July 22, 2018. Hello again from Tanzania. After a short absence I am back in full gear with the blog. I have been very busy since the last post, but I'll save that for later. First, Let me show you dinner. Beef stew! In the photos I show you all the fixins, tomato, mchicha, onions, bullion cube and the beef. They all go together in my little jicho (stove) for more than an hour.  The beef is straight from the butcher in what they call a mix. That means it has bones, bone fragments, tendons and everything else you can imagine in it. It all needs to be cut apart, marinated for a couple of hours, and then cooked for a couple of hours. That's because the meat is so tough it's like chewing on leather. I have to use my jicho for this because my gas stove would use up the gas too fast cooking for two hours. Today I washed my laundry as well. I'm getting pretty good at that too, it's really about the rubbing together of the cloth between your hands that gets the dirt out. The Tanzanians are very good at it, I'm getting better I think.

I finally completed my survey and paper. It was a real challenge. Getting people organized and walking from house to house with an interpreter and government official  was a real eye opener. We visited families that have never seen a medical person, let alone a white person. The condition of some of the people are difficult to imagine. Here are just a few of the things I found: untreated diabetes causing massive wounds on extremities, a broken arm that has been broken for a year, mentally disabled children living in terrible conditions, and HIV, TB, malaria, and diarrhea a common occurrance. I will provide some of the photos, but I will not show some of the worst.

HIV/AIDS.....24 of the 46 households we visited had someone currently or in the past suffering from it. I say currently or past because many of the family members have already died from it. Some survey examples: A house with parents but no children, do we count the three children who died from AIDS in our survey or not? A family of many children which includes children from her sisters household, but her sister died from AIDS. Do they count as family members or not? Should I count her sister? How about a household where the mother and father are HIV positive, but the children have never been tested and they don't look very well. Do they count as HIV positive or not? Now maybe you can see the dilemma, and get a feel for the amount of work to be done.

Did I mention that my brand new laptop died? The hard drive went. I am working from a borrowed laptop, that was a real challenge too.

PS I have a hyena story. Probably everyone has one, but I'll share mine too. When the dry season began the hyenas started coming around more frequently. I can lay in my bed and listen to them moving around and calling at night. At first I didn't recognize what they were doing, but now I have listened to them enough to understand. They make a grunting type noise that stirs up all of the dogs in the area. The dogs here just roam free without very much support (different story for a different time). The dogs bark and come up to the savannah where the hyenas are, and my house is. Then the hyenas eat them. I have heard that a few times too. The thing is, last night the hyenas were past my house toward the village more than in the past. There are no more dogs around me.
How's that for a story?

Reality does reach out and slap you in the face here.
Until next time!
Brian