Moshi Week 6 Moshi to Mamba to Pangani

The two weeks have been packed with great times

Kilimanjaro from the wonderful hotel and restaurant Kilimakyaro.  Best place to have a beer!

       

John Julia and Charles at Kilimakyaro

Julia and Charles at KIWAKKUKI

Julia John Trish Dafrosa Eunice at TARWIF

Julia Charles and Sam with his Batiks

John and Lawi with the new amazing sculpture

Julia and Charles with Market Mama--colorful and delicious fruits and greens

Crazy kitty at Kilimakyaro

BaobBaob Tree with Honey on the way to Pangani

John and huge tree in Pangani

Julia and Charles in beautiful Mkoma Bay

Lovely Tented Camp in Mkoma Bay

Lovely Mkoma Bay in the morning

Sailors going out of Pangani to fish

Mkoma Bay boat at Maziwa Island

Trish after a long day in the Indian Ocean -sad hair

Sailboats in the Ocean

Fishing Boats go out to Indian Ocean

Believe it or not, the waves were huge behind us. We road them in screaming with joy.

Our hosts at Mkoma Bay Lisa and Ulrich with us at the last day

It is pretty awesome to be in Pangani.  Many memories.

The weeks have been packed with wonderful times, great guests and terrific family.  Living here in Tanzania has been one of the highlights of my life.  Meeting terrific people, Africans, Expatriates, and settled Tanzanian residents.  All have been friendly and welcoming to us.  It is a joy to be here even while we miss our friends at home.

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!

Harriet, John and Lucy

By to chairs leaving A-5 after MEPI party, and Tutuonana Lucy!

Fabulous chairs leaving A-5

Coffee plant near picking time

Week Two in Moshi

Brandon Kathleen Neha & ME

How has the week been?  Very very busy.  Week two passed and in what seemed like a whirlwind.  I met with the DGHI students Kathleen and Brandon...Great work completed, and with Neha from Duke Engage.  Being involved with them at some level reminded me of how lucky we are to be at Duke where these young people are so smart, and were able to accomplish amazing work this summer.










Our Dean of the School of Medicine arrived with her family.  We had a fabulous dinner at A-5, thank you Melinda, and the Duke/KCMC collaborative presented their work.  That day was followed by presentations by the MEPI team and a trip to Kibosho Hospital.  Full days all around

Ahaz and the MEPI team

The MEPI Team each showed their talents by discussing how our MEPI--Medical Education Partnership Initiative is geared to maximizing the small faculty with excellent learning.
 

Lucy shared her information from the Duke Program Blue Docs which stresses Team Based Learning.  She does a little of everything.

We discovered  an engineering Duke Engage Student at Kibosho Hospital.  In fact there are two, but one was in Moshi.  These young engineers are repairing equipment that is vital to the ongoing work at the hospital, such as x-ray equipment, surge protectors, and masses of other electric things.  They have apparently been invaluable to the hospital.

Dinner at our dear friends the Emmanuels was enhanced even more by the presence of Greg and the Kimaros.  I always feel that I have been transported in time when we go the house in Machame.  It is relaxing and delightful.

At the table with the Emmanuels.  Delicious food wonderful company with some of the stalwarts of our community.

John walking the walk

We volunteered to set the hash at Kibo Farms.  This is a place that has an incredible coffee farm that covers 100's of acres.  The road has been worked on for over 4 years, and it is still treacherous at times.  We watched buses and motorbikes dodging one another as they did a slalom through the big rocks in the road.  At one point, a near miss made John lean on the horn of our pathetic car.  Only a squawk came out and I could only imagine the driver of the bus laughing all the way to Moshi!

John is scouting where to put the check as we walk between beautiful coffee bushes.  The whole walk was lovely, though were to put the crosses and how to stay out of the begger weeds was another matter again.


There was quite a bit of coffee being picked and we were able to watch the trucks going up and down the paths.  The pickers were happy as they would be paid at the end of the day.

The view at Kibo Farm is terrific.  The day was not particularly clear, and was cold, but I could still see many kilometers and loved the red in the house below the corn fields.  Part of what makes "hashing" fun, is the ability to get out and see areas of the countryside we have not seen before.  Thank you Africa!  (and of course Greg for starting hashing here.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that road crossing and water crossing are part of the usual fare with a hash and this one will be no exception.  I love the truck filled with corn stalks and the ladies carrying sticks and branches on their heads. And one of the highlights of this hash in particular is the huge turtle named Tom.  When he saw me with camera held, he woke up and started after his food.  Apparently I stood between him and the food and he was not happy.  All the workers at the farm know Tom and care for him.  He may be one of the oldest turtles in Tanzania.

