming.
The quantity of people gives the place a bit of a spring break feel. When we go to the local bar for drinks it’s just a bit ridiculous. We turn up, asking for 30 seats and inadvertently take over the whole place – a big pack of mzungus. It makes it a bit harder to blend in. We’re readjusting to the change in group dynamics - it’s not too bad, just a bit of a transition phase.
Madam Rachel, Max and the photo shoot
One of the new volunteers is working with me in my kindergarten class. She’s called Monica, and she’s really great to work with. This week Madam Rachel asked Monica and me to bring in our cameras to take photos of the kids. At the end of the day Madam Rachel told us both that she didn’t think we’d taken enough photos of her, and would we mind taking some now.
We were a little surprised, but happy to oblige. She was quite specific about the photos, making sure that we got photos of her with both of our cameras. She asked us to take photos of her from the waist up. And she asked to borrow Monica’s sunglasses because she didn’t like the way that she was squinting in the sun.
The next day, Madam Rachel proudly showed us the new sunglasses that she had bought because she liked Monica’s so much. And she asked if we could bring our cameras in again because we hadn’t taken any photos of her teaching in the classroom. Hopefully she’ll be teaching in her new sunglasses when we next take her photo.
It is very expensive to get pictures printed here in Tanzania, and Madam Rachel has asked us to send her hard copies of photos when we get back home. I guess that her best bet of filling a photo album is to have volunteers with digital cameras take her picture. And if she’s going to do that, she might as well make sure that the volunteers take photos that she wants.
This week we are heading off to Selous Game Reserve, which is in the south of Tanzania. We’ll be doing boat safaris, which we’re pretty excited about. We’ll update you on the trip in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment