Singida/Yulansoni first trip out
This one will be a bit long as there are a lot of things to cover about the trip out to Singida and Yulansoni this first time as an individual. While I have had the pleasure to go to both and to use local transportation to get to Singida in the past this trip as you will see had a lot of new adventures. For those not familiar with the geography: Singida is a town and a district in Tanzania. It is the nearest town with things like hotels, "regular" electricity and so forth. It is 324 Kilometers (201.3 miles) from Arusha where I had been before. In the past this trip was only partially paved, but now it is almost completely paved (mainly repair areas you have to go off road). Yulansoni is the village the Full Dimension Ministry site is located nearest to in the valley area, so we don't actually go to the village but to the site. (BTW site is located at -4.381468, 34.572284 and can be found on Google Earth where you can see the buildings).
The trip from Arusha to Singida starts very early, 5 AM with a taxi ride to the bus station. There you load up the bus and get your seats. This particular bus has assigned seating but they kept selling seats until people were everywhere on the bus. The seats were very small and the sides sloped in so when William set on the window side that meant he had to be about a 1/4 of the way into my seat which was small for me to begin with. So now I am sitting with one butt cheek on the seat and the other off with my legs outside the seat area trying to keep myself up on the seat. Everyone who got on the bus went to the very back and then immediately had to go back to the front. This meant I had to move to allow them through because I am being pushed to the row off of my seat. Fortunately this bus did not stop every 10 to 15 minutes to pick up additional passengers but we did stop quickly every 30 minutes for someone to get off or on and for people wanting to sell things to come on and pitch their wares. This bus also had a show and tell salesgirl much like the stewardess who have to pitch the catalog items. She had to describe the soap in great detail or the toothbrush or hand cream. It was interesting to watch. This trip normally has taken 8 hours via safari vehicles on teams or 10 hours on the previous buses. This time it clocked in just over 6 hours though my legs and buttocks would disagree.
There we got a taxi to the hotel. I am staying at the Stanley, which is in downtown but not one of the better hotels that we have stayed at. The staff is all very pleasant and nice but the windows don't close so all the noise from the local bar next door (which is close enough I could actually reach out and touch it) comes in the rooms all night. Including the one person who likes to shoot pool until about 3 AM. Unfortunately with it being a separate business there is not much that can be done about it. In addition they leave their lights on all night and they shine into the rooms. I have never been lucky enough to get an inside room here where hopefully that would not be a problem but my guess the bar at the hotel would have enough noise or the movie center next door on the other side where they show soccer games. The food here has a American attempt to it with Spaghetti, burgers, pizza, chips served with most meals like chicken or pepper steak. They are pretty good tasting and portions are normally large. I was pleasantly surprised to find Coke Zero here and cheaper than Arusha.
There were two nights at the hotel then the trip out to the site. We could not get a bus that left early so we settled on one that left at 11 AM. The bus was actually a mini van with two cushioned rows of seats and then the drivers row. Realistically it should hold 9 people including the driver. We had 11 people in ours and an argument broke out as they tried to rearrange us to get a 12th person on. We then headed a couple of blocks to the market center of town and there some of the passengers got out to buy items to take with them including bags of charcoal, wire, paint, bags of fruits etc. This lasted about 15 minutes before some of the passengers started arguing again.
The ride lasted about an hour and 15 or 20 minutes where we got off at an intersection with a dirt road. We were immediately set upon by all the pikipiki drivers (motorcycle) that wanted to carry our items for us to wherever we were going. Here is where William changed our plans and decided to ride the pikipiki to the site instead of waiting on the next bus. We first stopped at a red mud brick structure and set down at a table where some beef and rice and something like collards were brought out for us to eat. There was barely room for us to sit at the table the room was so small. The food came out quickly which meant it had been sitting on the charcoal burner ever since she made it. I have rarely seen so many flies in any place I have been and that includes sewage lagoons.
So we get on the pikipiki and I am trying to balance my backpack which will not sit properly on his motorcycle back frame so it is riding high and loose which meant it kept tilting to the water side. In addition I am keeping the laptop with my second hand. For about an hour and twenty minutes I balanced the two as we road over various muddy trails, hard packed ground, dodged herds of cattle and goats and drover through dry loose sandy river beds. With my back this is not my preferred method of traveling.
So now we are on site and I get to meet the staff on site at that moment. There are two nurse/mid-wives, one lab tech/nurse, one assistant school teacher and the doctor and an older lady who goes around cleaning the site. All of these folks live in the buildings on site. The doctor and his wife and young child live in a two room building about 150 sf in size (approximated). The four younger girls live in two rooms of the nurses home which the size of the rooms are probably 225 sf in size. I am given the third room to live in. The older lady lives in the back side of the mini-shop which is currently not in operation because there have been a lot of shops open in the Yulansoni area with the coming on of MPesa which I will talk about in another blog but it is a banking system for simplification that everyone can use. The main teacher has already headed home for the weekend.
