Our first week

We have not yet been here a week and already it feels like we are settling into a rhythm. First impressions reminiscent for me of India: overwhelming cacophony of noise, smells and visuals….In a few short days I already feel a bit desensitized to what is so new and amazingly different. I am amazed as how quickly we adapt.The long journey from London went well without significant problems. The boys were wonderful enjoying the freebies of Air Emirates and the swing of travel. We arrived in Dar immediately smothered by the hot hot air , all bags safely with us and eventually met by Juma the taxi driver (amazingly, via our UK contact to Muheza, Dr. Karilyn, we were able to text Juma from Hereford UK and set up a pick-up in Dar/ hotel and bus tickets for the next morning to Muheza !)Five hour bus ride on “Scandanavia” lines, the ‘better’ bus company, without ANY shocks, unbelievable (SCARY) speeds, but free bottled water, biscuits and juice included in the price. Met by Dr. Sally and immediately we are indebted to this lovely family from the UK who have been here 6 years already and planning for 4 more. Sally is a ob/gyn and Ben doing malarial and pediatric fever illness research. Their 3 boys Zach/Max/Piran (8/4/4 mos) blended with ours in that amazing way that kids instantly do and introduced us to some of the local kids who hang with the Wazungas (white people). They fed us lunch and supper, and walked us around Muheza which is a few crazed streets of tiny shops selling their narrow range of stuff, fantastic open and covered market and mosques alive with Ramadan (Moslem festival we have stepped into the middle of this month of Sept). A far cry from the Lonely Planet guide’s description of Muheza as a ‘scrappy cross roads town’ that could easily be left off the travel itinerary. On the contrary, feels like a perfect size for this Canadian family, and full of unique Tanzanian life for us to explore and find our way.Our house is great, shared with Dutch MD researcher Ilse and we quickly unpack stuff and watch the kids stake out their domains. She has stocked some food so really there isn’t even a scary low of “what will we eat and where do we get it ??” The house known as Hillview, is spacious and obviously built by Wazungas (complete with sit toilet, water filter and shower which wouldn’t be the norm here) and we feel lucky and comfortable. The house comes with ‘house girl’ Juliette who makes us wonderful soup and bread for lunch, washes the clothes and dishes and cleans. Imagine! She is lovely and welcoming and will teach us a lot of Swahili.
The next day Sally and Ben bundled us off to Tanga (larger town down the road) where provisions like cheese and yogurt and safe meat and a bigger market are to be found. We stock up and then spend a lazy afternoon at the Yacht Club (sounds posher than it is) for our first swim in the Indian Ocean. Warm salty water…what a concept.We are greeted in Muheza by a couple of brief power outages which we learn are frequent but usually short events. Uncharacteristically, there is a major outage of a greater magnitude that begins shortly after we arrive involving the hospital, in particular the lab and the hospital based internet which we learn will be our lifeline to the outside world. So for the first few days here access is not easy and we eventually find an internet café on the other side of town with very slow access to get off a few brief hellos to announce that we have landed safely.The power issue is big for Ben and his years of research samples, tiny vials of blood and serum that need to be stored at minus 70 and there are a couple of frantic days as Ben tries to find temporary freezer homes for them. Ultimately, they are shipped off down the road to a different part of Tanzania to another research site.The week settles into the daily jobs of buying a bit of food, figuring out what to make for supper (yes the question follows us across the world), walks, explorations, and gentle introductions to the hospital. We feel very welcomed by all. “Karibu” or Welcome in a million variations. We attend morning rounds (overwhelming reports of deaths in the night, new admissions and unintelligible monotone summaries of critically ill patients). We try to get our ears into English as a second language with Swahili as the first, let alone the Swahili. Sally tours me through the wards which are ‘Nightingale’ style open wards, male or female with 30 beds closely lined up beds with each holding at least one patient if not 2 or 3. No curtains. One or maybe 2 nurses. Although I know it is exactly what I expected and knew to be the reality, it is still hard to absorb.
The Muhueza Hospice is quite separate (called the “Diana Centre” as the monies for its development have predominately come from the Diana foundation) and that is where we will be based. We are learning about the necessary shift of focus of the palliative care team in the last short years (2-3) who now provide ARVs (anti-retroviral treatment) for the HIV patients, rather than simply supporting them as they faced certain death. The two services (active HIV care and palliative care) will separate in the timeframe we are here and that transition will certainly shape our experience. The layers of politics, both Tanzanian and Wazunga will take some time to understand. We will go gently and learn more than we give for quite some time.The boys have already made friends, partly via Zach and Max, but also via the now daily late afternoon game of soccer that has started. Amb and the boys wandered over to a dirt soccer field (generous description) with a ball and were quite instantly surrounded by 10- 15 boys. A couple of kids, they discovered go to the same school our boys will attend, and so there will be familiar faces. Their English is marginal, but better than our Swahili (!) and enough to make a good connection.We all plan and prepare for school next week. Turns out the school they are to attend is about a 45 minute walk out of town, so we decide to buy bikes to make the daily journey more realistic. A couple of days ago we walked up there and despite our best intentions found ourselves walking in the peak of the African sun without enough water (3 bottles was no where near what we needed). We collapsed for the rest of the day and drank drank drank. The boys seem fine with it all, and find humour in the seriously ugly green gingham shirts and green shorted uniforms, rather than despair.We are so proud of how they are doing with all of this. We can see already that they will speak Swahili much better than we will by the end. Muheza is certainly a setting where they will play with and attend school with Tanzanian kids, and that affirms for us our decision to come here, despite the currently indecipherable complexities of the work situation.
Have bought coffee beans in the market and roasted them myself for the morning brew! Ambrose says it is not up to Café Fantastico: I am awaiting the frother when Sally and Rose arrive next week and then we will have lattes.