Uuguzi huleta afya...Nurses bring health!

Swahili Word of the Week: Uuguzi huleta afya...Nurses bring health!

Weather: It is perfect. Blue skies, Upepo season has arrived and it is lovely. Breezes, sun and clear air. I love it!

Special Shout Out: Thank for all the birthday wishes and cards. Made my birthday season!

Nurses in Tanzania

So as I prepare for my trip home (YIPPEEE) I contemplate my time here so far. Last week was a very nice summation of what amazing experiences I have had so far. I had a superb birthday and then traveled upcountry to do site visits on our libraries that we have place in VERY rural areas. This gave me an opportunity to see some of the work that we are accomplishing.

A wise woman once told me (thank you kate campell) about the lollypop theory. Bedside nursing, although very hard work ,generally gives you a little lollypop at the end of each shift. When you walk out of an exhausting 12 hour shift, there is generally at least one thing that you did well and had a positive affect on a patient. The work I do now does not have this immediate gratification, but hopefully in time there will be a huge lollypop that will make up for all the little lollypops I am missing being away from bedside nursing.

Last week I got to have a quick lick of this larger lollypop. After traveling for 2 full days up to Singida I arrived at a nursing school in very remote Tanzania. Although, very minimalist compared to developed nation standards, they are churning out good nurses. What was amazing was the dedication of these nursing students. There were 265 enrolled nursing students, most of them were 18 years old. Very shy, polite and dressed in pink pinafores. The school had a total of 4 nurse tutors for all 265 students. No skills lab and a very, very outdated library. The capacity of the school was 120 students. This meant that all students shared a twin bed. Dorms were set up with two bunk beds so in a 12 x 8 room there were 8 nursing students. Yet when I arrived, they greeted me with shy smile and told me how much they enjoyed and appreciated their new Mobile Library; As did their exhausted and overworked tutors.

We continued on through to 4 more nursing schools and met an amazing third generation Norwegian MD TZ resident whose grandfather was a Dr in TZ in the 1950’s, as was his father and now he is the medical director. They were running an amazing hospital in the middle of nowhere. People travelled from miles around. The tribes around the area are very primitive, I saw my first tribe members with facial scarring. Beautiful. The nursing students here were also amazing. I met with the 3rd year leadership students. As part of leadership they are assigned different school tasks. Some were assigned to the kitchen and as part of the leadership class had just slaughtered a cow (only in Africa moment). These nursing students are entering jobs where they generally have 30 patients, they are underpaid, not respected and very overworked. They share beds, books and uniforms in order to get through nursing school. It makes me proud to be a nurse because nurses are a dedicated and amazing breed.

The trip was grueling on awful roads. I was physically sore from being jostled around for 8 hours a day in the back of the car. My life flashed before my eyes at least three times. Once when a daladala stopped short in the middle of the road. The driver had me in stitches when he stated that “DalaDala drivers are all born from the same father.” This is so true. Every country you go to DalaDala drivers all drive too fast, play their music too loud, stop in inconvenient places and have no regard to anyone else on the road. My second life flash moment happened as we were traveling down from Arusha. We came upon a quite spectacular crash where 4 Lorries had collided. Two being petrol tankers. One exploded, the other lay on its side with about 200 people crowded around it with Jerry cans. I asked the driver why and he said the driver of the Lorry would charge the people to fill up the Jerry can to empty the truck. I guess the nearest petrol station was a few 100 km away so it was door to door service for most of these people. It does make you wonder if the money ever makes it back to the petrol company though, and the safety of emptying fuel in the bush out of a crashed tanker with an exploded tanker a few hundred meters away, hmmmmmm.

Food for thought
Tanzanian nurses comprise over 60% of thehealthcare workforce
By 2020 they will only have 50% of the nurses they need (at the rate their producing nurses)
The average age of a nurse tutor in TZ is 55.

the affair

Weather- The rain is here, seriously. It has not stopped in three days, there are floods everywhere and the city is a sodden mess.

