ngirilover: Moshi Week Four

Holly lives happily at Greg, Terrie's and Nikoli's. She especially loves to eat any "off limits" food!

Sometimes it is amazing how quickly time passes. In fact, the older we get, the faster it goes. In my case, traveling to and from Tanzania so many times, I can hardly adjust to the speed with which time seems to pass by. It is definitely possible that I squander a lot of time, but as I count the hours in the day, and offer some for sleep, I can see why the days go by, and I seem to be back on a plane headed one way or the other across the ocean.
Here we are, the day that Julia and Charles arrive. The Kilimanjaro KLM site states that the plane will arrive 8 minutes late. This plane is seldom more than 8 minutes either late or early, so we will plan to be there at KIA excited to see our kids with anticipation of two great weeks for them.
The past two weeks have been filled with day to day work, and sadly for me with getting a bad cold. I have to admit being bitter about this as I thought I had been taking good care of myself, eating good healthy things, getting more or less enough rest and definitely exercising well. But, oh well, I am now hacking and coughing but at least glad that I feel better than I did 4 days ago, when I was pretty sure that I would never feel "right" again.

John Nelson and Trish & No, John wasn't taken from the Nursing home for the day, he was just in pj's before I had to have the picture!

We had a wonderful visit from one of John's medical school friends Nelson. Nelson is an oncologist at Duke and his arrival meant a packed week of meetings, discussions and plans made by John and him. He is a great guest to have at A-5. Never in the way, and always pleasant no matter how much power we have or whether the internet is bitterly slow.
Once again, we had a Moshi CAB meeting and 23 people were in attendance, 9 of them youth. They were awesome and even with some encouragement, participated in the meeting. My gut feeling is that they are much more comfortable amongst their own group, but they were terrific to see and definitely Karibu Tena! The rest of the CAB members were much more participatory than I can remember. They offered to help in lots of ways and finally a permanent secretary was elected. My dear Agnes gave an in depth report on the ACTG meeting and on the International AIDS meeting.
It was so interesting that many people asked that we have educational topics in the future for some meetings.

Agnes at a CAB meeting

A team of people visited the Palliative Care center at Health Dispensary. A whole blog could be devoted to the difficulties that occur when a relative dies leaving no written will. In Tanzania, the patriarchal system can be most unfair and suffice it to say, we are very worried about dear Dr. Pully and her desire to open a proper Palliative Care/Hospice in this little corner of Moshi. There is such a need, but the site may be tied up in the courts for months because her recently deceased father left no written will and only verbally made it be known that Dr. Pully should have this land and house. I will keep all my blog family updated about the progress-keep your fingers crossed; though once the house is hers for sure, much money will need to be raised to help the place pass inspection. Clean and neat it is, but sadly much of the furniture, equipment and lack of shade will not meet inspection. The amazing thing is that there is a tiny group who know this wonderful lady and are very willing to put their all behind her success. John's teeming with ideas, and hopefully some good will come to pass. The need for Palliative care and Hospice Care is desperate here, and the willingness to sacrifice on the part of this group is awesome.

Dr. Pully and her dedicated staff

Palliative Care MD's in Dar Es Salaam with liquid Morphine

The most fun part of the week was the trip to Mwika. As always, the drive to Mwika is beautiful and interesting, and if you happen to hit it on market day, it is a special boon. We did. People were strolling everywhere with goods to sell or those which they had bought. It is different than the years that we first came to Tanzania when the dirt road would be packed with lorries, people, avocados and bananas, so many that you could not drive around them. Now there is ample room to move around, though there were still crowds everywhere. I sort of miss the old days when the smell of Nyama would be everywhere and we would have to sit in the car for 10 or 15 minutes not making one small inch of progress.

Villagers walking to and from the Market on the new big road

Grass/hay on the way to Mwika Market

The old market!

But, on this occasion we arrived promptly at the Lutheran Church in Uuwo to meet the pastor, Mama Nancy, one of the new AMO's Alex and an Mzee. The whole team will be needed to continue to make this collaboration work. We are especially excited about Alex, a new AMO at the Uuwo dispensary, who had actually worked with the Duke project while he was in school. He was most enthusiastic about our arrival, and we were happy to see him.

Pastor Shao, Alex, Nancy, Trish, Muzee, Melissa and Vera

Melissa and Mama Nancy

Melissa will be the new Faculty Mentor for the Mwika Uuwo students. It was clear that she fit right in!

Curious and shy children at Mama Nancy's

The only sad/happy part of the past two weeks, is that our sweet Lucy from MEPI left to start school in Rochester NY. While we are excited for her, and know that she will succeed and make everyone in Moshi proud, we will miss that smiling face and joyous enthusiasm for a project that she helped to get off the ground, right from day one. The MEPI team will joyfully welcome her back, but wish her all the best and will think of her, I'm sure each and every day. Good luck Lucy and don't freeze!