Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

I like things I work with to be organized.  Not OCD type organization just organized so I can find things.  Sometimes that can be a problem if you don’t have the tools you normally use to organize with.  For example my “desk” is a bit of mess because I have nothing to put files in.  So they sit on top of my desk along with my books and constantly get knocked askew as I flip through them to file receipts which seems to be a major time consumer for me.  First I have to do the accounting then I have to take pictures of receipts for the folks in the states and rename the picture files once I get them on my computer so they can easily figure out what they are for then I get to file them in their folder.  I also have to keep account of all the money I spend personally for tax purposes since I have to show the money I got was what it took to live here. So the tool room has been a big headache for me.  First it is the old min-shop room and the shelving was kind of haphazardly built. 

This week I thought I would run through an account of some of the efforts to fix various things that I have encountered or some things that may need to be fixed. Let’s start with the rake from our site.  Last year we bought the only form of rake you can find here in Singida region for helping to clean up the grass clippings and branches cut.  Now understand they have what is called an outdoor broom which looks much like the stereotype of what a witches flying broom would look like.  Basically a rough straw set of bristles attached to a piece of wood.  The other version has no piece of wood and they bend at the waist to use it or have little kids do it.  They are constantly sweeping the dirt around buildings-when the kids do it is more like a mini dust storm. The rake is more like non flexible rakes used raking through dirt before planting it.  Well after about one year two of our “tines” broke off from the rake.  The tines are made of rebar pieces that are then sharpened.  So

One of the fun things I got to do last year was participate in the Peace Corp Volunteer’s conference for secondary school (high school) girls.  This year they did a conference for boys in Singida and I was allowed to participate again.  I don’t really do much at these other than walk around and smile but it is still fun getting to see students participate in science competitions especially since this is the first time for some of them to actually put what they learn on the blackboard to some kind of activity that they actually do. One of the great things about the Peace Corp Volunteers is that they are easy going, fun loving group but that they also critically analyze their own work and improve on it.  For example, last year’s science day was great and they had a lot fun while learning to put their knowledge to work.  But with everything in this world if you look at it in hindsight you can spot a couple of things to tweak and make it better.  That is exactly what they did.

Here is a young girl who helps care for the child of one of our nurses.  She is always on site with the baby strapped to her back bouncing it around and playing with it.  She saw me headed out to take pictures of the site work and asked I take one of her.  I barely got the baby in the picture too because it was so low on her back. How  does the old saying go-I would give my entire kingdom for … Well this week it would be for some really good screws.  This week I finished up painting the buildings we built late last year.  I had finished the inside last year before I left but still had the outside to do this year.  It took four good coats of the oil based paint to get a good protective coating.  The picture below is of the bathroom with the first three coats.  There are still some areas after three coats caused by the roughness of the concrete that requires going over it one last time to make sure I got it all.  The problems encountered this painting experience is t

Ok it appears last week's post was not a big hit except with my core group of supporters. The comments I got were very encouraging but the number of reads was about half the normal. This week I will focus on some basic updates of what is going on. I will start with the biggest update-I finally have a residence permit for Tanzania after only about 6 months of paperwork.  Despite every site online describing the process and telling me it would cost $500, the paperwork came back with a receipt only showing it cost $250.  Now the fun to try and track down a receipt or reimbursement from the government for the other $300 (250 for the actual permit and 50 for the entry fee). What does this mean?  Well first of all I don’t have to go to Nairobi every ninety days anymore.  So I can take trips inside of Tanzania and look around the country a little bit more as well as cut the enormous cost of the Nairobi trips out of my budget going forward.  Those trips cost around $750 every quar