The Passing of Boots

This last week we got a call from our house sitters in Melbourne that our dear little cat Boots had had a stroke and couldn’t walk. The vet said there was nothing they could do for him and so we had to let him go. He was 13. We are feeling so sad. Ever since we have been married we have virtually had our cats Kimba and Boots. He was such a great little friend. He would follow us around the house or yard just to be with us and talk with us. He had a great sense of humour and loved to play. Every day when we used to come home from work in Melbourne the cats would meet us with great affection. They could brighten any day. Boots would sprawl out on the bed every night forcing us into uncomfortable contorted positions to make room for him, but we never complained, it was so nice to have him there like that. We were truly blessed to share his life and he will be missed greatly. He was our little boy.

Lake Eyasi – A Cultural Visit

This last weekend we went on another camping trip with almost the same people we went to Lake Natron with. Alan and Andrea are due to leave Tanzania after 3 years here, so it was our last adventure with them. They go back to Aust & New Zealand. We had become good friends with them so it is sad to see them go. On this trip we did not take our little Pajero and instead rode in the Landrover of Alan and Andrea. They had said the road would be rougher than the Lake Natron road which was quite bad in places. No tarseal of course. This Lake is out west in the same direction as Natron sort of, but further west. We left Friday night after work and drove to a town called Karatu about 2 hours out of Arusha. That is the end of the sealed road. We spent the night in quite a modern camp ground. We walked to the Happy Days restaurant next door and had burgers and cold drinks out on a wooden deck. Back at the camp ground we went into the lodge bar where they were playing Country and Western music. We gave Andrea some Two-Stepping lessons.
The next morning it was west off the tarseal towards Lake Eyasi. Another 2 hr drive along well defined but crude dirt track. At often times the local kids would see the trucks coming and run to the edge of the track and call out for candy or pens (of all things). The camp round was a nice long grassy grove amongst some Acacia and other tall trees with black seed pods about the size of a tennis ball. It was on the side of the lake bed but like Natron, the lake was well down and it was about 2 km out to the water’s edge over a lifeless and very hot mud flat. It is an alkaline lake so there is very little life around there. No fish in the lake at all, hence no feeding birds either naturally. We never actually saw the water. Back at the tent sites, Alan pointed out the seed pods made good Platunc balls. We spent several hours playing a game of that. During which Bruce discovered he had a puncture in his van tyre. Bruce wanted to fix the puncture there as there are little facilities in the local Eyasi village. It took a while to get the tyre off the rim and it was hot. Warm cokes (no cold drinks available) were going down a plenty. The camp ground has a reasonable shower and toilets (holes in the ground surrounded by a bunch of sticks tied together). So a shower afterwards was welcome. Just before dusk we went up to a cliff top that gave impressive over views of the sunset over the lake and surrounding area. The sunset was a classic picturesque African rich deep orange sunset. Magnificent. We even were fortunate to see a striped Hyena slinking through the bush below. Alan had seen it on his last trip to Eyasi a year ago too he said.
The reason we went to Eyasi is that there are some isolated tribal people who live there in their old tribal ways. They are ‘off the grid’ so to say and pretty much keep to their old ways and not intermingle with the regular people. This is a very dry arid area making quite a primitive lifestyle. Too tough for us. Two tribes we wanted to see were the Hadzabe and Datoga. So on Sunday morning the local guide we had hired the day before showed up with three Hadzabe men. They were to show us where to find a Hadzabe village. The Hadzabe are hunters, not farmers. So they are always on the move after animals to hunt. They have no electricity in their villages, no water supply, no schools, no permanent houses, only basic structures made from sticks that looks like a stick igloo. If they kill a big animal like a Water Buffalo and the carcass is too heavy to bring back to the village, they just move the village to the carcass.
These three Hadzabe wanted us to take them to a special big rock where a particular plant grew. The plant they used to extract a poison from to put on the tips of their arrows. They would boil down some of the branches of this plant to make this poison for their arrows. Apparently this poison could drop a buffalo in about 30 mins. Powerful stuff. They normally took three days to walk to this rock so being driven in a landrover was a treat for them. One of them had a stiff leg whose knee no longer worked. A few years ago he had gotten into a tussle with a water buffalo they had shot with a poisoned arrow and thought was dead. However when they approached it, it turned out to be a different buffalo and was angry about being woken up so took to this guy galling his leg badly. The three Hadzabe with us were not used to vehicles so wanted to ride on the roof rack on top instead of getting inside the vehicle. Made for a good picture. We drove to this rock along the eastern side of the lake not along any road we could see. However when we got there a few Tanzanian locals came out at the sight of 6 mzungus and wanted to charge us a visiting fee. Even though we were just there to allow the Hadzabe to collect their plant clippings, they still said the mungus had to pay first. So we left, we are not into paying bribes. We drive a few more miles to the village cultural center where we could pay an official entrance fee for their area. These fees then should go to the village development rather than to someone’s pocket. But the office was unmanned and no one could find anyone to come and open it. So we left there too.
On to a Hadzabe village. It was a small village of only about 20 people, 4-5 families. ½ dozen young kids and some teenagers with parents. Dressed in loose skins. They let us shoot their bows for a while. They could hit a 6” target at about 25 m no problem at all. After 3 goes I actually hit the target. However I could only pull the bows back about ½ what they did and they were all shorter than me. So my arrow would have had no penetrating power. Some of the people with us bought a bow and a set of arrows as souvenirs.
After that we went to a Datoga village. These people are quite different. More sophisticated than the Hadzabe. They wear nicely tailored clothes from skins. Their houses are permanent mud brick houses. They perform a small amount of industry with the smeltering of metals to make arrow heads, that they sell to the Hadzabe, or make bracelets or other jewellery that the women then sell to tourists like us we presume. They had a crude set of bellows made to make their fires hot enough to melt brass (old padlocks) and bronze or soften steel. They managed to sell a few arrow heads and bracelets to our group. They grew some crops and showed Ramona and Andrea how to grind the maize into a powder. Very nice and friendly people.
The next day as we were packing up to return to Arusha, a couple who had been in the camp ground too, came and asked us for a ride back to town if we had room. They were on their honeymoon travelling around Northern Tanzania. He was Scottish and she was German. An interesting couple. Patrick worked for the Red Cross and had just finished 5 years in Afghanistan. He had some good tales to tell. We met up with them two nights later to go to dinner in Arusha to hear more of their work and travels. Their next assignment was in Chad. A different career path to most people.

Lake Natron; A Place of Wonders

This last weekend we went on a 4 day camping trip with other VSA volunteers, a German girl and a Danish guy. 9 of us all up. 3 people had been to this place before which was just as well as it is not obvious at all. The place is called Lake Natron in the NW of Tanzania. Not far from Ngorogoro Crater which is the big famous national park. To get to Natron however is 100 km (60 m) off the tarmac road. It took 5 hours to drive that distance. Corrugated gravel road that shakes you to bits, that then turns into a gravel dirt road, then a dirt road dropping down through dry river beds, or crossing high planes. Fun driving but our poor little truck gets a rough time on these roads. It managed them really well overall. There were 3 other vehicles as well so we travelled in sort of a convoy. Bruce has a 4WD high ace van he has fitted out for Africa and so includes a large tool box just as well. About ¼ of the way in the rubber bushing on the top of his front right shock disintegrated allowing the shock to bang around. He dives into his tool box comes out with a set of tools and an old piece of car tyre and makes a new bushing. This lasted about another 1 hour then the metal shims that hold the rubber bushing on became pounded out and they and the rubber came off again. Bruce makes a new rubber and I find a 3/8” washer at the bottom of his box. This is quite a bit thicker than the metal shims so he puts that on and it holds the rest of the weekend just fine.
Then a bit more on Alan and Andrea get a puncture in their Landrover. Now we are hours from anywhere, no chance of getting any repair of the tyre. We put the spare on and Alan says at the end up by the lake there is a tiny village maybe we can get another tube there. So off we go again fingers crossed.

At one point we drive through the crater highlands. This is a high grassy plane, with mountains on both sides, except that now it is so dry that there is only stalks left. But there are these small craters from old volcanoes all over the place. Very cool scenery, hostile to life but beautiful to admire. This is also the heart of Maasai country. The Maasai are cattle and goat herders. They wander around the planes and mountains with their herds looking for food for them. They live in Boma’s which is like a collection of ½ dozen igloos made of mud. In this area there is extremely little water. The Maasai have learned to live without much water, they drink things like animal blood. As we drove along the road, some that were close to the road and seeing 4 vehicles drive along, would come running down to the road begging for any water. Money was not important to them like it is in Arusha or more normal places. They just wanted water. Quite a shock to the mind to see and learn this. The Maasai dress in the most beautiful colours. The men are wrapped in a tartan like red/black cloth and they all carry a spear or stick. The women are similar but wear all this ornate jewellery. Large earrings, multiple in each ear, intricate neck pieces. Very stunning to look at them. They have their own language too so we could not understand anything they said only when they indicted drinking something.
Also at this Lake Natron is Ol Doinyo Lengai Volcano. This is Maasai for Mountain of God. As we drove north we saw the mountain come into view. It is a very symmetric steep mountain all by itself about a mile from any other mountains. We had to drive past it to get to the lake and the camp ground. It is still an active volcano, last erupted in 2006 with a large amount of rocks and ash and sand. (No Lava). You could see from its slopes there were no trees or plants, just rock sheets and rocks and sand gullies that water had flowed down in. It is quite pretty really in an odd way.
We got to camp just at dusk and set up the tents, and found they had a swimming pool albeit a little green and they served cold beer and sodas. We were set.

They next day we spent a lot in the pool as the heat was impressive once out of the shade. Ramona walked off the grassy area that was the campground boundary out on to the edge of the lake bed (when the lake used to be that high, all just sand now) and wow was it hot out there. Back to the pool. There is a little town a km down the road that we were told may have a spare tube for Alan. The camp owner asked us while we were in town if we could bring his supplies back as he had just seen the bus go buy and he didn’t want them to sit around for too long. There would be a guide there too we could talk to he said about climbing the mountain. So off we went. Found a tube at an exorbitant price, but the vendor had us over a barrel. We bought that and went to find the guide and a cold coke in a little wooden shack. This was a Maasai town, about a dozen wooden buildings. The clothing was impressive all over, some women in the bright red with jewellery, some in black from a different tribe with different jewellery. Bruce bought a great Maasai spear for $15. There is no phones here, no TV, no news paper. This was their world and that was all they knew. But very friendly people. They were selling all sorts of trinkets and jewellery very cheap. We arranged for the guide to meet us at 11 pm that night. They days are too hot, especially climbing on black rocks and sand, to climb during the day. So we were to do a night climb.

At about 5 pm we drove around to the lake bottom to a point where we could access the lake to see the Flamingos. The lake is low so there was about ½ mile of dry sandy mud to walk from the car stop point to the water’s edge. It is an alkaline lake too, so nothing grows, quite a stark arid area. Then there are these beautiful pink delicate big Flamingos by the 1000. Everywhere. A group here another over there etc. The horizon on the lake was just a pink band. Some were landing, some were taking off, others feeding or talking. The contrast of the aridness to the colourful birds was just so impressive.

We tied to get an hours sleep after dinner that night but not too successful. Got up at 11 and drove to the camp gate where the guide or actually the guide’s substitute was waiting for us. He said in broken English he was the guide’s brother and his brother was sick. Not good, the original guide was very experienced and spoke quite good English. Alan was saying this was a set up, to take our money and not do the climb. We talked with him some more and noted he had bought some climbing sticks with him for us to use which we took as a good sign, so we decided to take the risk. It was about 30 mins drive to the base of the mtn. Along the way we chatted some more to him in broken English and got to feel better about the situation as he seemed to know what he was talking about. He had bought a 2nd guy to stand security on the Landrover while we were climbing. We started climbing at midnight. It was a starry night, clear with a cool breeze blowing which made it a great night for a climb. We were walking on sandy trails or sandy rivulets in between sheets of rock from previous eruptions. The higher we got the more steep it became. The sand made climbing tiresome slipping backwards all the time. At 3:30 Ramona and Alan said they would stop there as it was getting more and more difficult to make progress. They nestled down behind a big rock out of the wind and waited for us to return. The guide made sure they understood to not move away from this area. He said it was too dangerous to attempt to walk down in the dark; we had to descend in daylight. Alan is quite an experienced climber which made me feel better about them stopping there by themselves. That left myself, Yong and the guide to go further on. At about 4:30 the going was steeper still and the sand and rough rock plates were making harder and harder to get a footing on. Yong said he was so tired that he just wanted to go to sleep, so he said he would stop there. It was still another 2.5 hours to the top the guide said. Poor Yong however was on a steep part and could find no flat space too lie down, so he sat down and propped himself up with his walking stick so he wouldn’t fall over when he fell asleep.
There were two other groups on the mtn too. They had started after us and had passed us earlier on so we could see their lights up the mtn. The guide and I carried on, we passed one group, then the second group as they had stopped for a rest. Once they started again they soon passed us. A fit Canadian couple with a guide. As we neared what looked to be the top rim there was a little bit of damp soil like stuff around and it made climbing on the rocks slippery. It was steep enough now that often I was climbing on all 4s to grab rocks and lift my feet up trying not to slip. Still a lot of soft sand in the gullies between the rock plates. By now I was rather tired. The sun had just come up so the head lamps could be turned off. Approaching the rim I could now see these two great rock structures like a gate way with a gap between them. We were heading for the gap. That must be the top I thought. However as we got within a 100 meters, I could see there was yet another ½ mile (1 km) more of rock and sand to go up beyond this gap. My heart sank; the 7 hours of exertion were taking their toll. That would take at least another hour or more. The guide was 10 m in front and once through the gap he turned left and disappeared from sight. I got to the gap a few minutes later and turned left too, to find a gentle ridge going up about 70 meters to where it turned to the right into the top ridge around the crater and that was quite flat. My joy soared we didn’t have to climb that ½ mile of sloping rock after all. It was now very easy walking on the rim. I could finally get the camera out and take some pictures. The top was a series of depressions and the main crater with a thin rim between them all. One side of the rim would fall down the mtn, the other side of the rim would fall into the crater or one of these other depressions. The rim was about 4 ft wide so it was quite safe and easy to walk along. The crater was about 1 km wide. On the inside the rim sloped steeply down for about 100 m then a sudden 100 m deep drop off down to the bottom of the crater. You could see steam, smell a bit of sulphur, and see rock that had cooled from lava extrusions. Pretty cool stuff.
The outside of the rim fell away steeply on all sides. With the sun just up and low on the horizon, the whole mtn cast a perfect symmetric shadow on the big escarpment cliff about a mile away. That made for a nice picture.
Then came the going down, not something I was looking forwards to. The Canadians had left to go down about 15 mins before us. The third group was still coming up. The rock plates were too slippery to walk on top of let alone try to step down on them, so it meant walking in the sand gullies between the rock plates. These gullies or rivulets were from 1 – 4 ft deep and 1- 4 ft wide. The sand was not slippery like the rocks but you could easily slide down with all the sand around your boot sliding down to. So the process was to take the walking stick, stick it in the sand or a crevice about 2 ft in front, then step down to the stick with one foot, if that held, then step down with the other foot while hanging on to a rock edge on the edge of the rock plate with the remaining hand. Then repeat over again. A slow but steady process. I knocked a few rocks loose and we had to yell out to the Canadians about 100 yds in front of us below to ‘Look Out’ as that can be very dangerous. Once going, those rolling & bouncing rocks do not stop for ages. The further down the less step it got and easier to walk.
It took about 4 hours to go down, picking up Yong then Ramona and Alan along the way. By then it was near 11 am and the heat was in full force. Needless to say the afternoon was spent in the pool in the shade with cold cokes and beers.
It took 4-1/2 hrs to drive out again the next day, passing Zebra, Ostrich, Jackals’, etc. This time we had filled up all our empty water bottles and handed them out to the Maasai people who came up to the road as we drove along. Some were so excited to get water.

About ½ way out, there was an ancient stone ruins site off the way so we went to that for a short diversion. About 500 yrs old, it was occupied by some people pre Maasai. People called Songo they thought, whose relatives now live way up north of Lake Natron. Not a lot of details known as there was no written language amongst those people pre-European.