Swahili Word of the Week: Nakupenda- I love you

Special Shout Out: Happy Birthday DAD! You are hands down the best dad in the world and I love you so…

The Affair

No, for all you expecting juicy details about a lover, alas the affair is with TZ not with a man.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a lovely birthday party last week where we chartered a 120 foot, 100 year old schooner. She was a true beauty, many G & T’s at sunset, delicious dinner and then dancing under the star all in the Indian Ocean. LOVELY. While on the boat I met a lovely soul, she and I philosophized about life in TZ. She had read a book called the four stages of culture shock. She thought moving to a foreign country (especially a developing one) was like a relationship. The first three months were the honeymoon period, everything is exotic, new and exciting. The second three months you are settling in, you become comfortable and enjoy it. The third stage you hate everything. The traffic, the noise, the fumes, how slow everything moves and that takes you to the fourth stage. This is where you are truly comfortable. You see the good, bad and the ugly but you take it all in and live your life happily. For those of you that don’t know I have decided to stay for a year. It seems only fair that I make it to stage 4 so I am going to give it a try, though seriously, the project I am working on needs a person on the ground, I am learning a lot and I am liking this shake up of my life a bit. I am so far following the plan and have moved nicely into stage 2, not looking forward to stage three.

I have become to analyze Tanzania in this affair I am having with her. The rain has come this week and it seems to have washed away all the masks and bandages Tanzania wears; she is now showing herself with all her wounds and vulnerabilities. The rain has been incessant and with it has come chaos. Tanzania is stuck between desperately trying to become a modern nation while having little of the infrastructure, governmental support and planning to get it there. I will use traffic as an example because it rules your life here. Tanzania (at least Dar) has a middle class that can afford to buy cars. The roads were built when Dar was a city of 1-2 million, we are now close to 6 million. Roads have not been improved, the public transportation is not really public, it is uncomfortable and not consistent. Finally the ministers don’t have to deal with the traffic. You see them block huge amounts of roads so that they can drive their black Mercedes through the traffic while the rest of us pay dearly for the roads being cleared. Traffic is AWFUL but the rain has taken it to a whole new level. Dar roads functions barely in the sun, with the rain and the floods it stops, literally. Yesterday it took me 3 hours to go 25km. Huge surges of people marched along the roads with water up to their knees, there is no drainage, the dirt roads now have 3-5 foot puddles, taxi’s, dala dalas and pedestrians try desperately to get around. The lack of traffic laws that are always in place (quote from my taxi driver “I don’t worry about traffic lights, no one is going to stop me anyway) seem to become anarchy in the rain. Gridlocks like I have never seen were in every junction. I have to say that I was a little smug when I biked to my local Indian store, talked on the phone for an hour, shopped, ate some dhal and then returned and the same cars were in the intersection. Go Bikes. But it is sad that Tanzania is stuck and I hate to say it but I do not see a solution happening anytime soon. It has made me appreciate urban planning. That being said, they say true love is loving something for its faults, wounds and vulnerabilities. Even after my long traffic days, a quick bike around my neighborhood let me witness my community building stepping stones through newly formed lakes. My local chip seller took my hand so I could balance on them as I marched across. This made me smile and fall in love all over again.

Job is going very well. Started on some new activities, working with many nurse leaders on curriculum development, working on a national standardized HIV course for all tutors and looking into placing skills labs in the nursing schools (right now nurse students practice their first skills on their patients, YOUCH!)

Life, Friends and Cheese

Swahili Word of the Week: Safari Njema- safe travels

Weather: Cooler and the rains have arrived. Torrential downpours that last 20-30 minutes, flooding streets, and making for the walk home in flip flops a laundry nightmare. All my clothes have mud specks flipped up the back.

Special Shout Out: Mum and Ronnie. Thanks for the mail. Such a treat to get good old snail mail. I loved it!


Life, Friends and Cheese

Coming up to my 3-month anniversary in Dar and Tanzanian (April 23rd) I have had a little flashback to my early days and also a flash forward to life that is. On first arrival I was taken in by TZ’s kindness, change of pace and exoticness. Now three months down the line I have become more blasé and lost a bit of perspective of how life is different here. I have got into a somewhat routine. I have made friends, I can fill my time quite easily. I understand my job, I feel that I am doing a good job and work well with all my colleagues.
This week we had a mobile library training for our librarian managers and librarian assistants. My perspective on time, as I mentioned before, has been taking a beating. Things move so slowly here! A training that should be one day is 5 (though I got it shortened to two). I am keeping my fingers crossed that librarians will be up and running when I do site visits in 1 month (both are around a 16 hour bus ride away, lord help me!)

In essence, I have become very comfortable here and ultimately happy. I have become used to power outages, that generally 9 out of the 10 channels on TV are in Swahili, that crossing the road is a Russian roulette every time, that I am constantly damp with sweat, that buying produce is either from the guy on the bicycle with baskets on the back piled high with veggies and fruits OR men on the sidewalk with small piles of tomatoes, chilis, peppers, eggplant or lychees. I am used to no cheese.

