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.