There are crops throughout the site. This year they implemented a plan to let locals plant a plot of land inside the compound for a donation to the site to purchase medicines. It seems to be a big success because there are an abundance of crops throughout the compound. It is currently the rainy season here which starts in December and runs through part of April. Rains come in heavy spurts and not slow drizzles here. So there are a lot of erosion problems since they are surrounded by mountains that drain all their water into the valley river area. It is such a concern that when it rains the children cannot come to school because it is unsafe for them to cross normally dry river beds or roads. If they are at school and it rains they cannot leave until a parent comes to get them.
It also causes problems for the primary school kids (elementary) who cannot make it across the river beds when there is water present.
At my time on site I work on documenting my first impressions of the repair and maintenance work done over the past year, inspect the solar power system which is constantly giving a fault alarm, cleaned some erosion sand from the concrete paths that have to be shoveled and inspect the rainwater harvesting systems. We have a bunch of new tanks to hopefully allow us to grow vegetable crops year round now. I am proud to say that the tank we first built after my 2001 trip which was my first rainwater harvesting tank is still in use and is in great working order and only has one small leak (I mean small about a liter a month).
The young girls all have jobs but as is typical in the culture they prepare my meals and hot water for bathing twice a day. This is one area I will have trouble with adjusting as I am not used to others doing for me and wish I could help with these chores without insulting them. It is difficult to even take my bath bucket back to them or a dirty dish without them running to meet me and take it from me. They still use charcoal fires on the ground to do all their cooking and water heating.
The bathing from buckets has never bothered me. After bathing from a steel pot part of a combat helmet a bucket is a treat. The water is warm to hot. What is difficult to get used to is standing over the open latrine hole while you bath so the water can drain down into the latrine. The smell coming up from the hole makes it difficult to feel clean no matter how many baths you take. It is however always refreshing after having taken a bath.
The main meals on site are rice and beans. The kids eat porridge but since I left my artificial sweetener bulk container at the hotel I was glad not to partake until I can bring some of that out to sweeten it with.
Our Sunday service was at the Lutheran church. It lasted 2 hours and 25 minutes and included a lot of dance routines by large groups. It was interesting the ladies dance was basically one set of swaying moves. there were two groups of guys and one did something very similar to the ladies but the other was really into it and jumping around and putting on a show while they were singing. The church held in our pre-school on site was still going on after 5 hours so was kinda glad we did not go to it.
I wish there was a way to truly describe being in Yulansoni for those who have not been there especially to live on site. It is so quiet and peaceful. With everything growing right now it is actually very lush greenery. Night comes on quick in the valley and it gets dark around 7:30 PM and by 8 most of the site is headed to bed. Other than the occasional patient being brought in during the night it stays quiet. Being a pharmacy we have a night guard but you barely hear him. The best thing that comes to mind is the song line about "It is well with my soul" is how I feel here.
Now our trip home was a bit more adventurous. We walked from the clinic to the Balboa tree we make "the turn" at. It is difficult to get a pikipiki at the clinic to take you somewhere outside the valley. So we had to go here to get a pikipiki or a bus. The walk was right at an hour and according to the coordinates it was a straight line distance of 3 miles so reality 3.25 miles and an elevation change of over 700 feet.
Then again William did not want to wait on the local bus so we had to wait on a pikipiki for about 30 minutes for me and then William came when he got one about 30 minutes later. This trip was roughly 40 minutes this time and again a major balancing act.
Then we waited about 30 minutes before a minivan heading back stopped to pick us up. This time we went for a full 15 people in the same type of minivan as before so it was very crowded but again both butt cheeks on the seat so I was happy and I did not have to work to stay balanced or anything like that.
Back at the Stanley my guy was still playing pool. Today I took a very long walk around town to get my conditioning up. Was able to walk out to the Aqua Resort Hotel (resort is a bit of a stretch) which is about an hours walk outside of town then walked to a beach resort hotel that was gorgeous and actually very close to a resort type but costs twice as much as my hotel and the Aqua. Did go in and talk to them and had a coke zero at their bar which cost twice what it does at the Stanley also.
Walking back into town I stopped at the supermarket store to buy some water and found the best treat so far. Sugar Free oatmeal cookies which thankfully don't taste like oatmeal cookies but cinnamon and ginger and fairly sweet tasting.