Lions in Ruaha National Park

After installing the last pump, we took a couple of days off to go further south to Iringa and to visit another big game park called Ruaha. The drive is through the Mikumi national park to Iringa and is on tarmac. Iringa town itself is off the main road about 2 km up on top of a cliff. The main street runs along parallel to the cliff top. We chatted to a guiding company about whether to use them to get to the park or whether to drive there our selves in our Pajero. We had heard the road was not so good from Iringa to the park. After considering the options we choose to book a night at a lodge just outside the park entrance and rent their guide and vehicle from there. That meant us driving the 60 km to the lodge. It was mostly flat but corrugated and rough. It took 3 hours to get there. We got there at dusk. The lodge was way up on the side of a hill with great views of the planes and trees below. At that time of year though, it was very very dry. No greenery to see, most things including trees are covered in dust. No chance of seeing any animals in the trees below as there is nothing for them to eat there.
The Lodge included a fixed evening meal that we shared with a group of Germans who had come too. They had a great wooden log balcony to sit on with a cold drink and look out over the tree covered land below and low mountains in the distant inside the park. I must have eaten something bad in Iringa as my stomach was quite upset and could not face a meal. Ramona was fine thankfully. I later lost what little was in my stomach too.
In the morning I saw the Land Cruiser out front ready to go. They guy was letting it roll down hill to jump start it. Hmm I thought. It was 30 km to the park entrance on the same road as yesterday. The Land Cruiser had a lift up top on it so customers can stand up in it and view game. While driving around though the top is normally down. Most of the rubber seals had worn out and it rattled so loud we really couldn’t talk. Once in the park we stopped at a bridge over a river to watch alligators, some hippos, some baboons leaping over rocks and little water ways, so cute. Not long after the bridge the driver stops and gets out of the vehicle, something had broken. We look under the rear and see the sway bar lying on the ground. Two mounts that are meant to hold it up had come undone, the bolts fallen out and lost. He ties it up with a bit of rubber tubing which looked dubious. On we go for about another 15 mins and the same thing happens. He ties it up again and adds a bit of thin wire this time. Then he drives to the head quarters a couple of miles further up the road and into their maintenance compound. He asks one of the mechanics there if they can fix it. About 1 hour later they have it repaired and we have to push start the vehicle again. So at a little after noon we finally begin our game drive proper. A little irritated by now. But the driver knows his stuff and we soon come across Jackals, umpteen Zebra, Giraffe, Warthogs, Impala, and then Ramona says this looks like a good spot for lions. Sure enough we see a lion under a tree, then another and another. 9 all told sitting there in the shade on a raised river bank overlooking the near dry river and the impala out there. We park about 20 ft ( 7 m) from and just below them in the river bed and watch them for ages. They could care less about us, sleeping and watch the impala was the order of the moment it seemed. Eventually one got up and walked down the bank and started to walk out to the river bed behind us intently staring at an impala. Then another and a 3rd. They were fanned out. A 4th one who had been on our front right got up and started to walk past us to join the others. I had been videoing her but as walked towards us she filled the lens. I was backing off the zoom to keep her in the lens then realised there was no more backing off to do as she was just off to the side of the truck walking past us. Ramona was so excited to see this massive cat just right there walking past us. The lion joined the others now in a spread out pattern that looked like a military plan. They sat there so still and just watched that impala. Magnificent, such patience and stealth.
We drove off to leave them in peace. Stopped for lunch well away from the lions. Some others were there and said they had seen a cheetah not far away. So off we went in search of that. The driver found her quite soon stretched out on the ground under a big Baobab tree in the shade. Compared to the big muscled lions, the cheetah is very thin and wiry, built for speed. A movement under the tree caught our eye and out walked a little cub then another. So cute! They walk up to their mama then start playing with each other for a bit. They are very thin too. The mother spots an impala about 200 m away and gets up slowly and she too stealthily walks towards the impala. Seems like Impala was on the menu that day. The cubs follow off too after their mama. She disappears low in the brown grass and we loose sight of her and the cubs. But what a treat to see nature in action.
We head back as it is getting late. Along the way we come across a group of elephants, then a big group of water buffalo under some trees in the shade. Out of the park and almost back at the lodge we get a puncture. The driver rummages around and comes out with a little bottle jack and wrench. We take the flat type off and can’t put the new one on as the jack won’t lift the axel up high enough. I tell the driver we’ll have to dig down to make a depression in the road to put the tyre in low enough to get in on the studs. We do this and get the wheel on. But the truck engine has stopped and now the truck has one wheel in a hole so we can’t push it out with just the three of us. Fortunately just then a van comes driving by and he pushes the land cruiser to get it started and we get back to the lodge at about 4 pm. We say good bye to the staff there, told them their vehicle needs some good maintenance and jump in our Pajero and start the 3 hr drive back to Iringa, knowing that the last hour will be in darkness. Not recommended. But it all went ok.
The next day we went to the Isimila Stone Age site not far from Iringa. This is the site of some very old discoveries of some of the earliest humans. 2nd to the Olduvai gorge only where the Leakeys found their famous finds in the late 50’s. So quite an important site. Not that you would know by the way it was presented. A small confusing sign on the side of the road, then a windy track through some back yards of mud houses down to an over look site that at least did have some respectable buildings on it. There was no one around so we walked down the part to the bottom of the gorge even though it said not too. Once at the bottom, a guide saw us from the top and came running down to show us around. Basically a very dry sand and stony river bed with some old excavators huts on it. The area had not been excavated since the 50’s too. The guide took us on an excursion over to another nearby canyon that we could not see at all from up top. It had some spectacular rock towers in it about 10 m high, we were able to walk right in down amongst them. Fascinating to see structures like this.
After Isimila we headed back to Mikumi. The hills along the Iringa to Mikumi gorge are quite steep with a river at the bottom most of the way. Being steep they have not been grazed or cultivated hence they are still covered in bush. In addition to the usual wrecked trucks along the road, from punctures, to broken axels, to being tipped over, there were forest fires everywhere, not large ones, but smoke and flames were quite common. Some along the road side as the picture shows. This was a first for us to drive past fires like this. There were no fire men or anyone in attendance at any of these fires. They just burn themselves out eventually we concluded. Tanzania continues to be an adventure. Then it was back to Gairo.

From 4 hours to 5 Minutes

The day we left Gairo Musa from the VSA office in Arusha came down to see our work and to collect some items VSA had provided for the house we had been staying in. We took him on a tour of 15 wells. Musa was able to talk to the local villagers very well. One woman came up to talk to him as she could not talk to us with our limited Swahili. She was telling him how thankful they were to get this water. This particular village had no other water source and they had to walk many kms or 4 or so hours sometimes to get 20 liters of water. Now they have water a 5 min walk from their house. It is not an unlimited amount of water and they have to pump somewhat hard to lift water from that depth, but at least it is some water for them. That is what we came for.

Pumps are Installed

In Mid August Ramona and I drove our truck back down to Gairo to finish the installation work for the 17 pumps. We spent 2 nights in Dar es Salam where we picked up some of the Tanira manufactured pump parts we would need in Gairo, caught up with some friends and bought 3 weeks’ worth of groceries from one of the big new grocery stores in Dar. There is not too much available in Gairo for Mzungus.
After leavingDar we headed to Morogoro to pick up the remainder of the SWN pump parts we also needed, and then arrived at Gairo 2 hours later.
We had bought down to the Gairo office the laptop computer that had been back at Adra for a couple of weeks while we reset the settings back up for it operate correctly. The first day in Gairo we spent in the office instructing the staff how to use the computer, how to connect to the internet, send emails and check emails, put attachments on emails, sending pictures, and how to open and close the usual Office documents.
Over the next two weeks we installed all the pumps, generally 2-3 per day depending on how deep the pump inlet was set at. Due to Ross’ should injury and not able to lift anything heavy, the Project manager had arranged for a 2nd fundi to help us out with the installations. Nick was the one we had planned to us, but now we had Nick and Jonas. They were great to work with, learned fast, and were keen to work longer hours as required. It worked out best having Jonas there as well as now there are two people in Gairo who know in detail how to install these pumps, how to remove and repair them. The pumps are spread over 6 small villages around Gairo town. Nick and Jonas got to know the Village officers well while we were doing the installations so they have a good relationship set up now for the villagers to contact Nick if the pumps breakdown and need a service. So we think we have set up a very sustainable water supply. A typical installation would involve Nick Supervising, and doing the critical rod assemblies, Jonas doing the backup preparation and then up to 8 or so village males of various ages helping with the lifting of the rods to lower down the well, then about 20 or more other people watching and offering unendless suggestions. Often during the installations the people would be chatting back and forth with Nick and Jonas making jokes, some about us we gather, or singing a song (because they were happy they said at that time). This part of the project was the most rewarding. A very satisfying feeling that we were giving something to these people who basically have nothing and that the benefits to them were so obvious and to see how happy they were was truly a moving experience.
When we finished installing a pump, Nick or one of the village elders would get on the handle first and do the first pump strokes. We would take a picture of the first water coming out of that well. It would take a few strokes to get the water all the way up to the top, then it would start gushing out the outlet spigot. Clear cool water stroke after stroke. The mamas quickly appeared on the scene with their plastic buckets for filling. In some cases there were dozens of them with buckets awaiting water.
One of the wells was in Gairo town itself right outside our house we were staying in along one of the main back streets. We installed this pump early on as we wanted to be able to watch its use all the while we were there. Ironically enough as Gairo is a much bigger town than a small outlying village, we would have a lot of people to stop by and watch but no officials to come around and organise the local people. It is a shallow installation of 30 m, so it did not take long to install. Some of the neighbouring kids we had made good friends with back in Jan-Mar were there and they helped where they could. They are a lot of fun too. Once the pump was pumping water, the people seemed to come from every house we could see to get water. In Gairo, the water is normally a gravity fed system from up in the distant mountains. It is only turned on every 3rd day however as it is shared with other towns too. Water from this source is charged at 20 shillings (2 cents)per 20 liter bucket. But with this pump on their main back street, providing water at any time and it was free, this was a big deal for them. That poor pump was pumped from dawn to dusk every day by mamas or children. It seemed they were doing a pump stroke about every second, over 12 hours that is a lot of strokes. The pump is really designed to be used by a taller somewhat strong person that can do full strokes of the handle getting maximum water per stroke. However a lot of the women are shorter as are the kids and they would not have the arm strength to do full pump strokes time after time. Instead they would pull the handle down then lean over it with stiff arms and then bounce up and down on their feet (as their legs are stronger than their arms) to jiggle the handle up and down about 10% of its stroke. They can keep this up for ages albeit at a low water flow rate. We’d go out there time and time again to show them how to do full strokes to get full water flow and try to tell them it was better for the pump to do long slow strokes rather than these short rapid strokes. They would listen for a few minutes then 10 mins later you could come back and a new set of mamas or kids were on it doing the jiggle again. There were just too many different users over a full day to try to tell them all how to do it properly. After 2 days the Gairo pump stopped pumping water so we had to pull it out to see the problem. We could tell it was not working when we drove up to it as there were no people around using it. This was a very good learning exercise for Nick and Jonas. They were able pull the pump out and investigate where the problem was without Ross showing them where to look for the problem. The bottom cylinder internal plunger had unscrewed there by letting water back out the bottom again. We screwed it back together again tight with a big pipe wrench and reinstalled the pump. It worked well again and all the people came back with their buckets. 2 days later the same thing happened. Nick wanted to leave it not working for a few days to teach the people a lesson that they need to not do the jiggle stroke as that probably helped the bottom valve to unscrew. After we did pull the pump again and take the bottom cylinder apart and saw the same valve had come unscrewed I explained to Nick and Jonas there was a liquid called LockTite that was designed to keep threads from coming unscrewed. We had to search almost every hardware type store in Gairo but eventually found an equivalent product. We reassembled the valve and let it dry a day before reinserting the pump in the well. For the next 2 weeks after, till we left, the pump worked perfectly.
The SWN pumps had 4 m long rods that are made up of an outer PVC pipe 1-1/2” in diameter and a 3/8” diameter inner stainless steel suction rod. We noticed that over a 4 m section, the PVC was 10 mm longer than the steel rod. Hence over a 50 m length of assembled rods there was a 120 mm difference in the inner steel rods compared to the outer PVC pipe. This caused a problem and would not let the pump piston in the bottom cylinder have full travel. It didn’t matter on the shallower pumps but on these 50 m deep installations it was a problem. There were 4 of them too. We contacted the supplier in Morogoro and asked them to make up 4 short rods 100 mm long. When we added these short steel rods to the stack up of the 4 m long steel rods, that extra length let the pumps work properly giving full flow per stroke.
These 4 deep (50 m +) SWN pumps also had special bottom valves to allow then to pump from greater depths. After we had finished installing the deepest one at 57.5 m deep, when tested, even though the pump pumped water the action just felt wrong. Ross explained to Nick that we would have to pull the pump out to see what the problem was. We arranged to do this in a couple of days time as we knew it would be tricky. By now the 57.5 m of rods were also full of water and the whole set up was very heavy, 200 kg approx. We had to devise a slow and safe way to be able to lift these out using a lot of people to help lift. The problem was a manufacturing flaw. One of the steel fittings in the bottom valve had a bit of casting slag still in it that the valve was catching on. This was preventing the valve from moving up and down. We filed it off and the pump worked fine after that. It had taken 8 hours to pull the pump out, find the problem and repair it and then reassemble it back in the well again. Another good practice session for Nick and Jonas to learn from.
After we had finished the pump work, and the day before we left, the ADRA crew in Gairo had a little farewell meeting for us to say thank you for coming down to help them with their project and for getting to know each other. They presented us with some local gifts. A Kitanga for Ramona and a Maasai wrap for Ross. This was such a great moment to share with them.

Oh No Another Injury that wasn’t in the Brochure

Last Sunday ended up quite a bit different to what we thought it would on Sunday morning. We went up to the neighbouring Danish run training center for a game of squash. Max had come back from the States full of enthusiasm to play some sports. The options are limited here so he bought back a volleyball/badminton set along with tennis balls, squash balls and ping pong balls. So he was itching to get some game going. We had a short warm up and he was ready to start a game. He was quite aggressive and has a good eye for the ball. He was up, then I got up a bit then he started to come back. He hit a ball that bounced back deep into the left back corner. I ran over flicked the ball back with a reaching out backhand and then to stop quickly and get back to the center of the court, I pushed off the wall with my left arm. Oh no, that felt weird and what’s worse it still feels weird. I realised with sinking diamay, my left shoulder was dislocated. We tried with Ramona or Max to lift it back into position but no such luck. Max dashed back to the Adra office to get his Landcruiser as would have to drive somewhere to get attention. Ramona called some other volunteers to ask if they knew of any adequate medical places we could go. There are some local village clinics, but after having seen the Gairo one, I said no lets go into Arusha even though it is a 30 min drive as they will have better qualified people. The bad thing about that drive is the large number of speed bumps and judder bars along that road. Not what a sore shoulder needs.
One of the ex-volunteers is a nurse at the Arusha hospital now. Luckily Ramona had her number so we called her while driving and she then called the doctor on duty to let him know we would be there shortly. Turns out he is an orthopaedic of all things, lucky for me as I was then envisaging a 6 hour drive along a rough road to Nairobi in Kenya. After not too long of a wait and being shuffled around 3 different rooms the doctor came in and took me to a small theatre for a general sedation while he put the shoulder back in place. I woke up all bandaged up but no longer in pain thank goodness.
So now it is two weeks in a sling then light duties for quite a while and physiotherapy though I can’t see that being too effective here. It means it will further delay our return to Gairo to finish installing the pumps for those poor drought stricken villagers. TIA

So between Ramona I we have now dislocated 2 joints in 7 months while in Tanzania. The irony is it is not to do with work but playing sport in our free time.

To Protect and Serve

In Mid July we were asked to accompany another manager to Gairo to access the progress of the projects Latrine construction and Rain Water collection sub-projects. While there we wanted to go and visit the supplier of the pumps we have been waiting on for months. The three of us drove down in our 4WD. It takes 10 hours. Along the way you drive through various villages along the road side. A good part of the way is a very dry area and the villagers must be very poor. The houses are mainly single room mud brick with thatch roofs. Very few crops or animals in sight. Every time you pass through a village the local police are out standing on the road. They don’t have any vehicles so they can’t go far from their office (shack). They stand out on the road and flag down almost every truck and bus and some cars. They stop them to check registration papers, insurance papers and anything else they can think off to find an infringement and get a bribe to let the driver go. This happens in almost every village. It must take the trucks hours and hours of extra time to make a trip with all the stopping they get every 20-30 km. In between the villages you can drive as fast and as bad as you like..Since the police have no cars they can’t go out to patrol the roads. They do not appear to be too interested in road rule infractions, just stopping trucks and cars to get a bribe. Even on the road from Usa River, where we are based, into Arusha, any police from a western country would have a field day. The driving is so bad and dangerous. The amount of traffic tickets they could give out and earn revenue for the government would have to be very large. But none of it gets caught. There are drivers passing on blind corners, coming over hills, some pass on the left, some just pull out into the opposing land and flash their lights at the then oncoming cars to try to get them to pull off the road to be let by. At some times the traffic going one way is 4 wide when the road is 1 lane each way. Not often thank fully though.

Anyway back to the Gairo trip. We got stopped three times on the way down. Check registration, check insurance, check to see if we have a fire extinguisher... We did get one speeding ticket and we were going over the posted limit. The car behind us was going faster and they tried to wave them down to but he just kept on driving. With no police vehicle they have no way to catch them. The guy behind that got pulled over too but he left in just a few minutes, where as it took about 30 mins for them to write out a ticket in triplicate to us. I asked the ADRA guy with us how come that driver got to leave so quickly. He said he saw him slip a note out the window.

There are some entrepreneurial teenagers trying to sell ears of maize along the side of the road at one place. They just may not last long at the job however. They stand out in the middle of the road waving ears of maize as you drive up at highway speed then at the very last minute step aside.

We have the Pumps!

We spent two days at Gairo making notes on the project. We also visited the pump supplier for the pumps we had been waiting on since April. After a few hours of drama we finally got the situation worked out and took the pumps back to the ADRA office in Gairo.
We had taken 3 soccer balls down to Gairo to give to the kids down there we had become friends with then back earlier this year. They were so excited to get a gift from the mzungus. They raced off to show their mum and other family members. (No fathers around) It was good to see them happy as they have such a little.
On the way back to Arusha from Gairo we got stopped another 3 times. Registration papers, insurance, ... We came across yet another two dead trucks i.e. trucks and trailers lying on the side of the road after rolling over.
We’ll be going back down to Gairo in a few weeks to finish the installation of the pumps which will be good to see the villagers get what they have been waiting for.

Back at Usa River in the meantime we have been working on writing a manual for the use of QuickBooks that ADRA is going to implement to its accounts staff in the next few weeks. We listed all the common functions the staff will need to do and have written detailed instructions on how to perform those steps. We think they will be so excited to use such a modern program after being with a DOS based program and manual documents for so long. It will be about a 40 page manual by the time we have finished. Max arrived back from his trip to the United States and bought back 3 new notebooks for the accounts staff to use. The internal battery of the notebooks will prevent them from losing their work when the power gets shut off with no notice which is a frequent occurrence. We had some network cabling installed in the accounts office to set up a little network for them so they can communicate to each other through the computers and share the various accounts files. These are all big steps for the staff to take and we know we will have to take a lot of time to explain all this new setup they are being introduced to.

The female dog on the ADRA campus had 7 puppies 8 weeks ago. They have just now learned they can run around and chase each other. They are little balls of fluff. Their faces are so cute with their big puppy eyes. We built a moveable mesh pen for them so they can stay outside during the day to get fresh air. They just love it. They yap and stand up with their little paws against the mesh whenever we walk by.

Where are the Pumps?

We still do not have the pumps to go finish off in Gairo. First there was to be a 6 week delay from the supplier in Morogoro while they imported them. Then when the pumps came in they said the VAT exemption we had obtained was invalid. They were the ones who told us how to get the exemption back in February. (It takes 6-8 weeks to get an exemption through the government offices). We were told by the sales manager, the owner was overseas. We told the sales manager the exemption was valid but he refused to acknowledge it. We went back to the tax office to check and they confirmed ‘yes it was valid’. Then when the project coordinator (pc) in Gairo went back to the supplier’s office again, there was a policeman outside saying he had locked the business as the business had back taxes owing. The pc did some digging around and found the business in another location in Morogoro, but there were no signs up or anything to say they were there. And the business owner was not overseas after all! They said they had tried to call the PC but could not get a hold of him?? They have his numbers, all our email addresses so that seems quite strange. So here we are after 12 weeks and we have no pumps, we do not know if we will get them from this supplier at all and the money is just stolen of if we do get them, when is unknown. Every day is a different storey by the time the word gets from Morogoro to Arusha. Very inefficient. TIA. I’ve started dealing with the manufacturer direct in Holland and we can get them from them if need be at lower cost but still another 6 weeks shipping time.

We started planning a procedure to use Quickbooks for the new accounting system for the organisation at their Usa River headquarters. Ramona knows other similar programs quite well so she seems to be able to find her way around the software easily. The time consuming part will be to work out the opening balances on the various accounts and enter them into Quickbooks before they change again.

The baby home was given for kitset incubators to use for premature babies. They needed to be first put together so we volunteered to do that. Once the wooden sides were assembled, we wired in the electrical heating system. Then they were varnished. Finally the clear perspex covers and tops were added.

The 24th June was Ramona’s birthday. We try to spend her birthday on a mountain or a big hill somewhere every year. Since Mt Meru (4562 m) is just a couple of miles away and it is quite the big mountain, we set out to drive up to the base a bit and spend a few hours hiking up there. Marsha came with us too as she had been to that spot before and sort of knew where to go. It is not a well known path and not a tourist trail by any means. We think it is more a path the local farmers use to move up and down the mountain. The lower slopes have very fertile soil and a lot of small area crops are grown, all tilled by hand with a hoe. Once on the trails off the main tarmac road it is a winding, dirt trail up the lower slopes. We were often in quite thick bush so easy to get disorientated very quickly. Very few vehicles drive up that far we concluded There are no maps, no signs, no nothing to tell you where you are. . All you know is up and down the mountain. We got so lost up there! We ended up driving a long way in the wrong direction along this path, narrow at places, with water and mud filled ruts, half buried big rocks, a bridge made of planks thrown on some other planks to cross a small stream. Bit worried about that one. So after a while we turned back, Ramona and Marsha had to re-lay some of the planks as they had shifted from the first crossing. We followed a new trail downhill and came back on to the main tarmac road again after about ½ an hour and found ourselves about 10 miles away from where we had first started. So OK, now that we knew a little about the lay of the land, we drove back to the start point and looked for a turn me must have missed to take us up the mountain and not along it. We found it very early on and up we went. This time we picked up a local girl along the way, hoping she would tell us the right way to go. She almost did, as she thought we were giving her a ride home and we missed the last turn off again. Another local pointed it out to us, (no English spoken up there). So we parked and hiked up for an hour as by then it was getting late. Had late lunch up there and then returned. Driving down was meant to be easy as there was only one right turn we thought. But not to be, we got lost again! So for the second time that day there we were driving down a dirt tail not knowing where we were, the locals looking at us probably wondering what the mzungus were doing there again. This time we came out about 3 miles away from where we started off the tarmac road.
Last Saturday, we went into Arusha to watch, on a big screen, the All Blacks play France again in NZ. There was one French guy and 6 of us in the bar, so good for barracking against the French. Just after that game finished we heard the Wallabies were to play Italy in a test match in Melbourne. We changed bars to a restaurant and had lunch and watched that game. Then not long after that game finished, the Springboks played the Lions in a test match in Durban, so we stayed and watched that game too. It was amusing how the matches all lined up in one after another in Africa time with the games being played in the late afternoons in three different countries.
On Sunday we along with some other volunteers had a ½ way to Christmas dinner at one of their houses. Roast chicken and potatoes with salads and vegetables. Finished off with a pavalova and Christmas pudding. There were 10 of us including three volunteers from Germany. Andrea had made up paper hats for us all to wear. The previous day I was lamenting over the death of Farrah Fawcett and so my hat had Farrah4ever on it. Ramona’s hat had Birthday Girl on it. The pavalova I baked in a gas oven so it was difficult to control the heat levels. It rose up quite quickly to this flat domed shape and made a stiff thin crust on top. Then when I turned the oven off to let it slowly cool, at some point the inside collapsed down taking about half of the top crust down with it. So in appropriate Tanzania fashion the pavalova looked like an old volcano with a large deep crater inside. Just like the Ngorogoro game reserve crater.

On Hold in Arusha

At the end of March we left Gairo to head back to Australia for two weeks. The work at Gairo had come to a stop almost as we are waiting on more pump parts to come in before we can install the remaining 14 pumps. Our worker in Gairo, Nik was going to finish off the remaining 4 pump slabs to be constructed and be ready for the arrival of the pumps. We went to Dar es Salam for a couple of days, where we got the truck serviced, caught up with Max the ADRA director there for an afternoon to debrief him on the Gairo progress, plus get some more great meals from the Pub we stay next to when in Dar.
In Australia we went to a Wedding of Matt and Lauren in Sydney. Matt worked with us in our old company EE. They had chosen a nice venue and planned a great day and a follow up BBQ for Sunday the day after. Congratulations to Matt and Lauren.
We got to spend some good time with our 2 cats in Melbourne. They were well adjusted to Sarah and Blair looking after them while we have been away and didn’t freak out too much when we came home. Sarah and Blair spoil them so much. That is because they are so cute.
We got to catch up with most of our old EE friends one night at a Pub in Port Melbourne which was very nice. Thanks to all who came.
Then it was back to Tanzania via J’burg again. Back at Arusha we are doing various jobs to help out as needed. One night we had a Pancake night. Ramona and I bought a bunch of berries, syrup and ice-cream and cooked up pancakes for about 14 people. Scrump it was. Another night Max and his family and some friends had a small bonfire out back of their house. We sat around the fire and told a few stories did some star gazing, sang a few songs. On the weekends we have been catching up with the other VSA volunteers around. Some good lodge meals, a few Sunday afternoon beers, good discussions on Africa, places to visit in Tanzania, and what is next for us all after our assignments are over. Most of the other VSA volunteers here at the moment are finishing their terms this year or early next.
We’ve taken on a big project at Adra to implement a new accounting software package and a review of their admin systems. They are switching to Linux for security and anti-virus reasons, so any new software has to run on Linux which makes it a challenge. Ramona is trialling the various packages out and noting their pros and cons. Linux is meant to be as easy as Windows but we have yet to see evidence of that. One day I got stuck for the whole day just because I couldn’t launch a file. It had to be done in terminal mode and that is so unfriendly and un-intuitive. Max’s son Brendon knows it well though so we had to wait for him to get free time to help us out.
The national power company (who is a monopoly) announced last week that they were going to start power outages as they could not meet the demand. So in addition to the power going on and off several times a day from a few minutes to hours, they now are turning the power off at about 7 pm at nights for a few hours it seems. So now our kit for walking outside at night has to include carrying a torch. I cannot imagine the loss to the country when they turn the power off, especially during the day and shut down all the businesses. Not only does the power company (govt owned) loose all the income they could have been generating, the loss of sales revenue from business shutdowns for the nation must be substantial. I’ve been reading a history book on the great scientists since the 1500s, the start of the renaissance. One thing that comes out clear is once electricity was invented and made available, the pace of modernisation of those societies was very fast. Without a reliable source of electricity it seems countries like Tanzania will always struggle. The people want it but many probably cannot afford to buy it even if it was available and the government says there is not enough money to build more capacity to generate more power. i.e. a no win situation. Without the foresight to invest in infrastructure, a country cannot move forward.
I’ve been writing a paper on and off since we have been here on some basic problems and solutions I see with Tanzania. I am sure it will win a Pulitzer prize when it is finished which it nearly is. So stay tuned. It is called Lions for Cows. Email us if you would like a copy of it sent back to you.

The Water Bringers

We have been told the local villagers from around the 6 villages we have been working in have given us a nick name. It is in Swahili, Wanaleta maji which means the Water Bringers. We probably have been a bit different to other people they may have seen over the years. A lot more hands on. We had gotten water in every well we drilled for them. Over the process of drilling the wells to installing the hand pumps that we have been out to each site numerous times to do something to the well, like build the slab, pump test it, bail water from it etc and each time some of the villagers had come out and seen us getting water out of these wells. So there must be a lot of local people who have seen us getting water from these wells and some of the different villagers have been talking to each other to come up with this name. Kind of Cute!

Installing the first hand pumps

Ramona and I had gone to Morogoro to buy enough parts to complete 3 of the 17 hand pumps needed. We installed these pumps in three different villages to give them a sample of what was to come. So last Sunday Ramona and I along with Nick our local helper and 3 of the local kids we have become friends with, loaded up the land cruiser and headed out to the first site. The pump sections are in 4 m lengths installed one at a time, lowering the assembly down the well 4 m further every time till the desired depth is reached. For each section, there is a stainless steel 10 mm inner sucker rod to connect up first then the outer PVC tube. It took a few trials to figure out how to do this efficiently and safely as once there were several lengths assembled it was too heavy to hold up by hand and the risk of dropping the assembly down the well was too high. The week before I had made up two sets of V blocks that would clamp around the outside of the PVC and act as stops to suspend the assembly at the top of the well so no one had to hold the weight. During assembly it became clear we needed a forked tool to hold the inner rods up above the PVC outer casing to allow the next inner rod to be connected to the lower inner rod. A trip back into Gairo to buy a piece steel and the use of a hack saw to make this tool solved the problem. After about 2 hours the first pump was installed and ready to go. I gave the handle a few pump up and downs and though I could hear water none came out. I gave it a few more with the same result. I started thinking, oh, what could be wrong? It is quite a simple set up. One of the village elders came over and we pumped a few more times and water started pouring out of the pump. Clear cool water just running out on to the pump slab we had made. The look on the villagers faces was one we’ll never forget. The word went around quickly and more and more people started coming out. Not that many but enough to make a crowd around the slab. The people were smiling, laughing and pointing at the water coming out. They quickly arranged for some buckets to put under the spigot to collect this valuable resource. Ramona said she was holding back tears from seeing the joy on these people’s faces. One mama with the usual baby on her back got on the pump and as she was pumping up and down you could see the baby’s head bobbing up and down like a ride on a bucking bronco. It made for a good video!We timed how long it took various people to fill a 20 liter ‘plastic’. A fit young male was about 1-1/2 min, an 8 yr old kid was about 2-1/2 mins and the mama with baby on back was 2 mins. This means on average it means they would pump about 600 lph while pumping.
After the first village and armed with the right tools now we went to the 2nd village to install the next pump. This pump was right beside a group of mud houses so there were plenty of people to come and see what we are doing. We had the pump installed in about 2 hours with a good sized group of watchers. Nick started pumping this pump for the first time. Just like the first one, after a few strokes, water started coming out of the spigot. More clear cool water. The people quickly saw what was happening and started bringing buckets of all colours pushing to get their bucket at the head of the queue. They all wanted a turn on the pump, talking loudly, laughing and smiling. One of the elder mamas there took charge of them and organised the empty buckets on the right and full ones on the right. We had our camera out to take pictures of different people and expressions. Once they saw this they all wanted their picture taken. Mzungu Mzungu cries were frequent to attract our attention. When you show them the picture on the camera screen, they laugh and scream and jostle around.
The third pump was not quite so dramatic. It was on a site that was out of sight of the local villagers so most of them did not know we were there. A few trickled down while we were there and got their buckets filled. One mama was on her way to the nearby water pit with green water in it when one of the guys called her over to get fresh water from the pump. This well is a Seep well, which is a name given to a well that has a low recharge rate, a lot lower than the above 600 lph. This means the people could be able to pump the well dry. We tested this out and after about 45 mins the pump stopped lifting water. We left it for 4 hours and when we came back there was plenty of more water again that had collected in the well. So these villagers may have to wait a while between pumping sessions it seems, but there will still be many buckets to pump from the well over a day.

