Day 131 – Monday 7th June 2010

Unfortunately Armorel had to go to work this morning, so it was just the original Salberg’s left.

After a lazy start, we headed in to town to do some shopping. We only have two shops in town that sell anything you could consider worthy of gifts, so took the family along to get some goodies.

You can’t spend too long in two small shops, so we wasted away the rest of the morning with a cool soda.

After a quick lunch we headed to the clinic for a tour and then onto the farm to show the family where we work and what we do.

It was a hot afternoon.

A cup of tea was needed when we returned home but had to drink it quickly as we had a football date. Tonight Brazil is playing Tanzania.

Everyone is expecting them to lose but we are heading to watch and cheer them on.

They lost 5-1, but a fun time.

Tomorrow my sister Anna is heading into the clinic to play nurse which will be great fun for her and then it will be packing for our holiday.

Most of the family are already asleep, so I think we will sleep to.

Day 130 – Sunday 6th June 2010

We treated the family to the joys of church this morning and we weren’t let down.

Very amusing!

We had planned to then venture on a Sunday picnic to the dam, but a number of things caused plans to change and we ended up heading to Mark’s house, the one with the pool. We had a lovely time, some wonderful food and a relaxing time.

The evening came and went, with an episode of Planet Earth and then it was time for bed.

My family sleep all the time!

Day 129 – Saturday 5th June 2010

Today was a sightseeing day, all 4 of Tabora’s hot spots.

We started with a morning tour of the market. It was quite a spectacle to see 6 wazungus walking around the market, and we got a lot more attention than normal, but all very nice.

We then headed off and bought some honey. This is only an experience because it looks anything but a place to get honey and you buy it in these large plastic bottles.

Then it was off to Tipha for Samosa’s. We decided that we would do take out and have them with our lunch.

3 down, 1 to go.

We then ventured off to find Livingstone’s museum. We hadn’t managed to go there yet so didn’t really know where we were going.

Luckily, just as we were starting to think we were lost we got flagged down by an old man who asked in English, “Livingstone museum?”

He jumped in the back with a key and on we drove.

The museum was fascinating, sorry we forgot our camera, full of stories and bits and pieces from the story of Dr Livingstone that we all vaguely knew. I guess Tabora is a little bit more famous than we give it credit for.

After a tour, us all refusing to enter some rooms due to the numbers of bats hanging down from the ceiling and flying around, and a chat with a group of 15 local children who had followed our car as we drove here, we headed home for lunch.

A lazy afternoon, where I think we all slept was had and then a dusk stroll around the block, seeing a number of amazing birds on route.

This evening we introduced my family to the wait for food at the Tabora Hotel. Only just shy of 2 hours, but the food was very good and we had a fun evening. It is so good to catch up with them all, and properly catch up and not a quick Skype chat catch up.

Tired, it is bedtime.

Day 128 – Friday 4th of June 2010

The ‘TIA’ (This is Africa’) experience begins.

In the early hours I get a phone call from my Sister. They have landed in Dar but the hotel pick up hasn’t turned up, which we sort, and then they arrive at the hotel who have lost their booking. This after all sorts of journey complications which saw them being upgraded!

It ends up with Mum and Dad in one hotel and Dave and Anna down the road in another. They report they had nice rooms and slept well.

We wake with excitement, watching the clock, waiting for their arrival.

We receive a text to say they are just about to board.

We then receive a text saying they are on the plane but there is a delay.

We then get a text saying they are off the plane.

We then get a plane saying they are back on the plane.

They depart.

We spent the morning trying to keep busy and headed for the airport just after 1.

It is so fantastic to have them all, so amazing to be able to share this life experience with them, though also very bizarre. We were drinking tea and it felt like they had just popped round.

I dragged Dave along to Friday football which was very hot but great fun. The rest came to watch and seemed to enjoy themselves. We spent the evening relaxing and catching up, and getting some goodies.

Thank you everyone who sent some along. We are so blessed.

It blows your mind the generosity and love. Thank you!

Day 127 – Thursday 3rd June 2010

The dogs were at it again last night. They are really starting to drive us mad.

This morning we headed off to the diocese offices, as we were picking up a car. We are borrowing one for my parents are here. They arrive tomorrow.

It’s great to have a large vehicle, but it’s an interesting drive. The selling points we were given when we picked it up were;

“The driver’s door doesn’t really open.”

“The brakes need pumping because they don’t actually work.”

“Sometimes you can’t get into gear, so you need to switch the engine off, wait and then try again.”

I think we are going to have some fun, but I have my proper Africa man’s truck!

I continued to work in the office and the supply of chapatti’s and tea continued as well. Armorel ran the ward this morning, as the nurse on duty was MIA. She has also started to train up the nurses on how to admit and discharge patients, so that she isn’t always responsible. We will see how that works.

Tonight we are entertaining, and have a bunch over for dinner. We enlisted Baraka and Zawadi to help us prepare, though they spent most of this time attacking John and eating the food. However, we have had a lovely evening.

My phone has just beeped. The text reads’

“We are just getting on the plane to Dar. See you in the morning.”

So tomorrow at around 1:30pm, my Mum, Dad, Brother and Sister arrive. We can’t wait! Sorry if the blog gets a bit quieter, especially when we go away, I am sure you will survive.

If you can’t cope let me know and I will put on some speculative posts for you.

Good Night!

Day 126 – Wednesday 2nd June 2010

The next two days I am helping the ladies out in the office at the clinic. First job of the day is to update and debug the computers.

It took a while. 74 Trojans found!

I then helped the ladies with some billing and finance stuff. All quite interesting, and they appreciated the help.

I appreciated the change of scenery and the tea and chapatti’s that they fed me with to keep me busy.

Armorel was off to Mwakashindye for the outreach clinic. It was another busy day where they saw over 350 patients and 180 babies. She really enjoys these clinics. They are so valuable to all. This is what we are here to do.

We had a nice quite evening, catching up about the incidents of the day and headed to bed.

Day 125 – Tuesday 1st June 2010

The dogs were at it again last night, so we welcome in the month of June with slight fatigue. I am heading off to the shamba today so get to dress like a builder, and Armorel is again saving lives at the clinic.

She spent most of the day helping out Dr Jim and saw and did a number of interesting things. She saw a boy who had stopped speaking, but had not lost the ability to scream and cry when she approached with a needle. She saw a lady with a large hernia resembling an anteater’s snout, which completely disappeared when the patient lay down. She put a plaster cast on a boy’s broken elbow, and diagnosed a lady with TB from a large, swollen foot infection. Oh, and treated the regular malaria cases.

My day was less heroic but just as fun. The plan for today was to finish the dam with small stones and cement. It was an early start, which found us buying cement at 8am, and me being introduced as a builder. Do they know I have no idea what I am doing?

We had a great day, though exhausting and hot, and full of new experiences. After dropping off the cement at the dam site, which is 4 km along an interesting track which the 4x4 finds tough we had to get the sand. So we drove to the dried up river bed and began to dig. After two full loads, the whole of the back of the car full, we needed to get water. The nearest source is about 3km away so back we went, along even more challenging terrain to fill the buckets and cans that we had available.                   Jacob in the pond filling up the water. 

Then we started to mix and start work, though you run out of water quite quickly so we got very familiar with the route to the pond.

The dam is not finished, we got about halfway, as we ran out of small stones, we will return soon.  

Tonight, I can barely stay awake. I am exhausted. We treated ourselves to a square of chocolate and I think are ready for bed.