This is what happens when you set a hash.  We could have been considered one of the road hazards as we were picking these things out of our socks all the way home.  Disgusting.
Dinner at the pastors led to a conversation about Palliative Care, one of my favorite topics.  Turns out that they have been trying to help Mama Pulchra.  I hope it works out!

Week One in Moshi...Work Fun and all

Our new Rooster, Magic (Johnson!)

Amazingly, the trip from the US to Moshi was good.  Somehow, we lucked out in Amsterdam and were reseated on the big 777.  It is a great plane, with comfortable seats.  Imagine that!  We were actually able to sit for the 9 hours without getting “bed sores” and to survive the full trip in tact.  When we got off the plane, the Tanzanian cool breeze of winter’s end reminded us of why we love to come back to Moshi. 

The customs’ officers gave us a break and we breezed through thanks to our Kenyon son Charles, and our travel to our home was easy.  There is so much new building on the way.  One would think that prosperity is blooming in Kilimanjaro, but sadly, the building belies the reality of the world.  The rich here, too, are getting richer, while the poor are much much poorer.  Prices are high in everything especially food, and with poor rains for the whole year, it is clear that the average person is going to suffer greatly.  Corn, instead of being harvested, just limply hangs in the fields, brown and dried up.  Cows are thin, though goats look delighted because they are eating all the dried up corn.

The days are already busy.  Pauli & Lucy decided to invest in chickens and they are fabulous.  They had also rebuilt our coop, moved it to a different location to make sure that the disease that killed the others won’t affect new ones.  And our new ones are fabulous.  I have been able to name the rooster (Magic after Magic Johnson), for sure my black and white hen will be “Chumvi na pilipili” (Salt & Pepper), Angel for the white one, Blue Heaven for the funny bluish one, Malika for the Black one and I am still thinking about my brown one.  Though silly, I find comfort in giving these chickens names.  They are settling into their new home. John and I think that the activity of chickens around the house may provide snake protection, and for that I would be happy!

The Kuku Girls in their new home

I was fortunate to be able to visit our great Duke Students in Mwika (or as I know now, Mrimbo Uuwo) where we had a nice visit and I congratulated them on the fantastic work that they had done during their nearly 8 weeks on the ground.  Kathleen, Brandon, and Joy not only entered patient records electronically, INCREDIBLE, taught a person how to continue the job and made a manual for how to keep it going, but also did community assessments and held seminars all over the Mwika area to provide feedback and some small prevention advice to the community.  The seminars were well attended, and the communities are begging for more!  I cannot wait to read their report.  Neha as usual is doing incredible work with her young primary and secondary students and clearly has earned tremendous respect in the area.  I wish we could clone her.  Just one sentence grabbed my attention yesterday. “The parents I talk with say that they used to see so many kids around on the roads during the day, drinking and just hanging out, but now there are no kids around, they are all in The Program”.  The program is the mentoring program that she and Katya started last year which has now grown in size, meets 5 days a week, and provides tutoring to both the secondary students and primary, as well as peer mentoring for the primary students 2 days a week.  Now the goal is to make it sustainable.

Brendon Kathleen Neha Me!  In Mwika

Last night John and I went to a wonderful Tanzanian wedding where one of our brightest medical students was married.  It was fabulous, though I think John provided quite a bit of comedy with his dancing. (no way to really describe it.)  The MC thanked the Wazungu Wazee (White old people) for coming to the dance floor. John and Sister Julitha from our clinic were given a lovely cake in honor of the KCMC-Duke project support for Michael.  There was a lot of laughter, probably at our mercy! The evening blended of all walks of people from our gardener to high-ranking officials.  Terrific time. And then Sunday we had one of our fabulous hashes, which as always lived up to our expectations.  It is a nice way to relax after a hard week. Be forewarned though Moshi-ites.  The police have a new speed gun between Moshi and Machame, and they caught us going 64K in a 50K speed zone.  As far as I know, no one has ever driven this slowly on the stretch, and I managed to distract the policeman with our new driver's licenses, thus making his speed gun fail!  (While Charles and I saw the speed, he was unable to get it back as he was so fascinated with the fact that we actually have legal licenses which as all my friendly bloggers know I got the hard way!!!)  Bob, John and I talked about what the trip to Dar or Pangani is going to be like if we have to adhere to this 50K/hour.  It might take days to get there!

Elizabeth and Iris, Cutest mom and baby award here!

Charles talking to new Kenyan friends

Bob and John discussing new speed rules

So now on to new adventures in week two. John and Charles will be in Addis for the MEPI meeting, and I will stay on here.  Hope I get caught up a little on sleep.!