Mikumi Wildlife Park

We are heading back to Arusha in a couple of weeks, for several months while we are waiting on pump parts to come in before we can carry on with the project. Hence we took the opportunity before leaving the area to go visit the Mikumi National park. It is straight south of us, not that far, but the dirt roads are not too good so it is best to drive east to Morogoro for 2 hours, then back south west to the park for 1-1/2 hours as that is all sealed road. The park is unique in that the sealed road actually drives right through the park from east to west and continues on to some other southern Tanzania towns. This means you can be driving along and come across a troop of baboons sitting on the road, or a herd or giraffes crossing the road. Elephants are plentiful as are impala along the road. Quite surreal. Big fines if you hit an animal through. There are speed bumps, vicious ones, all along the road so you can’t drive fast in most places anyway. We being tourists would stop to take pictures, where as the truckies and buses would get impatient with us and go around us at speed. The park on the north side of the road is about 1/3 of the total park, the other 2/3rds are to the south of the road but there is not much in the way of roads and tourist activities on that south side.The park headquarters is about ½ way along the road and then turn off to the north a few 100 m to go through their gate and access the interior of the park. It is all gravel sand roads in the park but in quite good condition. 4 WD not needed at all. You have to stay on the roads and are not allowed to get out of your car. This makes it a bit difficult to get some pictures at times. An open top vehicle would be an advantage. We just used out little Pajero. We hired a guide for $10 for the day to shows us what roads to drive on, and give us good information about the various animals.The park is quite flat with open long grassy areas and them some other places with more trees.
There are quite a few different animals to see. As well as the above are eland, warthogs, lions (we didn’t see any that day), leopards (though almost impossible to find in any park), lots of zebra and wildebeest, water buffalo, hippos, (who make the cutest deep based loud umph umph umph sound to each other), crocs, and lots of birds from small to medium size.
We stayed at a tiny hotel ( only 4 rooms) in the town of Mikumi right on the western side of the park outside the park boundary. Run by a Swiss-Tanzanian couple, great restaurant and bar. Real western food, oh Boy! There are a few safari lodges in the park where you may get big animals walking around outside your room. They are almost $500 a night however. Though very accessible, there are not many visitors to this park so you are not waiting behind other vehicles to see animals etc.
We drove around the park on Saturday and on Sunday we headed further west along the sealed road. The next big town is called Iringa and the Lonely Planet says it is a nice drive from the plains of Mikumi up a gorge 170 km to reach Iringa perched atop the hills. We didn’t have time to drive the whole way and still get back to Gairo at dusk, but drove most of it to see the scenery in the gorge. It is mostly too steep to farm so there are not many people living in that area and it is mostly forest and rocky bluffs with a decent sized river at the bottom. It was indeed a nice drive. The road even though sealed was in major need of repair. Dang!. There were so many broken down trucks or trucks in some form of accident, all the way along it. We’ll have to do it again and get all the way to Iringa next time.

Buckets and Buckets of Water

This week while the drillers were waiting for a resupply of materials, we went off to pump test some of the already finished bores. When we had first drilled each bore we had flow rate tested them to ensure they were yielding sufficient water before deciding to complete the bore or drill deeper. Now the goal of the pump testing was to pump a lot of water from the bore to see what level the bore could sustain a flow rate for. We estimated the village women could not pump faster than 500 lph or in their terms 25 buckets per hour. Hence we would start the pump testing with the QED Hammerhead pump (see www.qedenv.com)at 15 m deep below the top of the pump slab and let it pump to see if it could maintain that 500 lph flow rate or if it would draw the level down in the well to the level of the pump and the pump would stop and start as water trickled into the well. If it did this then we would lower the pump another 5 m and let it run again, if it drew it down again then we would lower the pump to 25 m etc. Once a sustainable level was found this told us how deep to set the hand pump intake valve in the bore. It was good for the bores to be pumped for a good amount of water too as this was the first time they had been really pumped so it was a chance for the bore to clean itself out. We also measured the water salinity before and after the pump test to see if there were any changes. The water clarity was also recorded before and after on a relative basis.
On the first bore we went to pump test it was at a site where we had encountered a good amount of water while drilling. We set the pump up and turned on the compressor. There were a few villagers and kids who had come out to watch as normal, but when they saw this clear water coming out of the hose and going onto the ground, they quickly organised the women to bring their 20 l plastic buckets to collect the water. Some even bought bigger containers to put water into as well, which made for a good picture when they put them on their heads to carry home. Even little girls of about 10-12 were carrying a 20 kg bucket of water on their head. How they balance them like that is a mystery. We pumped at 500 lph for over an hour filling buckets all the time. The women were so happy as this was close to their houses as compared to them having to walk a long way to get water from their normal source. Ramona started off holding the hose but then gave it to them to hold and fill their buckets. They were pleased to take charge. We’d get to a point where we would only have 3-4 buckets to go then two girls would show up with two more buckets and on it went like this. It was quite a good feeling to be able to help them like this and gave an indication of what it would be like when we actually mount the pumps on the wells for them to use the first time.
When we went to the next well and asked them if they had any plastic buckets they wanted to fill up, they quickly supplied them. By the time we got to the third bore in that village, the word had gotten around and women and girls with buckets were lining up.
We did 3 more bores in another village after that with a similar storey. Parts of the job like this are quite rewarding.

Quintessential Rural Tanzania

This one picture I realised after taking it shows so much by itself of rural life in Tanzania. It shows a woman walking home from a days work in the field, she is balancing the hoe on her head. She is pregnant and is carrying a child on her back as though the child was just another item to carry around while you do the days activities. There is another child following behind her. She probably has no money to buy a pair of shoes. The house she calls home is like the mud brick house in the back ground. The grass she is walking on has been grazed very short by the number of cows and goats they keep.