On the front of looking for a place we may have had some conditional luck. There is an apartment type room that William said was nice and is affordable but will not be available until the current owner moves into his new house sometime late March early April.
Let me finish this with saying these are hopefully not being taken as complaints or as look at what I am enduring because I don't think of these things like that. This is really the life I was best suited for I think. Being in Yulansoni and the peace and quiet is something amazing and takes me back to my time in the military where I was just somewhere in the middle of nowhere with my buddies not talking just enjoying.
The trip from Arusha to Singida starts very early, 5 AM with a taxi ride to the bus station. There you load up the bus and get your seats. This particular bus has assigned seating but they kept selling seats until people were everywhere on the bus. The seats were very small and the sides sloped in so when William set on the window side that meant he had to be about a 1/4 of the way into my seat which was small for me to begin with. So now I am sitting with one butt cheek on the seat and the other off with my legs outside the seat area trying to keep myself up on the seat. Everyone who got on the bus went to the very back and then immediately had to go back to the front. This meant I had to move to allow them through because I am being pushed to the row off of my seat. Fortunately this bus did not stop every 10 to 15 minutes to pick up additional passengers but we did stop quickly every 30 minutes for someone to get off or on and for people wanting to sell things to come on and pitch their wares. This bus also had a show and tell salesgirl much like the stewardess who have to pitch the catalog items. She had to describe the soap in great detail or the toothbrush or hand cream. It was interesting to watch. This trip normally has taken 8 hours via safari vehicles on teams or 10 hours on the previous buses. This time it clocked in just over 6 hours though my legs and buttocks would disagree.
There we got a taxi to the hotel. I am staying at the Stanley, which is in downtown but not one of the better hotels that we have stayed at. The staff is all very pleasant and nice but the windows don't close so all the noise from the local bar next door (which is close enough I could actually reach out and touch it) comes in the rooms all night. Including the one person who likes to shoot pool until about 3 AM. Unfortunately with it being a separate business there is not much that can be done about it. In addition they leave their lights on all night and they shine into the rooms. I have never been lucky enough to get an inside room here where hopefully that would not be a problem but my guess the bar at the hotel would have enough noise or the movie center next door on the other side where they show soccer games. The food here has a American attempt to it with Spaghetti, burgers, pizza, chips served with most meals like chicken or pepper steak. They are pretty good tasting and portions are normally large. I was pleasantly surprised to find Coke Zero here and cheaper than Arusha.
There were two nights at the hotel then the trip out to the site. We could not get a bus that left early so we settled on one that left at 11 AM. The bus was actually a mini van with two cushioned rows of seats and then the drivers row. Realistically it should hold 9 people including the driver. We had 11 people in ours and an argument broke out as they tried to rearrange us to get a 12th person on. We then headed a couple of blocks to the market center of town and there some of the passengers got out to buy items to take with them including bags of charcoal, wire, paint, bags of fruits etc. This lasted about 15 minutes before some of the passengers started arguing again.
The ride lasted about an hour and 15 or 20 minutes where we got off at an intersection with a dirt road. We were immediately set upon by all the pikipiki drivers (motorcycle) that wanted to carry our items for us to wherever we were going. Here is where William changed our plans and decided to ride the pikipiki to the site instead of waiting on the next bus. We first stopped at a red mud brick structure and set down at a table where some beef and rice and something like collards were brought out for us to eat. There was barely room for us to sit at the table the room was so small. The food came out quickly which meant it had been sitting on the charcoal burner ever since she made it. I have rarely seen so many flies in any place I have been and that includes sewage lagoons.
So we get on the pikipiki and I am trying to balance my backpack which will not sit properly on his motorcycle back frame so it is riding high and loose which meant it kept tilting to the water side. In addition I am keeping the laptop with my second hand. For about an hour and twenty minutes I balanced the two as we road over various muddy trails, hard packed ground, dodged herds of cattle and goats and drover through dry loose sandy river beds. With my back this is not my preferred method of traveling.
So now we are on site and I get to meet the staff on site at that moment. There are two nurse/mid-wives, one lab tech/nurse, one assistant school teacher and the doctor and an older lady who goes around cleaning the site. All of these folks live in the buildings on site. The doctor and his wife and young child live in a two room building about 150 sf in size (approximated). The four younger girls live in two rooms of the nurses home which the size of the rooms are probably 225 sf in size. I am given the third room to live in. The older lady lives in the back side of the mini-shop which is currently not in operation because there have been a lot of shops open in the Yulansoni area with the coming on of MPesa which I will talk about in another blog but it is a banking system for simplification that everyone can use. The main teacher has already headed home for the weekend.