Nothing like a little trip to change some perspectives. Last weekend I went up to Nairobi and then Nanyuki for a visit with my African Family. For those that haven’t heard the stories of how my parents met the de Boers and the Campbell/Duckworth clans, ask me sometime. It is a bookworthy story. I am blessed to have them out here and they showed me a weekend to remember. It was so nice to be among people who knew me well, to be able to relax, let my hair down and be. In previous visits to Nairobi I had seen at as an African city, with its busyness, street stalls and traffic. After living in Dar it was suddenly a Mecca. They had coffee shops! With real coffee! Nakumatt grocery that sold everything under the sun! Thump bought me blender, my cooking life in Dar will forever be changed. And Fi took me shopping for all sorts of excitement including a fitted sheet so I won’t wake up twisted in a flat sheet with my face pasted to my polyester mattress. It was a haven of excitement. I was lucky to be able to go birding with expert, hike up parts of Mt Kenya with gorgeous views, clean air and great conversations (and see a cool chameleon), play tennis and have some lovely conversations and laughs with friends. Coming back to Dar from Nairobi took another adjustment. But coming back was nice, when I walked in the door it was good to be “home”. Not only that, I imported a shocking amount of cheese from Nairobi, this paired with the box of wine that I constantly have chilled in my fridge gave me great excitement this week after coming home for work. Can you overdose on cheese? I don’t know, but if you don’t hear from me in awhile you’ll know why!

Happy Birthday Heather!

Masai at Kigamboni South Beach-My fave Dar beach

Frangapani- so delicious smelling

Looking hot and bothered with my bike sale, the bike on the left black should be mine tomorrow I hope.

Trials and Tribulations

Weather: We had a break and had two days below 28 C, Wooohoooo.

News: I will be in California from May 21-June 16th!

Swahili Word of the Week: Kiti Kidogo- bribe payment

Special Shout Out: Happy Birthday Kara, Ellen and Heather!

Well, maybe because I just wrote a 23 page proposal, or I was sick or ?? but the writing is not flowing as free this week. I realized that after reading my last few blogs I have painted a very rosy picture of Tanzania. Which is true and I do love it but any who has been here knows that there are definite frustrations, idiosyncrasies and pitfalls when living in a developing country. I highlight a few just so you know it is not all kindness, glamorous and lovely out here ALL the time. Giving you a more realistic picture but hopefully not too negative too.

Last night I went to a lecture on dynamite fishing in Tanzania. Tanzania is one of only two countries (the other is the Philippines) in the world that has a rampant dynamite fishing problem. Although it is illegal and punishable by a 3 year mandatory prison sentence, as you can see in this video it is blatantly going on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uv109P2vyg. Dynamite fishing kills coral reefs, fish, turtles and marine life. They use homemade dynamite made out of fertilizer that costs about $5. There are many lives and livelihoods lost through accidents (there are two men who now are working to fight dynamite fishing after having both lost both their hands from dynamite accidents!). The lecture was given by a man working for the WWF who has been working on this project for 4 years and to quote him “has made no progress what so ever.” The reason is because the dynamite fishers have become like the mafia. They use scare tactics to stop locals reporting them, they pay into a joint fund that pays off police men, magistrates, ministers. Out of 97 arrests, 37 prosecutions not ONE person went to prison even though the law states that it is a 3 year sentence…

I highlight this as it illustrates some of the frustrations of working here, often the best thought efforts fail miserably because of the core of corruption and Kiti Kidogos.

Things move at a different pace here. Often, this pace is very pleasant and necessary. When I first arrived I was walking down the street and a man approached me and said “What is wrong, do you need help” I answered “No, why do you think I need help?” “Because you are walking so fast, I thought you must be in trouble!” I was walking at my SF pace, which very much differs then the Dar pace. I have realized the pace makes sense because of the heat. But some things move frustratingly slow. Meetings for example do not start until the guest of honor arrives. Normally 1-2 hours late, is it a power thing? I don’t know but can be quite irritating. Meetings do have some nice qualities though. They love their pashas and icebreakers here. Pashas are where you give support to someone who has a good idea, has done a presentation etc. A pasha begins with rubbing your hands together to make them warm and prepare them for the clap which can be simple moja, mbile, tatu (1,2, 3) or very elaborate including ugali making, feet stomping, snapping fingers! Icebreakers are great too. My favorite is when they make your write your name with your hips. Looking around at meetings filled with people doing pelvic thrusts definitely breaks up the monotony and can make waiting for a guest of honor almost worth it.