Coming to end of drilling phase

We are at the end of the drilling phase of the project. It has been a fun and very interesting three months. The drillers have been a great crew and we’ve had many a laugh along the way with them even though there are big language differences. It all adds to part of the fun. The next steps are to pump test the wells at various depths to see at what depth we will need to set the pump intake to allow a sustainable pumping rate that the villages will do with these hand pumps. Somewhere around 500 lph we think or in villager terms 25 buckets per hour. The driller told us they will pump a lot less than that as these women spend all their time talking!
Then after pump testing we need to finish off the concrete block slabs that we make to mount the hand pump on and it also serves as a elevated platform for the women to pump upon and keep the pump area out of the mud that will inevitably collect around any place where there is spilt water. This activity has been somewhat going on in parallel with the drilling. The local engineer has been mostly looking after this construction with Nik (see scratched Eye posting below) our neighbour and helper. The slabs are self draining and the water is ducted away a few meters to the low ground side of the slab to keep it away from the pumping area. Finally we put a wire fence around the slab a couple of meters out with a wire gate at the end to keep the livestock out and from contaminating the area. (The fence is made of 2” pipe for the posts and 1” pipe for the post stays and apparently there is a risk of someone stealing them for their scrap value.) Go figure.
The last step will be to actually install the pumps themselves. This will (should) be a short job but the procurement process in Tanzania is very slow. Let me say it starts with at least a 4 week process to first get a original proforma invoice from the supplier for the goods you want, then apply for a VAT tax exemption from the government Tanzania Revenue Authority. The proforma has to be an original no fax or email copies so you have to physically drive to that supplier to get the invoice even if they are a 10 hour drive away then after that is the procurement process, there are no credit card purchases, there are bank transfers but errors here are common. Cash is the medium of choice in a lot of cases so that means driving back to the supplier to give them the cash and hope they have the good in stock otherwise it is yet another trip back to them. (Yes you can tell the government makes it very difficult to make tax exempt purchases as they want to collect as much VAT as they can even through it means groups who are trying to help the people in their country are having to pay over 20% more for the goods they need to do their aid work in Tanzania.) Another Go figure!So there is no planned dates for when pump installation will happen which is a shame as the villagers are excited now about getting these water pumps working having seen us out drilling wells in their villages. When they don’t get it you can guess who will get the blame, yes the mzungus.
Bore water quality is becoming an issues, lab results show high chloride content, over the Tanzanian standard so this has to be considered somehow.
We have drilled 3 wells in each of 4 villages, drilled 1 and will repair two existing wells in a fifth village, 1 well each in the 6th and 7th villages. We were to do more but the budget can only go so far. Originally we were to drill on average 17 m deep wells using the information we had been given by the water diviner who had last year located the sites to drill at. However once we started we found this was far from sufficient and we had to drill on average 55 m depths. This is a much higher cost as the drilling costs roughly on average $100 per meter. After just 5 successful bores and 3 dry ones we were about to run out of money and have to stop. The operations manager of the drilling company we are using, who is from Oregon, paid us a visit and came up with a different and lower cost drilling method to suit us. This was to use a smaller diameter down hole hammer so it would penetrate a lot faster, using less labour time and fuel to drive it, plus since our holes are in rock, not clays he said we could not use PVC to case the hole, just leave the hole walls open and put the pump drop tube down the rock hole. He also said the water will be there just have confidence and drill deeper. This we did and had 100% success rate on all the future bores. Plus we were able to get the project budget revisited and dropped some other items that were no longer considered going to be of importance, so this freed up some funds to go to more drilling. Hence between all of this we got a 2nd wind to go drill more holes and managed to drill the above. So we should get to 17 of the original 22 water sites for the villagers. It has been a challenge from many angles but good to get through to be near the target.
It would have been good to use the philosophy we had for the last 3 villages in the earlier villages. In the early villages we were very conscious of the budget and shy about going deep. Hence some wells have low measured flow rates, below what we had hoped for but at that time it was all we could afford to do. Knowing now that there probably was more water deeper down it would have been good to try to get that. We drilled right at the end of the dry season so we concluded if a well had some water now, then it should yield more water in more wet seasons. Another theory we applied early on was if we measured a well to have a low inflow rate, (called a seep well) then we would drill a little deeper and put the pump inlet at the bottom. Then every night the well would fully recharge up to the static water level, and when the women come in the morning to get water they will fill the first 10-12 buckets from the water column in the bore alone, before having to wait and pump at the slower well recharge rate. Better than no water well at all we determined.
Ramona has done an excellent job of recording all details we use on site. We have to often go back through her notes and to recall what happened back then. She says she doesn’t understand drilling at all, but to read her notes implies the opposite. We made up an excel sheet that we updated as we finished a well. It records, well name location, projected depth, actual drilled depth if drilled, drilling method, drill costs, static water level, in flow rate, salinity level, pH, the type of pump we anticipate using on that bore and to what depth to set the pump inlet. It ends up being a lot of data.
It takes about 3 days to drill a well on average, a day’s travel to and from along these dirt roads/tracks, a day or a day and a half to drill depending on the depth and then a day to complete the well and pack up again. If it rains or we get a break down it adds to this time. So for the last 3 months we’d start the day with waking up to babies (there are many here) in neighbour houses crying, chooks cackling around outside the house, roosters having a crowing competition and some pigs screaming somewhere. Breakfast, then driving our little Pajero to the current site where the drillers were (they usually camped on site in the trucks), start drilling by 9-10 am, drill or work till about 6 -7pm and head back to the house, getting there at 7-7:30. Ramona packed us a picnic lunch every day with a couple of big bottles of cold water and a couple of sodas too. The drillers would do the actual drilling work or a few times we jump in and help lift rods around if one of the crew was away. Mostly though we were observing the drilling, measuring flow rates, static water levels, and making decisions as to keep drilling or when to stop drilling.
The weather for the most part has been fabulous. Glorious sunny days, too hot if anything, just light clothes and a big sun hat. Little wind. We did get 1-2 weeks of days where it would rain in the afternoon for a few hours then stop. This was not too big of a factor but what was a big factor was it making the ground too soft for the truck to move around on without getting stuck. For a while there we spent many hours every 3rd day digging one or other of the trucks out of the dirt. But then it cleared up again to more very nice weather. It made being on site quite pleasant some days. On the south and west are mountains to look at, there are big granite rock out crops spread around which are pretty and fun to spend a few hours climbing on. Some villages have more trees than others which makes them nice. Sometimes we were in or on the edge of a maize field or in the middle of grazing grounds with shepherds around with their live stock of cows and goats. (Alas there are no longer any wild animals around). There were always from a few to 100’s of spectators around. Lots of children(watoto menge!).

Gifts for Drillers

One a recent trip to Dar es Salam we bought the drillers some gifts. The idea came from a week earlier we were out after dark digging one of the trucks out of soft dirt that it had gotten stuck in. The drillers were under the front axle trying to jack it up to put logs under the wheels. They were using their phones to provide some light. Ramona remembered we had out hiking head lamps in the Pajero and so got those two to lend to the drillers to work with. They were really pleased and asked the next day if they were a loan or could they keep them. We said they were a loan, but it gave us the idea of the gifts. So in Dar we bought each of the 4 of them a head lamp. Plus they have very little work safety equipment so we bought a pair of safety goggles, ear muffs and finally a set of long leather work gloves for each of them. The drilling truck has a welder on board as they often do welding of the steel surface casing or welding of a plate on top of the finished bore to stop kids throwing things down the well. They had no earth strap on the welder and had to tie/tack the earth wire to what they wanted to weld. So we bought an earth clamp too. When we came back and gave them to them they were so pleased, saying Acente over and over again. They use the items all the time now. The welder ‘Babu’ was quite excited to have a real earth clamp. He put it on the next day and then did some other repair on the welder too.

Scratched Eye

Last Sunday (week ago) we were out late helping dig one of the drillers trucks out of a field. It was on a dirt road with bushes on each side close to the truck. I was digging behind the passenger wheel and throwing the dirt/sand out to the side. Somehow I hit a branch with my head and a branch flicked and whipped across my eye scratching it. It hurt quite a bit and made me stop digging and go back down the road to the back of our little Pajero truck where Ramona flushed it with a bottle of clean water she keeps there. It must have been a bit of a scene as there were about 20-30 villagers watching me by this time seeing what was up with the Mzungu. One of our helpers Nik comes up. He speaks no English so uses a lot of actions to communicate with us. He had broken a little branch off a sort of cactus bush that made a white sap come out of it. He was pointing to that and then making a movement like squeezing a women’s breast. After a while we gathered he was saying he would go off and get a lactating women (there are many here) to come and squirt milk into my eye to sooth it. We politely declined and said we were OK.
Things to experience in Africa!

Scene from National Geographic

Today we experienced something while drilling that even the drillers were surprised at. It was like being in an episode of National Geographic.
We are currently in this village Luhwaji west of Gairo. Here a village is a collection of several 100 mud houses on dirt roads and trees with maybe 1-2 primary schools. The roads are often poor quality, have no road signs or anything to hint of any money being spent of any official order. Almost no cars, just people walking or maybe on a bicycle. A few water points scattered around with a bunch of women and plastic buckets around them when the water lines are turned on every 3-4th day.
Each village has an chief executive officer who voices that villages affairs to meetings of surrounding villages or to higher up the chain to a ward executive. The CEO will have several executive officers. Then there are some village elders who have respect and can have a say in what goes on. There will be a few essential shops scattered randomly around and usually a pool table on a road side somewhere with a bunch of your males hanging around it.
Luhwaji is relatively flat so I was confident we would find water at 30 to 50 meters deep. The first hole to 30 m was dry so we moved to the next recommended location about 10 m away. The project is having to drill deeper depths everywhere we go. So we are very conscious of drilling extra amounts. At the second site it started out promising then got into hard rock again at about 15 m deep. Ramona and I took one of the village executives with us to go scout out another site (site 5) to drill on in case this current site ends up dry too. We tell this guy that this is no water where we are currently at and we may try this other site.

When we get back the drillers are at 21 m and still dry as a bone. So we stop to take yet another rethink. The executive office who had just been in our car comes over to talk to Jacob the local engineer we are working with who also had just arrived on his motor bike. They go back and join a bunch of others and you could tell they wanted a conference on something. A lot of fast Swahili talking and pointing. We have a crowd of over 300 watching us now and looking at this little conference going on. I make this joke to Ramona that as long as they are not sharpening up their spears we are OK.

Jacob comes back and tells us that the reason we have not found water is that the village elders did not get together and pray for water at this well. They need to pray to their gods and make a blood sacrifice to ensure there will be water for them. So sure enough we all stop working and a group of elders come up to the back of the drill rig with a chicken. We walk a good distance away. They start praying then slaughter the chicken and drip the blood around the well head somewhat. Then we go back and carry on!

The well was still dry however at 60 m where we stopped.

