After 3 manic weeks, fieldworkers have been trained. My colleagues and I are exhausted and have been worked by the boss to the point of tears, sometimes literally. But at last time for a breather and a very quick, semi-literate entry on this here blog.
I have been in trouble at work for not being sufficiently “encouraging and supportive” to the students on our distance learning courses. Bunkum. I am encouraging to those who write good essays, and I am honest with the rest – some of whom, frankly, wrote some pitiful and occasionally amusing crap that would embarrass an A level student, never mind a practising GP. I tried to make it clear that no matter how much cash these suckers have paid to get London--- whoops, better keep this anonymous. No matter how much they pay, if they write shit I’ll tell them it’s shit, and believe me: some of what I marked this last month was grade A, horse-derived fertiliser.
On a brighter note, I made an epic journey in the Hilux from Mtwara to Dar, in a day, in the rainy season. This is a journey that many vehicles try and fail (I passed 17 stuck vehicles on the way that day) and only 10 years ago used to kill many people every year. Nelson the Hilux did a fine job, joining up in convoy with a couple of S Africans in Nissan HBs and we had quite an enjoyable Safari. Some nail biting river/puddle crossings, involving sludgy mud deeper than my bonnet, but no serious damage to man or machine. Even more unlikely, no real police issues – car was stopped 3 times and searched once but I departed without even having to bribe the guy. Result.
The roads are always pretty dodgy here and sometimes horribly pot-holed, even if they have been surfaced. Some enterprising young men will often fill in a few pot holes with sand and gravel, then stand by them with a spade, asking the now fractionally-less-delayed drivers to pay them for this act. Nothing wrong with that I guess, shows some initiative, although I have heard from my friend Sarah that the way they fill the holes often actually worsens them in the long run!
And as for work: most recently, we have trained our study staff, as I say. A nice bunch of folks who persist in calling me “Mister Marky!” (That’s Dr to you, and without the Y... Nah, I don’t really care). I tried to contribute to training as well as organising, and enjoyed the chance to remind a few of them of the recent Spurs vs Arsenal and Chelsea results.
Pilot study was very interesting. We went to a health facility in Chanika, just south of Dar. No running water. One toilet (a pit, no plumbing). One Dr (which is more than most) and a number of chickens wandering in and out of the buildings. But tidy, clean, well organised and staffed by hard working folks who actually seemed to care about health. This has actually been a recurring image of health care in Tz for me – chronically under-resourced and under-staffed, but the people there do convey a sense of effort and intelligence which you can’t help but respect. By the end of the day we had seen 17 patients, diagnosed 4 malaria cases and one severe anaemia, found at least 2 problems with our survey, and seen that number of errant chickens reduced by 1.
We had a few minor travel issues, but nothing like the Mtwara journey. One day our return to base was delayed by two fallen trees, which had succumbed to the extreme rain and wind and blocked the entire road. While 9/10 of the delayed drivers sat in their cars hoping for God or Allah to intervene, a small group of us put our backs into breaking up and pushing the trunks and branches away. If I say so myself, our rhythm of PUSH, count to 3, repeat, was a display of strength and coordination which would probably have earned us tryouts for the Tanzanian national rugby team’s tight five. If there was such a thing.... Needless to say, once a gap had been cleared, everyone else drove through without waiting or even waving to those of us who had solved the problem, but that is typical of the way the roads here work. What was even funnier was arriving at the same point the next day, to find a small group of men holding pangas (machetes) and demanding money for having cleared the road. Even if I knew the Swahili for “I sodding did it, you shysters!” I was laughing too hard to shout it.
And here is the statue at our lunch stop. I think it is supposed to be a giraffe. I remember reading, while on a holiday many years ago, about the horse statue outside the art history museum in Vienna. It is a horse, rearing onto hind legs. This is incredibly difficult to do, apparently (or was at the time) the sculptor gaining worldwide renown for achieving this position without the usual “cheats” that were common amongst his peers, such as a tail or spear touching the ground to help with distribution of the statue’s weight. The same guy (I should look up his name, but the internet is slow today!) tried again and again to repeat this feat of art and balance, and eventually it drove him to madness, so they say. So I couldn’t help noticing that this giraffe has achieved the same, by means of standing unfeasibly upright, a pose surely never seen except on the cover of an old copy of Black Beauty. I wonder if the sculptor knows what an exclusive club he has joined?
