Monday, January 3, 2011

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

Weather: Sweltering

Swahili Word of the Week: “Upo? Nipe!” My favorite greeting in Tanzania. Literally translates to, “Are you there? Yes, I am here! “

Special Shout Outs: To the lovers of mail, its been a great week at PO Box 80297! Chloe- Loved the package, thank you!; Picky- Great Christmas Card, and GREAT house, hope there is room for auntie alice; Kate, Rupert, Amy and Lila- Your Christmas card made me smile and the glitter remnants are scattered throughout my office; Ronnie- Love the Christmas card.

I am sorry for the long gap and lack of communication from me and my side of the world. I wish I had some glamorous excuses (well I have a few) but more than that is has been hectic with a capital H out here lately. This note will hardly suffice but here goes anyway…

I have been busy with work with a variety of projects. The most labor intensive is working with representatives from all 67 of the nursing schools to develop, design and format standardized nursing lesson plans for 3 years of nursing curriculum. The lack of books and access to up to date teaching materials plus the huge shortage of nurse tutors created a need for standardized lesson plans that all nurse tutors could use as templates to teach the nursing students. Work is well underway and I will be traveling around all of Tanzania in February to check on progress. The libraries and skills labs are in progress. Mum’s charity kindly donated stacks of new nursing textbooks to our libraries as there is such a need. We had a party to inaugurate them where over 40 people came. It was like little kids and candy, we could not keep the nurses away from them, they are so excited to have access to up to date information (many books here are from the 1960-80’s). I spend every Friday volunteering at the local ICU which is always fascinating and gut wrenching at the same time. But I love the patients, nurses and docs too and it’s a nice combination of learning and teaching…

Dar has become very hot again, to add to this we seemed to have missed the short rains completely. Everyone is distressed not only for the maize and kasava planting but also because the government has not properly rationed the water for hydroelectric power so now we have daily power outages ranging for 4 – 12 hours and no water at all Saturdays and Sundays. Hmmmmm On a lighter note Mangoes and plums are now in season so Hip, hip hooray.

Mum and I have been busy traveling, Zanzibar for her birthday which was heavenly. Pemba island for snorkeling and relaxing for Christmas. This included Christmas dinner of a clove infused turkey (Pemba is the island of cloves, clove turkey sounds weird but it was delicious!) and then we went up to a river camp in the Southern Highlands for horse riding, hiking bird watching and swimming. Not that I’m bragging BUT we saw a 6-foot python swimming in the river right next to our path AND an endemic Loveridge Sunbird in the Udzungwa Mountains. No big deal!!!

Mum has been visiting for the past two months and has extended her stay to take care of me (and avoid the frightening UK weather). She has been a star taking care of house stuff and garden stuff and of course the chickens. We have had some chicken excitement in that they contracted either mites or lice. So new years day was spent sprinkling them with insecticide powder and rubbing their combs, legs and beaks with Vaseline jelly to suffocate the bugs. Happy 2011! We did end up having a lovely evening sailing on a dhow and watching fireworks from 4 different spots. Lovely.

No real updates on 2011 but will keep you posted. I am heading to Bangkok for 10 days in January as we have been shortlisted for an award and then I plan to be in the US in May for the birth of my Niece/Nephew (whoop, whoop).

Much love and Happy 2011,

Alice

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