There are crops throughout the site. This year they implemented a plan to let locals plant a plot of land inside the compound for a donation to the site to purchase medicines. It seems to be a big success because there are an abundance of crops throughout the compound. It is currently the rainy season here which starts in December and runs through part of April. Rains come in heavy spurts and not slow drizzles here. So there are a lot of erosion problems since they are surrounded by mountains that drain all their water into the valley river area. It is such a concern that when it rains the children cannot come to school because it is unsafe for them to cross normally dry river beds or roads. If they are at school and it rains they cannot leave until a parent comes to get them.
It also causes problems for the primary school kids (elementary) who cannot make it across the river beds when there is water present.
At my time on site I work on documenting my first impressions of the repair and maintenance work done over the past year, inspect the solar power system which is constantly giving a fault alarm, cleaned some erosion sand from the concrete paths that have to be shoveled and inspect the rainwater harvesting systems. We have a bunch of new tanks to hopefully allow us to grow vegetable crops year round now. I am proud to say that the tank we first built after my 2001 trip which was my first rainwater harvesting tank is still in use and is in great working order and only has one small leak (I mean small about a liter a month).
The young girls all have jobs but as is typical in the culture they prepare my meals and hot water for bathing twice a day. This is one area I will have trouble with adjusting as I am not used to others doing for me and wish I could help with these chores without insulting them. It is difficult to even take my bath bucket back to them or a dirty dish without them running to meet me and take it from me. They still use charcoal fires on the ground to do all their cooking and water heating.
The bathing from buckets has never bothered me. After bathing from a steel pot part of a combat helmet a bucket is a treat. The water is warm to hot. What is difficult to get used to is standing over the open latrine hole while you bath so the water can drain down into the latrine. The smell coming up from the hole makes it difficult to feel clean no matter how many baths you take. It is however always refreshing after having taken a bath.
The main meals on site are rice and beans. The kids eat porridge but since I left my artificial sweetener bulk container at the hotel I was glad not to partake until I can bring some of that out to sweeten it with.
Our Sunday service was at the Lutheran church. It lasted 2 hours and 25 minutes and included a lot of dance routines by large groups. It was interesting the ladies dance was basically one set of swaying moves. there were two groups of guys and one did something very similar to the ladies but the other was really into it and jumping around and putting on a show while they were singing. The church held in our pre-school on site was still going on after 5 hours so was kinda glad we did not go to it.
I wish there was a way to truly describe being in Yulansoni for those who have not been there especially to live on site. It is so quiet and peaceful. With everything growing right now it is actually very lush greenery. Night comes on quick in the valley and it gets dark around 7:30 PM and by 8 most of the site is headed to bed. Other than the occasional patient being brought in during the night it stays quiet. Being a pharmacy we have a night guard but you barely hear him. The best thing that comes to mind is the song line about "It is well with my soul" is how I feel here.
Now our trip home was a bit more adventurous. We walked from the clinic to the Balboa tree we make "the turn" at. It is difficult to get a pikipiki at the clinic to take you somewhere outside the valley. So we had to go here to get a pikipiki or a bus. The walk was right at an hour and according to the coordinates it was a straight line distance of 3 miles so reality 3.25 miles and an elevation change of over 700 feet.
Then again William did not want to wait on the local bus so we had to wait on a pikipiki for about 30 minutes for me and then William came when he got one about 30 minutes later. This trip was roughly 40 minutes this time and again a major balancing act.
Then we waited about 30 minutes before a minivan heading back stopped to pick us up. This time we went for a full 15 people in the same type of minivan as before so it was very crowded but again both butt cheeks on the seat so I was happy and I did not have to work to stay balanced or anything like that.
Back at the Stanley my guy was still playing pool. Today I took a very long walk around town to get my conditioning up. Was able to walk out to the Aqua Resort Hotel (resort is a bit of a stretch) which is about an hours walk outside of town then walked to a beach resort hotel that was gorgeous and actually very close to a resort type but costs twice as much as my hotel and the Aqua. Did go in and talk to them and had a coke zero at their bar which cost twice what it does at the Stanley also.
Walking back into town I stopped at the supermarket store to buy some water and found the best treat so far. Sugar Free oatmeal cookies which thankfully don't taste like oatmeal cookies but cinnamon and ginger and fairly sweet tasting.
On the front of looking for a place we may have had some conditional luck. There is an apartment type room that William said was nice and is affordable but will not be available until the current owner moves into his new house sometime late March early April.
Let me finish this with saying these are hopefully not being taken as complaints or as look at what I am enduring because I don't think of these things like that. This is really the life I was best suited for I think. Being in Yulansoni and the peace and quiet is something amazing and takes me back to my time in the military where I was just somewhere in the middle of nowhere with my buddies not talking just enjoying.
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