In conclusion I have been compiling a quick list of only in Africa moments… Though not nearly complete I though you might like a glimpse of what has been brewing.

1. Note on an internet café window. Sorry No Internet Here
2. Meeting interrupted. My CDC presentation was interrupted when a gecko decided to warm up on the lens of the LCD projector
3. A friend asked about how I made chapatti, “I don’t know how to make chapatti” I answered. “What, No Chapati, how is that possible?”
4. Huge skyscrapers going up in central Dar, with absolutely no parking? And they wonder why there is traffic that takes 3 hours to go 10 miles?
5. My Bajaj (moped taxi) breaking down on my ride home, getting pushed the rest of the way (a good mile) because he didn’t want to lose my fare.
6. Realizing that as my Swahili gets better my vegetables bought from the market are getting cheaper. Coincidence? I think not!

7. Other than Mukatano Junction, TV in TZ is abominable. I missed the oscars BUT got really excited when my Hollywood Hotspot started with an Oscar overview. My heart sank when they said this years best picture went to Slumdog Millionaire.
8. They have 8 different types of Mangoes.
9. Although they grow massive amounts of Coffee in TZ all you can get here is instant africafe, a tragedy!
10. Watched a Spanish Christmas film in Chinese with English subtitles, what what!

Kindness

Weather: Hot, humid… I might have to change this segment as it never seems to really change. I am promised a monsoon ‘season’. I’ll believe it when I see it. I think I have lost 5 kg of weigh from sweating alone.

Swahili word of the week: Karibu- it means welcome. They say it so much here it is almost overused, yet it is not, because it is 100% sincere, every time! A rarity in this world, at this time.

Special Shout Out: Congrats Frank and Theresa for getting Married. YAY!

Tanzania is known as being an island of peace. Not because it is an island (duh), but because the many border countries that have had genocides, civil wars, dictators and unspeakable unrepeatable acts of hatred and violence. Yet Tanzania has survived. Maybe because of lofty visions of a socialist government, or a different history then their neighbors. Certainly not because of tribal hostility, it has close to 120 tribes but they appear bound to their nation. After many travels through southern and eastern Africa I cannot put my finger on it, but Tanzania has a unique quality and it illustrates itself in the way it has shown extreme kindness and welcoming to me, a wageni (visitor).

The last few weeks I have traveled a lot. Some for pleasure (Zanzibar with Mum) and some for work; a tear your hair out workshop in Morogoro. Yet everywhere I go, I am welcomed. I have been taught by my wise parents, how to be a good (or I like to believe an excellent) hostess. The key is to make it seem effortless, not forced and most importantly, not a burden. Tanzania is the ultimate hostess. I was in Morogoro for work this week. After a harrowing long workshop I decided the weekend would be spent marching up the 2150m mountain that the lovely town sits at the base of. Being a cheap skate I refused a guide. My bicycle and I headed up the mountain until the road turned into a track too steep for the bike to ascend. I stashed the bike in a goat shed and continued hiking up a treacherous 3 hours until reaching an old German settlement with killer views. Along the way, as I huffed and puffed, with full hiking gear on, passed by grandmothers, mothers with ugali on their head and a babies on their backs and small shoeless children scampering away I was welcomed. I was offered water, fruit, a chair to sit on and most importantly a guide to make sure I took the right path rather than the one that leads to who knows where. All of this without me asking or paying (though my red face may have been a good indicator for the water).

Likewise back in Dar this weekend, as I took a tumble out of a moving dala dala. Yes, that’s right, I can’t blame the old lady that had her crutch sticking out over the exit stairs (or can I?). As I lay bleeding in a ditch, the whole daladala emptied, helped me to my feet, brushed me off and bandaged me up without a word. A simple camaraderie that is expected here.

It seems to have rubbed off on even the expats here. I have been busy socializing and went to my first hash house harriers dar meeting. It claims to be a drinking club with a running problem. After a nice 5 K run I personally ended up pounding 4 beers in the circle of doom and doing a reenactment of the ‘angry chair’ from davis days, (WOW). Needless to say we drank way to much Kili, I made some friend and I had a really good time. Looks like Monday nights are going to be dangerous from now on.

Asante Sana Tanzania for welcoming me, teaching me and ultimately hosting me.