Life of a Tanzanian Driller

Got some good first hand experience of the life of a TZ driller this past 2 weeks.
The first 3 bores we drilled were close to Gairo so it was a 10 min drive back down the road to the town. Then on Wednesday we moved to a village called Mshugi which is 12 km north of Gairo. Big deal you say! It took 8 hours for the drillers to get their trucks there. They use two trucks about 10 ton units I would guess. Tandem back wheels. One has the drill rig on it and the other is a support truck carrying the PVC pipe, water, sand, extra drill rods, shovels etc.
8 hours involved driving on these dirt roads whose condition deteriorates every km further you get from Gairo. It involves crossing 3 river beds which are sand here. One had water two were dry. The one with water had a drop down into it then a steep climb back up the other side on a uneven dirt/sand surface so traction was poor at best. They got stuck here big time in the sand. It took them 3 hours to dig themselves out and then redig them out again and again. They do know how to get these trucks unstuck I must say with no fancy tools. Just bags they fill with sand, any branches or small logs lying around, a log wire rope if the first truck gets thru and the 2nd gets stuck the first can pull it through some times. We help as we can but they are a hard working team. Then got stuck 3 more times before reaching the site.The drill truck has hydraulic feet on it which they lower down when drilling to take the weight off the wheels and importantly to level the truck so they are drilling vertically not on an angle. So they use this truck to go first. Originally this truck had 4 wheel drive and a third drive shaft and associated transfer box that they use to drive the hydraulics for the drilling mast. However this transfer box broke a while ago we hear, so now the truck has no 4 wd and when they want to use the hydraulics they have to get under the truck and disconnect the rear wheel drive shaft and connect in a shorter drive shaft to run the hydraulics. Then when they want to drive again they have to undo the hydraulics drive shaft and put in the wheels drive shaft. If the truck is in the middle of running river bed then they do it in the water as there is no option.
So when this rig truck gets stuck they use these hydraulic feet to jack the truck up off the ground, pack bags of sand under the wheels and then logs if possible to provide a drive path for the next meter or so to allow the truck to get some speed up if possible. It works most of the time.
The 2nd truck has no hydraulic feet so it goes 2nd and if it gets stuck they connect a long 1” wire rope to the first truck on the other side, and the stuck truck and then pull it through. This takes hours to do every time in many cases. They must be used to it as they just get out and get on with it without too much complaining at all, more joking with each other. They get covered in sand and water and mud when there is surface water around.
Due to the difficulty of getting the trucks around and no little support pick up available, the drillers just stay out on site. Cook their food over a charcoal cooker, no washing, little laundry, sometimes restricted water, a bed either in the truck seats or a piece of foam on the ground.
After finishing the first bore at Mshugi they were to move on Sat night to the second site for the village. Ramona and I left them to pack up the trucks and then leave. It was not too far away. On Sunday morning we drove back out there which takes even us an hour to go 12 km in the little Pajero across all the same dirt trails and river beds. It is so easy to get lost out there as the villagers just walk everywhere so there are dirt trails criss-crossing all over. We get about ¾ of the way there and come across them stuck in another river bed where they were not meant to be. Apparently some villager had given them some confusing directions. This time the support truck had gone first for some reason and it was a steep drop down into the sandy bed and a climb out the other side. It was stuck big time. They had gotten stuck the night before and had been up all night working to get it out as if you leave it to sit it gets even more stuck. So they were trashed by the time we got there. They were about ready to try to tow the support truck out backwards again with the rig truck. The wire rope is about 50 ft long. They did manage to pull the truck out, however the rig truck then stopped pulling and the truck being towed out backwards could not see that and he was racing the truck backwards to make sure he got up the incline before getting stuck again. He slammed into the rig truck big time. Wham! Luckily no damage done to the rig truck but the folded up mast hit the canopy frame on the support truck and bent it to heck. The rig truck drives up the road another 50 yards to clear out of the way. So we all get over that and then discuss where they really were meant to have gone. It was a narrow dirt road with maize crops either side making the ground soft. This means the trucks cannot turn around until they drive back up to the intersection a few 100 yards up the road. The rig truck is still about 50 yards away when the drive of the support truck starts to back his truck up again. He races back again and you could see what was going to happen. The drilling foreman and Ramona were running up the road chasing the support truck driving backwards. The driver was looking at the rear wheels to make sure he did not get off the dirt road so did not see them yelling and waving and WHAM again into the back of the rig truck. Two 10 ton trucks colliding at 20 mph, ouch. This time there was damage to the rig truck but only to some accessories and not the important parts. It is not even my equipment and I felt sick to the stomach to see this.
Having recovered from that bit of excitement, we continued on to the real site and got stuck again in the very next river bed about 5 mins away! This was dry sand so not too bad, only an hour or so to dig them out and change the drive shafts around again. At that point I said to the foreman, let’s take a ride in our Pajero to scout the rest of the route to this last distant well as I now have serious doubts about the trucks getting there. This we did and he decided quite quickly that I was right and so we abandoned that last position. The local villagers were meant to make it more accessible too but had done nothing so they now get left off the drilling schedule. We turned the trucks around to head back to a village closer to Gairo and immediately get stuck again in the river crossing we had just gotten them out of an hour before. Another hour or two for the drillers to dig themselves out and change the drive shafts around. I said to the foreman, let’s get them to site and take the rest of the day off as they must be exhausted by now. Which we did and they were grateful to find a big tree to park under in the shade and go to sleep.
That is a hard life.

Can of Sprite

Our well drilling is being as successful as we had hoped. The area is very dry and making us drill a lot deeper than originally planned which is using up the budget faster. Yesterday we were drilling in Mkalama village about 7 km from Gairo. We were close to an old (2002) abandoned well and while we were waiting on the drillers to drill more, we got to having a look at it to see why it had been abandoned. Turns out the hand pump on the top of the well had lost its bottom check valve and the villagers had never replaced it so the NGO who installed the pump came and took it away they villagers said. It is a $40 part and they had been without water from this well for about 5 years now. They were using a nearby open pit to get all their water from. Open to surrounding area run off, animals to come to, and their own washing So we figured if we got the villagers to clean out the well we could put a new pump on it and get them a lot of clean water from this sealed well. It was a 1 m diameter well as compared to the 20 cm diameter well we were drilling nearby. This old well flows at 1000 lph where as our drilled one flows at 75 lph. (different circumferential inflow areas) We chipped the concrete cap away to expose a 1 m diameter round lid and flipped it over to the side to get access to the well. It was about 4 m deep with 3 m of water and sticks in it that the locals kids and put in there over time. One of the local villagers striped down to his shorts and then put a long log down the well to act as a ladder! so he could climb down into it. Others on top lowered down a bucket on rope to him to fill the bucket then they would pull it up and dump its contents off to the side. This poor guy down the well would get water spilt all over him as they lifted it up and stones and dirt kicked down on him from the workers above. He was down there for about 4 hours filling this bucket time and time again. But he did a great job.
When he finally came out I gave him a can of Sprite for his efforts. This is one of the Aluminium cans with the pull tab. He put it on the ground not really knowing what it was let alone how to open it. This old Masai shepherd came in his purple red wrap around and staff, and peered at the can, picking it up looking at the top and bottom and the ring. It was like a scene from ‘The Gods must be Crazy’ movie as he had obviously never seen a soda can before and didn’t know what to make of it. They left taking the unopened can with them.
You see some weird things here at times.

Deforestation

One activity you can’t help notice as you drive around Tanzania is that in addition to a lot of women carrying buckets of water on their head there is an equally large amount of people carrying fire wood around. At quite often intervals along the road side you see bags of chopped up fire wood for sale. This appears to be quite an industry for young men. The road site sale locations vary from 1-2 bags for sale to over 30 bags in some places. The men just go back into the bush off the road and cut down the trees then cut it up into smaller pieces for the buyer to use in their cooking. The bags are quite big and heavy so you see them more being transported on bicycles. Bicycles are used more to load up for transport. The rider then pushes the bike around with its load on the back as it is too heavy and unstable to try to ride. Sometimes there are 2 of these large bags on a bike which makes for a very large load. Or you will see women walking along with bundles of sticks on their heads, or if it is a bigger branch, then maybe a single piece of wood on their head. Less frequently you will see whole acreages cleared with the stacked up logs and branches ready for moving away. Most of the forest here is small trees or scrub so there is little construction quality or size wood available. There are some fences around houses or stock pens made of smaller diameter branches though that the owners put up. Similar to the water problem there is no practical way for the rural villagers to get fuel to cook their meals other than to go find it. This means cutting down trees or branches themselves or to go buy these bags of cut up wood. There is no electricity to speak of run to these rural village houses. Even if someone could afford to install the infrastructure for running power lines to all these villages, the people there more than likely could not afford to buy electricity. Likewise they cannot afford to buy bottle propane gas and they would have trouble transporting it around if they could. Consequently there is no real infrastructure to buy bottled gas anyway in these rural locations. Those that could afford it would have to travel a long way to purchase some, which requires a lot of time as the transport would likely be a bicycle or a bullock drawn cart.
From the west we encourage the villagers to boil surface water before they use it for consumption, but this requires yet more wood to be burned so there is an extra cost to them to do this.
The population appears to be growing fast in these regions. There are a lot of women carrying babies on their backs. A rough unofficial count as we watch women walk by our work sites is that about 50% of them have a baby. Many young unmarried women have children we hear. We recently heard by a person who was at a speech put on by the president of a Children’s Fund that approx 40% of these babies do not make it to 5 yrs old though. A growing population means more fire wood is needed every year.
A climb up onto a high cliff and looking around will soon reveal to the observer that vast tracks of land are bare but for a few trees scattered around. The constant grazing of the cattle and goats by roving herders keeps any grass to a short level. Some areas are devoid of much vegetation just bareish dirt/sand. A growing population of people means a growing population of cows and goats too.
In the long run deforestation of large areas of land is a cost we will all pay with changing weather patterns. There may also be necessary support of a large number of people on a land that can no longer support them. Not to even mention what this is doing to the very valuable tourist resource of the large wild animals in these countries. The governments of these countries that are home to these big animals are meant to be their guardians, yet we seem to be trading in lions and elephants for more cows and goats.
We are told there are some programs, but to date we have not seen any attempts to farm trees to make a sustainable situation where by the trees cut down this year are replaced so that eventually each village would have its own renewing plantation to harvest their wood from. This would solve more than just the wood for the villagers problems too, the whole world would benefit at some global level.

Ramona Injury

Last Wednesday Ramona and I were throwing an American football around out in the dirt street with some of the neighbouring kids before dark. They are 6-12 yrs old probably and full of enthusiasm. Some can manage quite a throw. Ramona went to catch a good throw and caught it on her little left finger first. She said ouch then a few seconds later said "I need help". Her little finger was sticking out sideways, it appeared to have been dislocated at the first joint up from the knuckle. I thought this has to go back in now as we are a long way from anywhere for real medical help. So I pulled on the finger and it dropped back into place thankgoodness and Ramona could immediately bend it as normal. She is quite brave indeed while I was cringing. The next few days the joints turned purple then that faded back to normal. It is still a little swollen however between the knuckle and that first joint.